The School of Greatness - 844 Become a Self-Healer and Break Free of Emotional Cycles with Dr. Nicole LePera

Episode Date: September 2, 2019

FAMILY ISN’T EVERYTHING. How often have you heard phrases about putting family first? Most of us had a plaque on the wall growing up that said something similar. But if you’re letting family walk all over you, you’re doing a disservice to yourself. We get what we tolerate. If you don’t like something, but you tolerate it, you can’t expect people to change. So how do we have better relationships with our families? We have to create a request. And we have to keep our word. Telling people what you need doesn’t always feel good, but it’s necessary to take care of yourself. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about boundaries and reparenting yourself with an inspirational holistic psychologist: Dr. Nicole Lepera. Dr. Nicole LePera is a Holistic Psychologist who believes that mental wellness is for everyone. She evolved her more traditional training from Cornell University and The New School to one that acknowledges the connection between the mind and body. Dr. LePera founded the Mindful Healing Center in Center City Philadelphia where she works with individuals, couples, and families taking gut health, sleep, movement, cellular health, belief, and mindfulness into treatment. Dr. Nicole Lepera shares her three steps to creating healthy boundaries and how to break cycles in ourselves. So get ready to learn how to be a self healer on Episode 844. Some Questions I Ask: What were your biggest limiting beliefs? (9:30) How do we become unstuck? (17:00) How do we manage the guilt of our family? (23:00) How do we regulate our nervous system? (46:00) What does it mean to “reparent” yourself? (1:0200) How do we become a self healer every day? (1:16:00) In This Episode You Will Learn: How emotion is tied to memory (12:00) What “interdependence” means (20:00) The three steps to create a boundary (29:00) How to “depersonalize” (39:00) Dr. Nicole’s definition of manifestation (57:00) About the “Small, Daily Promise” (1:13:00) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/844 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is episode number 844 with Dr. Nicole Lepera. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Julia Cameron said, what we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon.

Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours. Which do we want more of? I'm very excited about this interview with Dr. Nicole Lepera, also known as the holistic psychologist over on Instagram. She's been blowing up on Instagram, growing hundreds of thousands of people a month with her wisdom and unique approach to holistic healing. If you don't know who she is, she is a holistic psychologist who founded the Mindful Healing Center in Philadelphia, where she works with individuals, couples, and families talking about gut health, sleep, movement, cellular health, belief, and mindfulness into treatment. She evolved her more traditional training from Cornell University and the New School to one that acknowledges the connection between the mind and body. Dr. Lepera

views mental and physical struggles from a whole person perspective and works to identify the underlying physical and emotional causes we all face. This school of therapy differs from the more traditional therapy methods in that it concentrates on the client's relationships and interactions with their environment and how they express these relationships through their feelings, thinking, and being. And this is one of the reasons why she's taking over the Instagram world with her message because she's resonating so deeply with people in their heart and their way of being. And in this episode, we talk about how to become emotionally unstuck when you feel like

there's no way out of those emotional tragedies, what interdependence looks like, and why we need to break our patterns to find it. Setting boundaries and the important difference between boundaries versus ultimatums. Dr. LaParis tips on creating a new personal narrative in order to manifest what you want, how to rebuild trust within yourself and become a self-healer every day. We talk about reparenting yourself and creating powerful boundaries with family members and so much more. I think you're going to really love this one.

I really believe this is going to blow up in a big way. Make sure to share this with a friend right now. If there's someone that you know who might be struggling with self-healing or any type of emotional challenges right now, send them this link, lewishouse.com slash 844, or just copy and paste the link where you're listening to this podcast over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you're listening to this podcast. Very excited about this. Make sure to share with a friend and tag myself, Lewis Howes, and The Holistic Psychologist over on Instagram, as I'm sure Nicole would love to hear your thoughts about

what you picked up and learned from this episode. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. We have Dr. Nicole LaPera in the house. Good to see you. I'm so glad you're here. I found out about you months ago on Instagram and just have been loving your work and the impact you make on people's lives. So thank you for being here. And you'll be moving out here soon, hopefully, right?

That's right. That's the goal. That's right. Even though it's not publicly announced yet. Here it is, publicly announcing it. I'm the hell out of Philadelphia. I mean, I don't know how you can come here and not want to stay. It's pretty amazing.

Really. I travel the world all the time, and there's amazing places, but I always want to come back here. That's good. You know you found your home. I love it. Yeah. The first year, I actually hated it, because I came from New York City.

I lived in Ohio, then lived in New York City before I moved here, and I loved the energy in New York, but you've been on the East Coast for a long time, so you're probably ready for a break and a change of pace, right? Yeah. But it's different energy. It's a shift of energy. I remember when I would travel out here, getting used to the slower pace of things was a test of patience. I didn't like that. My East goes South. I'm like, come on, where's my coffee? Let's go.

I didn't like it. That's why I moved here. As opposed by the beach, it's even like 10 times slower by the beach where you're staying right now. But in West Hollywood, it had more of a New York walking vibe, so that's why I love it here. A little more energy. Now, you've been doing your work for how long now? Probably by the time my very long program ended. Schooling?

Schooling, about seven years probably after school. But my program was about seven, eight years. Seven, eight years of school. This is after my undergrad, from the start of grad school until I was designated a psychologist and then ultimately able to get a license and then open up a practice. It took seven, eight years to get a license. To get a, yeah.

So it's- And that's for most therapists too? I mean, all therapists? Five years of, so the clinical psychology, now things have changed. When I first started school, the route to having a practice and essentially getting the license to have a practice was through a PhD, a clinical PhD, or what's called a PsyD. I don't know if you ever heard that, a P-S-Y, capital D. Anyway, long story short, things have since changed. And now you can go and get a master's level education and then get licensed.

Two years, three years maybe. I'm not sure if there's a thesis involved with that. And then you can get, you have to get enough supervised hours either route, but you can hang a shingle. And that was my ultimate goal. And at the time, I was very limited. I had the PsyD or the PhD path. So I chose the PhD. And then seven years later, a nightmare dissertation, some licensure hurdles.

So say it mildly and up went my shingle. Wow. There you go. I think in another life, I would have loved to have been a psychologist. Yeah. It's a cool thing. The mind has always really fascinated me, and that's honestly, as long as I can remember, you probably would have heard me say, I want to be a psychologist only because of the mind piece. I like helping people, but it's interesting, the more I kind of explored my own path in, I realized it was less of, oh, I want to help heal people, and more of, wow, the mind's incredibly fascinating, which is cool because I think that's a different route,

and I think that also kind of evolved me to the way that I'm working now with a really heavy focus on the mind and the power of the mind in a little different way. Interesting. So are you coming back around to wanting to help people too? Yeah. I mean, people are right. You know what I mean? Are you just fascinated by how messed up we are? Yeah. I'm just fascinated by the power of the mind on both ends that keeps us stuck.

And then the power of the mind that can make us well and then beyond well. I mean, I just know myself because I was so limited. I have so many limiting beliefs in my own, passed on from my own upbringing, experiences I've had. Still you have limiting beliefs? I've overcome a lot of them. What were the biggest for you? Big time scarcity mindset. Like scarcity around relationships, health, money? I've noticed food was one of my things.

I didn't know until I started to explore some of my patterns. And for me, scarcity ran the entirety of it. What do you mean around food? So this idea, and it would come up in my big joke in my relationship a lot, would be we lived together and we'd have items in the food, in the fridge, and we'd shop together and we'd eat the same diet. And I would go in, where's my half? And became incensed by, where's my goddamn half of food? And I was like, why is this so upsetting to me? Like I'm not with going without there's, I mean,

I live next door, literally three blocks. I live, I can walk to a whole foods. Like I, there's no reason why when my half goes away, what was that about? And I started to realize the underlying driving thought of this was that scarcity. So my food, my things, lack of money, mindset, things like that. So that was a really big one. I used to think genetically in some ways, I would see the way people and the way their bodies looked and how they were in the world.

I was just not gifted. So I think that a lot of my own healing journey was overcoming that, which is why I'm so passionate now about helping other people because I think a lot of my own healing journey was overcoming that, which is why I'm so passionate now about helping other people. Because I think a lot of people are limiting themselves based on. And again, these don't come out of nowhere. These mindsets, the way I see it at least, they all come from an accumulation, as I put it, of our past experiences. I was talking about this this morning about memories. About how really we have maybe five or six. Maybe you tell me differently. You're the psychologist. But I think we have maybe five or six, maybe you tell me differently, you're the psychologist, but I think we have like maybe five, six, maybe seven

strong positive memories. And then we have five or six or seven like strong negative memories that we always kind of reflect back to and think about. And obviously there's filler memories, but I was trying to, I was like, I don't really remember much from ages five to 18 in between those five to 10 memories on each side. If I really focus on like, okay, what did I do in third grade when I was like eight years old or whatever it was every day, you kind of forget like the 365 days in between the memories that we hold onto with these patterns. Is that kind of safe to say in my uneducated? Yeah, 100%.

And what I would offer is the reason that you have those really high positives and maybe really low negatives was because of the emotionality attached. So the bigger the emotion, we tend to be able to retain those. Those memories. Those memories.

Because our memory center, our emotional center, our limbic system, it's all interconnected. And a lot of the reasons why we encode and then can retrieve, essentially put the memory in and access it later, is because of the emotionality. How strong it was. How strong it was. So what were the memories you had and the experiences you had that created the limiting beliefs? Scarcity. and the experiences you had that created the limiting beliefs.

Right. Scarcity. It's interesting you say this because then there's another category, and this is where I fall and actually diagnose myself with a memory impairment for quite some years. Memory impairment? Impairment based on the fact that I had no memories. I dated a girl that said she didn't remember anything before 18 one time.

I was like, she was super positive and amazing and loving, and I was like, there's something off if you don't remember anything before 18. Nothing? I was like, how is that possible? There's got to be some serious trauma that you're – and later I found out there was incredible trauma. I think societally – so there is that. So when I realized I had no memory, I had two theories, two working theories.

That's crazy. Two working theories. memory. I had two theories, two working theories. One was that I had such a cataclysmic trauma that I can't remember and that washed all my memories. And I spent a lot of time thinking, and oh gosh, what could it have been? And I keep coming up with, I don't. And then the other diagnosis that I gave myself was a memory impairment. So anyway, flashing forward, I've now come to realize that I started to share. When I got the Instagram platform, I started to talk a bit more openly about my lack of memories. I started to understand our nervous system and our stress responses a bit more. And I came to realize that more of us than you would realize are like this X of yours and myself,

that we don't have memories. And it doesn't have to be a biological thing wrong in our brains. And it doesn't have to be a biological thing wrong in our brains. And it doesn't have to be the big T. It's like the big T trauma that I think a lot of us talk about, the big cataclysmic event. I feel like you'd remember the trauma. Right. So sometimes it's a low level stress, chronic stress, and inability to have emotions present in the home that results in that lack of memory. So anyway, to answer your question, though, the way I came to know

that I had a lot of my lack-based mindset was because we still remember. So I have people who reach out to me like, oh my gosh, if I can't remember, how will I heal? So I don't have a visual memory. I can't go back in time. And when I talk about inner child work and you go back to heal,

you don't need the memory to heal the way that I see it because we all are a walking memory, whether it's in based on our reactions, our triggers, our patterns, the thoughts that we frequently think. So a lot of mine would orbit around lack-based or not having type of things, lack of consideration. So we can see evidence of our past, whether or not we see our past in that word visual. Based on how we're showing them now. Yes. So you were being, for example, you were like, where's my food? My half is gone. Or you took three-fourths and I only have a fourth. And so

that's definitely reflecting a memory of experiences or an experience you had that you held onto and said, I'm not deserving of enough, or there's never going to be enough, or whatever the story you said to yourself, right? A lot of mine was based around this concept of being considered. So for me, it was a bit of emergence between lack. So I attribute that to my dad. My parents are much older. When they had me, my mom was 42 and my dad was 45.

How old are you now? And I will be 37 in September. Same age. So, yeah. So my dad very much had a lot of the depression error-based thinking. I mean, my garage looks like a fallout shelter with literally twine wrapped up because enough twine put together, you have a rope. I mean, that kind. So very direct ways and indirect ways, I'm sure. My dad's messaging about money and holding and keeping.

And then the consideration piece gets wrapped up in there for me. You weren't being taken, you weren't being considered, not being considered, you weren't being seen or not being thought about. Yes. And that comes to my mother who was very much emotionally, completely vacant, absent. And so not feeling seen, heard, understood. So for me, when items would go missing, like my brownie that I really wanted, it became not only do I not have enough for me, but the meaning that I signed was I'm not considered. And that would open up a really deep wound. So when my partner's looking at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? It's a brownie, Nicole.

I'll go get you another one. You know what I mean? But inside, I was like a little girl who was not being seen and was being told that there's not enough for me. And I mean, so that's where that pain was coming from when I was tearing around the apartment about my brownie. It wasn't about my brownie. And I think that's the way that, I mean, if we all look at ourself and our patterns, and I'm always talking about developing self-observation to do that, all of our clues are there. Our past is present with us. And that's why we're stuck. And that's why we can't, the way I say it, at least that's why a lot of us struggle

to move forward. And that's why I hear the word stuck probably more often than I hear any word spoken. So how do people get unstuck? First, I think consciousness. We have to become conscious to ourself because we're in our autopilot 95% of the day if we're not conscious. And that's going to be the program. I mean, the computer analogy is, I think, the one that we all understand the most. That's going to be the program that we're running day after day after day. So without consciousness, there is no change. And then becoming conscious to our patterns. We are incredibly habitual creatures as humans, whether it's our daily habits, behavioral habits, whether or not it's our patterned thoughts that a lot of us have. We all tend to think the same content type thoughts.

And then the way I say it is they induce feelings, actual changes in our body's physiology and our neurotransmitters and our stress hormones. And then that becomes our normal. And that becomes our stuck place. So without consciousness, I don't think change happens. So awareness is consciousness. Awareness of our pattern, of our triggers, of our pain, of the trauma. Does that mean healing the past first and reflecting on all the past? Is that why people do therapy, talk therapy, because you're talking about the things that created the pattern today? I am always a believer, and I explore this within myself a lot, how much is the past necessary? And I keep coming to the conclusion that it's necessary,

that becoming self-observational understanding, I think that developing through a mindfulness-based meditation practice is incredibly helpful because it actually helps us to fire up our brain in a new way that then allows for self-observation throughout the day. Because I don't think there's no magic cushion. There's no magic anything. The way I see it, we can't do something once and then expect my day to look different magically because I've meditated in the morning. Yeah, there's some gains and some peace.

I mean, a joke you made, like, oh, I meditate in the morning so I can calm my mind. Yeah, we get a little residual, carry out, carry away from sitting and meditating. But if I'm not watching myself throughout the day, and if I don't train myself to watch myself throughout the day, to watch my patterns, to watch the thoughts that are causing those emotional reactions, and especially to see when I'm triggered, just when I'm having a big feeling about a current event. Typically, the feeling is really big because it's about the meaning assigned to the event, the similarity of this now event based on my past experiences. And so there's always a reason why things are way bigger than they maybe ought to be logically

in that moment. And then that's where we dive in and give ourselves some new, either releasing the emotional valve, soothing our own emotional wounds in that moment, not looking outside of anyone or anything else to make us feel better. At least that's the way that I view it. So you're saying no one else should be determining our happiness? Yeah. Big promoter. That's not a shocker. Yeah. I talk a lot about interdependence is the kind of term that I've been going back to a lot recently. What does that mean?

A lot about interdependence is the kind of term that I've been going back to a lot recently. What does that mean? Essentially being, you know, because we are social creatures as humans. We actually benefited quite greatly from having tribes, you know, as we were evolving in terms of safety and division of labor. So as I see it, we need, quote unquote, little n. We little n need relationships. quote unquote, little n. We little n need relationships. But I think what interdependence means to me is being able to be a self-reliant and resilient human,

meeting all my physical, emotional needs separately, and then having that shared space of relationship. How does someone become interdependent if they've been so reliant on the needs of other people, especially under 18, the needs of parents for financial or housing, food. But if we're talking adults, how do you become interdependent when you have a lot of trauma or pain? Well, I mean, developmentally, Lewis, that is the reality.

Up until a certain, at this point, I think, unfortunately, because of some of the financial struggles that many people are having, I think even now adults are finding themselves much more compromised and dependent. College debt. Yeah, place or living, you know, back to live at home, to be able to pay for college debt. I mean, it's really, it's a shame. It's sad because I think we're shifting back into that more just necessary dependence. So wherever you sit on that spectrum, I think it's about breaking those patterns of looking outside of ourself to show up for others, take care of others, get my needs met by relating with others, whether it's because they make me

feel better or they distract me or I've learned that. I come by this really naturally myself. My family was, and a very large reason why I'm not able or I choose now not to have contact with them is they are so enmeshed and codependent where there's just no boundary and direct and indirect messaging that I got growing up was that I was responsible for other people's feelings in particular. So for me, evolving out of that and starting to separate myself off and just see myself as a self-contained human also meant then showing up differently in my relationships, putting up the word we all love to hate, which is boundaries, and learning how to carve out space. Not only physical space, where my needs might be different than another person's needs in that given moment, but more importantly, emotional space. And that's, I think, a struggle that a lot of us have. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of people that struggle with family,

family and boundaries. I've gone through this challenge myself with different people in my family throughout the years. And on one end, I have a lot of guilt tied to responsibility to make sure my family's taken care of, at least basic needs, right? On the other end, I'm like, okay, we've all come from the same place. We all have certain skills and the capacity to take care of our basic needs. It's not like we were homeless or something like that,

like we all got college degrees. We're all very privileged in a certain sense, right? Sure, we all faced a level of trauma and have our own level of limiting beliefs based on experiences and trauma that each one of us felt separately. But I still have this challenge with like, okay, do I just make sure everyone's taken care of all the time? And then I feel taken advantage of or abused or not respected or whatever it is? Or do I set boundaries and have people potentially hate me and not want to talk to me? You hear these catchphrases like family is everything.

Always be there for your family. Nothing else matters but family. But what about our own emotional well-being? Doesn't that matter? Yeah, that's a tough one. But what about our own emotional well-being? Doesn't that matter? Yeah. So how do we manage the guilt and pressure and the feeling of responsibility of needing to provide for our family or take care at all costs versus having personal freedom and peace in our own heart? Yeah, absolutely. It's tough. I made that noise when you said that first one because family is everything might as well have been a plaque. In your home, right?

In my home. I mean, that was said as a mantra. Family is everything. Family is everything. Family is everything. It was under the guise of the Italian culture. My dad is very much kind of 100% Italian. And if you're not a part of the family is everything motto,

you might as well not be in the family. Yeah, it was really. So a lot of us, I do know that we get that direct. Some of it's a bit more indirect, where you're just kind of not urged or things aren't fostered that take you out of that family unit. So there's a lot of ways that I see it, that these messages are internalized and then we become the adult that begins to believe that ourself on some level. So the thing I will always say first and foremost is boundaries suck, especially when you're creating them with our families.

These are dynamics that have been set in place for as long as some of us have walked the earth. So when we change a dynamic that's already one way, it sucks even more. However, I say that because it's uncomfortable to put up boundaries and to start to define limits of what it will no longer work for you. But what I see that saving ultimately over time, so the immediate discomfort, that's really uncomfortable for some of us.

It might be immediate for years, right? Yeah, but the way I see it on the other side is a much more sustainable relationship. Because even in the description you said, right, I start to feel resentful, taken advantage of. And the problem there is I then look to these people who are taking advantage of me or not respecting me or not giving me something back and I get mad at them and then the relationship

suffers. But unfortunately I have to look at me and the role that I played in continuing to show up in a situation that wasn't working for me. Wow. So when did you, I guess, leave talking to your family or connecting with them? How long has it been? So it's been officially a year. Right when you started Instagram. Right when I started Instagram. But this was, I mean, it was several. I mean, one might say it was a lifetime in the making.

You tried to make it work. You tried to separate. You stayed in. You came. Yeah. And so part of the situation with me, and again, I never prescribe my path as for everyone. We all have different journeys on this planet. So part of the situation that made it inherently more complicated was the fact that my mom, my dad, and my older sister, who was 15 years older than me, I was a much later in life child, live in the same home.

They all live together. Live in the same home, yeah, with my nephew as well, my sister. Your parents are what, 70? So my mom will be, she just turned 79. My dad, I think, is 82. Wow. And your older sister who's 52. And my older sister is 52, yeah.

They all live together. They live together in the home, and now my 12-year-old nephew. And he lives there. They all live in the home. Wow. So talk about a living. So you don't live there. So I escaped.

I've gotten out. I actually got the hell out as soon as I turned a little college age. I think I was 17 when I flew right off to college and I was out of there. But I say that because I tried every version of separate relationships. What are those versions? You know, Hey, my sister's name is Suzanne. Suzanne, you know, let me try to, you know, have a separate relationship over here with you where we don't talk. My mom is chronically ill. So another bit of my background, my mom is chronically ill and has been my, my entire life. There's now a bit of a pain pill, not a full blown addiction. I mean, she just is really tolerating. I mean, that's exactly what it is to be honest. But so pretty much my mom is the orbit around that. My whole family kind of,

you know, kind of shift. Yeah. She's the nucleus. So mom's health. much my mom is the orbit around that. My whole family kind of, you know, kind of, yeah, she's the nucleus. So mom's health. And my mom has had when I was in my early twenties, which was probably at the height of my anxiety where I might as well, I was living in New York and might as well have been one panic attack after another that I was living. Cause my mom was actually having a pretty serious heart surgery at the time. So yeah, there's like micro health things. So, but it's always how's mom doing? Is mom okay? Mom has at the time. So yeah, there's like micro health things. So, but it's always, how's mom doing? Is mom okay?

Mom has this health thing. So one of the versions that I tried was having a separate relationship where we don't, you know, talk about mom and health. And talk about life in general. Anything. I mean, I don't talk about the dogs. I mean, you know, what you watched on television.

Yeah, anything. And it just couldn't, you know, and then- She couldn't or- She couldn't. Beyond that, it was always, I was needed to go to this doctor's appointment and that. And it was just this endless search for this cure of this illness.

It just got really complicated. Tried separate relationship with my dad. My dad might as well be a million miles away. Just always worried about my mom. My mom is just now at this point with the pain pills completely on another planet. So I say it was a year ago when I finally, but I tried every version of direct communication. I would just remove myself, not go over as frequently. Then I would get the God damn it

texts. Where are you? Call us back. We're worried about you. So much anxiety. So finally about a year ago. So what do you say when you create a boundary of separation from your family? Are you saying, I'm choosing not to speak with any of you anymore. If you want to talk to me, feel free, but it's not going to be on your terms. What do you say to them? So I mean, the way I suggest is a boundary is an I statement. So if this continues to happen, I will no longer whatever. So obviously it depends. What a threat. Are I mean, that's what people, they make you, they manipulate and guilt you. And you're like, I think the difference, and it's interesting. I was talking with Melissa Hartwig on her podcast and she asked, what is the difference between weaponizing boundaries and about, you know, having a boundary and what is

this idea of ultimatum? Cause I think that's a really, that's how it's received. Boundary is an ultimatum, but yeah, I mean it is, but the way I see the difference is I'm not saying you, I'm going to do some, this is me, this is my limit. And if that gets crossed, I am now going to take myself away to end the conversation, to kindly talk to you when you're a bit calmer. Right. And I think that anytime it's me or I based and not, I think that's when we can shift out of that idea.

However, Lois, I mean, of course there there's going to be someone on the receiving end of that that might, I mean, say, and so at my meditation yesterday, I met a lot of followers and it was an incredible experience and they, more often than not, every three mentioned the concept of boundaries. The fact that A, they had no idea what a boundary was

until they started to read my work and other people's works. Then they started to use boundaries and we're talking about how incredibly difficult it is. I actually put a post up today about a lot of the feedback that one gets, you know, where we're told we're selfish or holier than thou. Who the hell do we think we are putting up these boundaries? So, I mean, the short of it is they typically aren't received. Well, no, there's always going to be some type of manipulation or guilting or are you better than me now or you've changed like you wrote in your post today. Man, so what was the reaction like for you with your family when you said, okay, I'm choosing to do this if this continues to happen?

In the beginning, it was kind of just another joke in my family is you might as well talk to this wall right here. So it was heard. It wasn't responded to, but three days later, three texts later back was the content that I wasn't interested in talking about. Or like I said, I would try to experiment with a little more distance between calls or visits. And then every now and again, it would get met with either anger or worry. Where am I? You know, am I? Am I dead in a ditch somewhere? I mean, just these crazy- So you just not respond to their texts anymore?

Or you just say, please don't message me unless it's something positive? Yes, yes, yes. And if it was direct content that I wasn't interested in discussing, I would say, I've asked us not to talk about this. I don't care to have this conversation. It sounds like unless you create a boundary, we get what we tolerate in life. So unless we create boundaries or guidelines, we're going to continue to get the things that we tolerate. And if you don't like something, but you tolerate it, you can't expect someone else to change. If you continue

to tolerate that thing until you make a clear request, this is my request that we only talk about these things or we eliminate this from our relationship or whatever it may be. And moving forward, if that doesn't happen, I want to create a boundary for myself. We have to create a request and it can't be an angry, mean request. It needs to be like a calm, loving request. Usually it sounds like it's never going to be a calm response because the person may not want to change, but that's the way it's got to be, it sounds like. Well, I always define three steps. The first one is to define it for yourself. And for some people, we don't know at first.

We never heard of what a boundary is. We don't know that we can. So I always say this is an individual process of looking within. Maybe kind of step back, engage some of your relationships, see the ones that are working and what looks or feels different about those and the ones that aren't working. So that's a process.

So defining your boundary, then putting up, enacting your boundary where you're communicating it. I love you already very intuitively. Set at a calm time where both parties are not reactive. You're not going to shout this out in a fight. It's probably not going to be the best time. Objective language, I think, is really great.

Make it about you. Where you just make it about you. And you just, you know, no fingers. It's not you. You guys are crazy, so I'm never coming over. Probably not going to be the most well-received. And then the third step is also our responsibility, and only ours, is maintaining it.

Follow through on it. Is following through. Keeping your word. Because the second we don't do that, we do send the message that enough guilt, enough anger can, and I say this too, and I know this can kind of, I don't know, the way people can receive this can be many different ways, but a lot of times we're not upholding our boundary because of how we feel. I call it the feel bads. So we take our boundary because of how we feel. I call it the feel-bads. So we take our boundary down so that we don't feel – I'm good at feel-bad.

Why do you think I talk about them? I come by the feel-bads as part of my family. We love to feel bad, right? But I say that because, again, it's our job to tolerate the way we're feeling. It's our job to tolerate our feel-bad and not to do the easy thing that's going to take our feel-bad away. To keep the peace, right? Which is acquiescing, yeah. And then be resentful all over again acquiescing. Yeah. And then be

resentful all over again, being that person. And I know that that that's where some people are. Well, you know, it's, so I actually, it's like a self, a lot of the times, and I'll even go a little bit deeper into this. A lot of the times that we struggle with boundaries is because of our own feelings. We don't want to put limits up because of how it makes us feel. Yes. We don't want to hurt people that we love. And a lot of us want to show up as a caring individual in the world. I, myself included, I fancy myself a very kind, considerate person, but there's a limit. A lot of times the reason why we don't even initially have boundaries, again, because we weren't modeled them, but because we don't like how it feels. We feel bad. Yeah. You don't want someone else, as a people pleaser, you don't want to hurt someone else.

Even if you need to for your own sanity, you still don't want to hurt people. You don't want someone angry at you because then you're like, oh, they don't like me, right? But that's where manipulation and guilting comes into play. And it's just like, I learned a lot in the last few years about setting back. I used to really care about everyone's opinion about me. Like, really, and want to try to, like, win them over. If, like, one negative review, like, how can I win this person over? Even though there's thousands of positive comments or whatever on something. And I was just like, I'm not going to be able to change someone's mind, necessarily. And me putting energy on one person to try to make them, like, like me more is a waste of time. I think we've got to

continue to just reflect on like, okay, this person's not resonating with me. Is there something I can do to improve, to move forward? But if not, I'm not going to put my energy on trying to save one person's opinion about me, right? So I like this. So setting boundaries, define the boundary, creating like a calm, communicational request with the boundary, and then staying your word and following through on the boundary. Otherwise, I'll never be met. So how do you feel a year later, not talking to your family now? It's been a year. I mean, coming to the decision to not talk to them was complicated. It was really difficult. And that's why I speak very openly and honestly about it too. Because I think I'm very surprised when I get messages of other people that have,

have certain amounts of distance between their family, complete no contact. And I didn't, was not aware that there were so many other people that, you know, had had to put or had chosen to put distance in because I did not come by that decision easily. It was,

it was painful for me to do that. Yeah. And, and I don't want to hurt them. And I do love them. And I do want what's best for them. But I also have to love me and want what's best for me. So when I say it's been a hard year, I mean, I have moments, the holidays. And there's the positive and the negative of that now.

On the one hand, it's like, oh, I can actually choose what I want to do for the holiday. That was completely new. Me and my partner are starting to make our own traditions because the requirement of family is everything. You better believe you're showing up for the big Italian Christmas gathering. So I was given little flexibility to have space apart around holidays. But obviously the other side of that came sadness, knowing that my family was having a holiday without me,

with my nephew who's young there. I mean, it's complicated on a lot of levels. And they might be talking bad about you or whatever. Oh, I know. I know that it's being viewed. Probably not me. I'm pretty positive, and my partner is very aware of this herself, that she's probably been villainized.

It's probably her who's taken me away from the family. I mean, whatever story that they're going to create, they're going to create. It's tough, though, because unfortunately, sometimes if family is only destructive towards you, you shouldn't have to stay there and be responsible for their joy and happiness for decades if they're always destructive towards your health, right? On another end, you could say, well, I'm just not going to allow it to affect me. I'll be around them. I'll still show up. I won't distance myself from the family, but I'm just not going to allow their thoughts or words or actions towards me affect me. Is that something that's healthy too, though, just to be

in the space while there's manipulation, guilt, shaming, or whatever, judgment, whatever's happening in family dynamics? Should people do that or should they more separate themselves fully from family if it's a constant? I think if they can, I mean, if they can find the way. So for me, I got really good at being okay with it because what I would do, and I didn't, even though I heard this word in my schooling, I did not realize that this is what I was doing, is I would dissociate. Dissociate? Dissociate, yeah. So I would, I call it my spaceship where I would go away on. You weren't present. I wasn't present. I mean, I got very savvy. You would not have any

idea having a conversation with me. You know, I would be in that. Looking through me. Yeah, so let's, yeah, so let me tie this all together. The reason I could not remember my childhood is because I dissociated. So I wasn't present enough to put it in. So there's nothing there to reaccess. So that's just to tie that all in. You were physically present, but you were not emotionally present. Yeah, because of the emotional overwhelm of the family, the anxiety, and no one modeling or helping me

to navigate those feelings as we do as children. I will always say this. As children, I believe we come to this planet, however you think we get here, as adaptive, intuitive creatures. Yeah, of course. We all have a guidance system and we all are incredibly flexible and adaptive. So I adapted. I dealt with my own emotions, my own way,

which was I dissociated. So some people though, in adulthood can find the way to show up with their families. I talk a lot about depersonalizing, simply meaning not owning it. Even if they say something negative to you, if you can see that as more of a reflection of them yeah you can maybe maybe come and go and leave that interaction and be okay enough you know what to expect you're not expecting them to change you arrive you deal with it laugh at the situation you can maybe i think humor is incredible and then you leave um i did not find myself able though for that. I did not want to use my old habit of dissociation. And then, like I said, because of just the living structure and just the in-depth, ingrainedness of their dynamics, it was much harder for me to find that okay space. I don't know, honestly,

what the future brings. I'm doing and I'm using. And so part of what would happen, I would go back to visit and then my partner would notice this as well. And I would then become almost regressed. I'd become reactive. So I was trying to heal, but I would only get so far and then I'd be pulled right back down. Or the next health crisis, I'd be pulled right back in.

So my healing was limited. So this year has been incredible for me to be able to actually gain some more full traction to do my own inner healing so that I don't know if a future comes and I can have some version of contact with them. I'm not sure. But I know that I have to be in a different place if I am going to be that person who can come home, let them be them, and leave that home intact. I'm curious. I feel like a lot of people have challenges, right? Whether it be family or limiting beliefs, scarcity, relationships, health, whatever it may be.

And a lot of people do talk therapy. But why does it seem like most traditional talk therapy doesn't work and people keep going? Yeah. And how can it work better for them? What do they need to do so that it starts to see benefits and results? What's your thoughts? I'm really happy you asked that. So one of the reasons I think, and this happened in my own life, so anxiety was all I knew. I went to multiple years of talk therapy myself. I was actually in what is called a psychoanalytic training program. So think Freud,

the couch, clocking. I mean, these are people that go into treatment hour, I mean, each day of the week, you know, five days a week for an hour. So I was training in that modality. And part of that training was we had to lay on the couch ourself. And so at some points I was up in therapy two hours a week. I was on medication. I had, you know, my SSRI, my benzo in the back pocket, and I was taking the traditional routes of treatment, and I still wasn't getting better. So for me, realizing that we have to look at the whole person, that's why I now work holistically, that there's a body that my mind that's unwell, if you will, is attached to. So for me, it was exploring the nutritional, the sleep, all of the lifestyle-based stuff, because I was so physiologically out of balance

that I wasn't able to, a lot of my symptoms really of anxiety even, sometimes even of depression or what we think of as depression are the result of this physiological imbalances. Yeah, lack of sleep, anxiety constantly. Yeah, big time food, gut damage. I mean, we now know that the gut is incredibly important in our health. It's not only where nutrients are absorbed that damage to the gut results in chronic inflammation that can be really, really problematic in terms of our mental wellness. So for me, without that, I was just contributing and exacerbating my anxiety. So no amount of talking in a room the way I see it, or even medication, because we also now know that the medication that we thought all the neurotransmitters were in our brain, like I said, are in our gut.

Yeah. So we're doing talk therapy, then having a gallon of ice cream and pizza afterwards. It's probably not going to help us because we're going to go up, down, up, down, up, down constantly. Yeah. And I can assure you, I've yet to find a program or meet a clinician. And I now have a whole network of them that I'm connected to that have had any version of that. I mean, clinician and I now have a whole network of them that I'm connected to that have had any version of that. I mean, the nutrition, the gut, the body is not mentioned in any training program. So I think that's a huge limitation. I also know that another big, big problem for a lot of us, whether or not we have the big T of trauma or the little T of trauma, is a dysregulated nervous system. Yeah.

So now there's science. Yeah. So now there's an incredible amount of science. Dr. Stephen Porges is amazing. He does polyvagal theory. And so to put it really simple, unless we start to address that dysregulation in our nervous system that at this part most of us have, that's going to limit treatment. So the sympathetic, is that fight or flight?

Fight or flight. Most of us are spending most of our time chronically in fight or flight. 60, 70% of our day. I mean, from this mean from this i mean i'm looking out the vast city in the background i mean some for some of us the city is enough my mind is now taking on a whole other capacity to induce stress so a lot of us humans are living chronically stressed you could be in peace you could be in nature but your mind could be in traffic. Yes. Thinking and anxious about. And then you could have induced a completely panic attack.

I mean, I've seen it happen in my office. Content we're talking about before I know it, the person's having a complete visceral reaction. They're sweating. Right. So without regulation of that nervous system, I see that treatment, talking about it only goes so far because we had a great session. Thanks, Louis. See you next week. And now I'm out the door with my overactive nervous system and that next thing is going to activate me. And

the next thing is going to activate me and I'm going to have a fight with my partner that also speaks to the power of the subconscious. So what therapy is, is talking from the conscious mind. We can have a great insightful therapy session. I can understand. I can even have a great game plan, but then I'm back out the door. And if I'm not conscious, I'm back in my subconscious and then I'm back in those patterns. So then what I would see week after week, me too. I thought I was very insightful. I thought I knew myself, right? And I'd work with people. We had a great session and back the next week and it's the same rapport. Oh, got in the same fights with my partner. Still stressed out about work. It's

like nothing's changing. And it's because again, therapy, the way I see it, only addresses that conscious mind. Even the best laid plans of what we're going to do that next time we're activated only go as far as me remembering to do. Being aware and mindful in that moment when we're triggered, right? To do these new things. So I think that those, whether it's the lack of the body attention, the lack of addressing the dysregulated nervous system, or really us not understanding. I mean, the subconscious is as crazy as this might sound, not talked about in any training program. So unless these clinicians are given these tools, I think that a lot of them are going to. And so part of it, I was nervous. I wasn't sure when I started to go and shout from the rooftops,

these new holistic methods and how I did find the traditional model to be limiting. I was nervous about what my peers were gonna say and they've been nothing but receptive and I think a bit relieved. I actually offer professional mentorship sessions now and I have at least one or two professionals a week that I'll speak to and help to update, help them to update their practices in these ways because they say it.

They know it. They're stuck. They're probably stuck in their own life too. And they don't see, I think, their clinical work being as effective as they know on some level it could be. Yeah. So how do we regulate our nervous system, I guess? Is that what you said? Yeah, nervous system, I guess. Is that what you said? Yeah, nervous system. So our goal is,

so we are actually structured as humans to be spending all of our time in the other nervous system, the parasympathetic. Relaxing. In that relax mode. In the sun. Yeah, one might think,

only to need, right, when we are literally at risk. Like, or needing to go eat. Yeah. So the tool that I'm talking always about is breath work through conscious breathing. The easiest one being just retraining the way you naturally breathe. Most of us as humans now have evolved to being a bit of a shallow chest-based breather.

So for me, I couldn't. When I first started doing breath work, I was gasping for air. I'm laying down trying to get a deep belly breath in. And now I've practiced consistently enough that I breathe mainly from my belly, which indicates to me that I'm spending more and more time. There's still times where if I'm feeling particularly stressed, I'll have to remind myself to breathe. As crazy as that sounds, I catch myself holding my breath or I catch my breath being a little more shallow. So that's one that when I work with clients, I talk about right off the bat because being able, I don't see anything honestly as empowering as being able to begin to consciously gain control of the way your body is physiologically

reacting, especially if you sit on that anxiety spectrum and definitely if you have panic attacks, because I know that they feel like the most out of control place in the world to be. So to show people that, wait a minute, I can start to, and again, these aren't the magic elixirs. We can't breathe from the belly twice or just use it as needed as a lot of us want to do. It's not that. But if you do practice it, you can start to feel a bit more in control. And I don't find anything as empowering as that.

Yeah, and when we can calm the mind, then we can make a lot better decisions. Yes. Before in constant stress or fight or flight in the mind and the body, it's hard to be mindful of our reactions. We're just going to go back to our patterns of the past, right? Yeah. Well, I love that you said that because the mind and body are connected. They're interconnected. So just as much as like you and I just said, I sit here, I think stressful thoughts, I'm having a stress body reaction. Our mind is monitoring our body's reaction too. So if

my body is having a reaction with, and the stress hormones, they have a longer shelf life. I mean, cortisol, adrenaline takes our body a bit to metabolize those. So our mind is going to continue to register that our body is stressed and it's going to try to make sense of it. So then it's going to make it even harder to calm or to redirect our attention from a racing mind. So it's very interconnected. So that's why I talk about attentional control, getting the hell out of those thoughts that are becoming the issue and inducing the body experience, but also calming the body so that we can clip that up message too. Yeah. It's working on both for sure. I try to think about like if my mind is a bucket, right?

And there's thoughts that I can put in the bucket all day. And there's thoughts that are coming in and leaving the bucket. How do I constantly fill it with positive, peaceful, loving, beautiful thoughts as opposed to chaotic, stressful thoughts? And I just try to decide every moment to have more beautiful thoughts than negative thoughts. And a lot of my practice is breath work, meditation, and gratitude. It's simple things. It's really basic, simple things. And the more I focus on gratitude, I find that my mind is in a peaceful,

beautiful state. And there's no room for negativity when it's in a beautiful state. So it's a practice because when we're in stress mode and we're in scarcity mode, it's hard to think beautiful thoughts because you're just like, I'm going to die. That's how you feel. No one loves me. They're attacking me. And this negativity and these negative emotions come up. So I just try to focus on gratitude for what I have. And that brings more peace and positive thoughts into the bucket every day. Well, you're actually speaking to something that's very real too. Part of the fight or flight response is a shrinking of our perceptual field

where we cannot see those expansive areas outside. We only can see the immediate and we're actually primed to see threat. So that's why it's always typically colored negative. So those of us that are living, this is why it's always typically colored negative. So those of us that are living, this is why it's also imperatively important to get out of fight or flight or to build and practice that over time will shift us a bit more out of fight or flight because we are, and this also goes into the whole financial climate. When you're living under stress, even if it's financially induced stress, I can't pay my bills. You are now dealing with a shrunken perceptual field that

makes it hard to lock out of that. It's funny, but once you start focusing on gratitude in scarcity, you start to create more abundance and opportunities to generate financial income or the right partnership or whatever it may be. So it's hard to get out of that. But if you just focus on, okay, what am I grateful for? And how can my energy shift to be a magnetic force field of good to come to me? Good and fine. That's what it is. I mean, that's why gratitude, I'm so excited now because it's actually getting studied

a bit, that gratitude does shift us vibrationally, energetically, that even a small practice list, one, two things a day that you're grateful for does have those effects. And it's becoming more and more proven that it does because it's shifting our brainwaves to a different frequency. I always think about people in service at restaurants. When someone's waiting on you and they come with a grateful, positive energy, I guarantee they're making more tips. And then if someone's negative and focused on their own head and just angry or down on themselves, you're attracting less. You're attracting what you're creating in the world. And I always hear these great stories of people

that are so positive. It's like, I want to hire these people at these restaurants who are so positive and bring gratitude. I'm like, if you're grateful in this situation, I can imagine how you would implement this energy to something else. And I feel like they're attracting more of what they want by being grateful and their way of being, their energy. It's not easy. It's a practice. So how did you start to eliminate scarcity in your own life?

What did you focus on when you recognized, OK, one of my living beliefs is not being seen or being scarce. So what were the steps that you did? Did you start to do inner child work right away? Yeah. So first I practiced consistent self-observation. I watched my thoughts. Observation.

Right. So I developed consistent now. And I resisted meditating consistently. But I built in a consistent meditation practice so that I could then carry that skill throughout my day because I knew that's where I really needed it. So I practiced that consistent daily self-observation where I was looking at my thoughts all day long. And what, journaling them or just being aware?

Just noticing because the first way, and this kind of ties into something you were saying earlier, the first way that we can start to quiet our mind is we don't battle our thoughts away. We can't obviously hit the mute button on them, but we can start to pay less attention by removing our attention. So each and every time I would see that because my subconscious, our subconscious is what's offering most of our thoughts for us, right? So my cupcake's gone and oh, my subconscious is going to assign that I'm not considered scarcity-based meaning, not my conscious mind, right?

So I don't have control over that. That's why I explained that. Subconscious, you don't have control over. We do not have control over it. We can— Reprogram it. Reprogram it through consistent repetition of something new. By being aware of our thoughts consciously and being like, okay, that doesn't support me anymore.

Let me have a new thought. So the simplest way I put it is to change our subconscious. We first need to start paying less attention to those older narratives that are naturally going to be there. But you need to pay attention to them first to pay less attention. You need to notice them and then remove your attentional focus back to your breath, back to the current moment. And that is the tool, the muscle I call the muscle that we're building, our attentional muscle. We all have one. Most of ours are just very wimpy because either life

that's endlessly distracting is grabbing our attention or a lot of us are spending way too much time looking, if you will, at our thoughts. So noticing our thoughts enough to then redirect my attention away will weaken that narrative. So that's the first layer of work. Okay. Noticing, watching your thoughts. What's the second layer? And then if you want to, the subconscious can be reprogrammed. So then I started to play around with, and the future self journal was kind of where I, what I developed for this part of my own healing was to practice. I mean, what an affirmation is a new thought, right? So then I would start to practice abundance based affirmations. And that's a mental rehearsal in the act of affirming. We're literally lighting

up a new neural pathway in our brain. So our brain does not know whether or not I already believe that to be true or not. The goal is to repeat it enough that over time, I believe that to be true. So the subconscious can be changed later in life. So the reason- What was the mantra you were using for this? I'm abundant. Simple mantra. Just simple one. Just simple one. Couple abundant. Simple mantra. Just simple one. Just simple one.

A couple of words, yeah. Just simple one. So whenever you hear like, ah, trigger, my cookie's gone, whatever, like I'm abundant. Right. First it was get out of there, just center myself. Sometimes I needed to take a breath because all I said was, ah, goddamn cookie. And then once I had a second, then I could say, but, you know, and then remind myself that i'm abundant there's a store up the street like it's not about the lack of but we first have to pull it away because i think a lot of us try to go right in a strong arm and shift it and it just

doesn't work because this is a belief that we've been practicing i mean some of us outside of our conscious awareness for as long as we've been walking the planet i mean so this is a really strong network. It's going to take time. It's going to take years potentially, decades potentially, right? Now, do you associate the thought with a physical feeling or physical motion or just like an abundant movement or is it just a thought? So the way I define manifestation is pairing that thought as if it's true.

So how would believing me to be abundant, how would that make me feel? Would I feel free? Would I feel limitless? It might be different for each of us. So that is part of it. But for me, so the narrative work is what I just described,

getting out of the old narratives, if you choose to be committed, practicing new ones, it can work. The deeper level, because a lot of these narratives, a lot of our subconscious is touching on a wound or an unmet need. So for me, this is where this consideration came. So my deeper work, my inner child work, was now as the adult that I am to find the ways.

And I had to find them. I did not know them. No one taught me how to consider myself. I did not have parents or caregivers that were modeling, you know, kind of self-consideration or self-care in any healthy way, if you will. So I didn't know when I say this, because I think a lot of times we become an adult and we think we should know. We should just know how to take care of our emotional selves. But if we were never taught, how would we know? I did not know. to take care of our emotional selves. But if we were never taught, how would we know? I did not know. So then my deeper journey was, okay, how can I show up in the world consistently on a daily basis and consider myself, consider my needs, explore what they even might be, how to even give

them words and then what to do. I didn't know how to give myself a feel better. I dissociated. That's all I knew. So now that I was showing up to manage my feelings in a new way, I was like a little kid again. I had no f***ing idea what to do. And I just had to move toward, okay, does this make me feel better or worse? And I talk with my clients a lot about this because it can feel really overwhelming when you're trying to navigate your emotions now in a new way. We all have had a way that we've coped and we got really good at it, but chances are that's not the way that's going to get us the relationships that we want, the life that we want. So for me, it was like stabbing around in the dark and just moving toward what felt a little better. And then you start to get a toolkit. You start to say, okay,

when I'm feeling down, you know, while I might hate to say it, moving helps me or, you know, While I might hate to say it, moving helps me or a bath helps me or a time alone helps me. I had to rediscover all of those new tools for myself in those moments. So that was the deeper part of the journey is now because I view it's my responsibility to consider myself, to learn how to navigate my emotions. And it's not my partner's job not to eat the cupcake to consider me. It's my job to. It's not my partner's job not to eat the cupcake to consider me. It's my job to. And then I realized over time I wasn't assigning through that constant attentional control.

I stopped assigning. Lack of consideration, meanings. You stopped after a while. Yeah. Eating food was eating food. Dishes on the counter were just dishes on the counter. And then I was building myself up enough and reparenting myself enough that I was feeling overall considered by me. So that when she offered me an act of consideration, it was like, oh, great. But it wasn't necessary anymore. So my okayness and our relationship stability didn't

depend on her showing up to give me a gesture of consideration anymore. It was just an added bonus. It was an added bonus. Because you're taking care of yourself. Then I was able to let it in more. Because I think some of us become so rigid in exactly what we need from this other person to fit my need in this way. And now I could accept, maybe it's not the way I would want to be considered, but it's a little gesture of it and it's consideration and it still fills my cup. I feel like I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm pretty abundant,

right? I've created a life I want from 11 years ago being the most scarce I could ever be, like broke on my sister's couch, no money and no clear vision of how to make money. To now it's like, okay, I'm not worried about eating for a long time. Unless something drastic happens, like I'm not worried about eating for a long time. I'm not worried about a place, a roof over my head. I can live in a one-bedroom apartment and be fine. Studio, it doesn't matter. And I feel so good being independent that my current relationship with my girlfriend is amazing. Like yesterday, I woke up late. It was a Sunday. I woke up late.

I was supposed to get up earlier to work out, but I woke up late to a doorbell ringing because she's in Mexico City. She had sent me Starbucks latte. So I just woke up, I opened the door, and there's a latte from her from Postmates. And I was just like, that just brings me so much joy. There was no expectation that she needed to do that.

It's just I'm allowed, I'm able to receive it so much better. And I don't have any expectation. I think when we put expectation on our partners so much, sure, there's certain boundaries and rules that we create in every relationship, but it's like we shouldn't be expecting on the other person to make us happy. That's when we get let down, right? Absolutely. We shouldn't be expecting that.

And part of, I think, a dynamic that unfolds in relationships is we look to recreate what we knew first of relationships and those very early relationships. That becomes our normal, our familiar in relationships. So whether or not it's expectations, just emotional climates, we tend to look to recreate that which we first knew. Because that's our first journey in relationships is the caregiving unit, the family structure looks different for all of us, but whatever we're deposited in, right? You're seeing relationships happen.

Sometimes you're getting direct messages about what's okay or not okay in relationships. And then you're having your own experience being in relationships with these humans. And then that becomes the relationship model that gets stored the thing gets replicated over time so for me my current relationship was a big shift out of my past ones because what i noticed looking back that i was searching for was those familiar feelings so i felt closest to the people that resented you that guilt that guilted you, that manipulated you. In some ways, but that were much more surface, that were anxiety I understood.

So I had a lot of partners that also were very much relatable in that because that's how my family unit felt. So it felt familiar. What we're seeking most as humans, the way I see it, is familiarity. And that comes up a lot in our relationship. So even if logically you can look and say,

oh, maybe your friends are even telling you this isn't the partner for you something feels really comfortable about it because that's what you're used to it's normal and i think that happens in terms of what you expect like you were saying in relationships but also the feeling in a relationship registers too and i think sometimes we're just seeking that familiar even if it's not logically the partner that we necessarily want to be building the life with. You mentioned you learned how to reparent yourself. What does that mean, parenting yourself? So whether or not it's so – there's a lot of categories of it, I think.

So some of it's just our physical needs, right? How do we show up and take care of the body that we're in in terms of sleeping and eating? And again, reminding each of us or looking at those earliest models that we were given, what were we taught about those just very much just our basic needs? How are we exposed to them being met? What were we told about how they should or shouldn't be met? What do we see? How were they met in those earliest environments? And then it's our emotional world, I think is the other major category. So how do I learn my own emotions? How do I come to know what they feel like in the body? How do I come to know

what to do with them? And how do I learn, but also how do I re-talk to myself? Is that part of it too? Re-talk to yourself. For some of us, it's teaching. I mean, I had a family who did not talk about emotions. I think a lot of people- Yeah, most people's families don't, right? Don't. So it's learning. Emotional language might be the how do I talk is to talk. Why don't we talk? Why don't, I mean, because it's not on the school's responsibility to teach us emotions necessarily.

Although I wish there was a class in school that taught us about emotions growing up. It's kind of what Mr. Rogers was about, right? It's kind of like it was his mission because he saw that no kids not no kids but a lot of kids lacked the emotional capacity to express their feelings in a safe environment right it was anger fighting screaming manipulate it wasn't like this is how i'm feeling right because the anger and other things were actually more acceptable, at least for me growing up. It's like showing that you're a man by being angry and fighting or punching as opposed to like sitting down with a buddy of yours and be like, I'm really feeling sad about this in my life that the teacher did, you know, you just get made fun of. Yeah. I think there's societal messages. I

often think about men a lot because I think you guys have really, really kind of structural messages that are put in place, passed down from society at large that is quite damaging the way I see it. Family cultures and climates, it comes back to safety. When we have caregivers that aren't comfortable with their own emotions, they're not going to be comfortable with their children's emotions. So before we know it, we start to shave off the okay or the acceptable emotions in a family. And so either we're left with none being acceptable and we just don't talk about emotions. This was very much my family or we're left with only the handful of acceptable emotions.

Right. Which is anger or. And then we internalize this and then we carry that into our adulthood. So now I'm the person in the relationship who doesn't address anything emotions and I run from the conversation when I know when the person's across me saying, we got to talk.

I'm like, I'm out of here. Bye-bye. Maybe I'm on my spaceship now because I don't want to talk about emotion. That's scary to me. Or we become only these emotions are okay to talk about. And I think this is, again, passed down through generations.

Likely our caregivers grow up in families where these emotions weren't okay and they were unsafe. Really, that's what it comes down to. Until you learn how to break the cycle, it's very hard to break the emotional cycle of how you were raised. For me, I started breaking it because I had a lot of breakdowns in my life. When I turned 30, I had a massive breakup breakdown, a business partnership breakdown, breakup. And I just started reacting in every area of my life

when I felt I was under attack, when I felt like someone was abusing me, which was kind of my trigger. It was like when I feel abused. So I was sexually abused as a kid, and I was bullied and picked on, and it felt like I was the youngest of four and just felt like I was always the one who got the abuse.

That's the story that I told myself for 30 years. And I got in a fight in a basketball game that meant nothing. The game was like a no stakes game. It was just a pickup game. I got in a really bad fight and it's kind of like the perfect storm of like, why is all these breakdowns happening? It's when I finally was like, wow, I have a lot really bad fight. And it's kind of like the perfect storm of like, why is all these breakdowns happening?

It's when I finally was like, wow, I have a lot to lose here if I keep following this pattern. And I decided, I was like, I need to take a look at my life. I need to start making some changes. I need to start being aware of why I'm doing this and learn how I can break through these triggers. And that was really the game changer for me. But I feel like it's hard for people to want to look for growth and improvement in life without some type of drastic event or events happening, a near-death situation, a breakup in a long-term relationship, a divorce, a career ending, whatever it may be, why is it so hard for us to want to improve or grow when there's no tragic accident?

Yeah. I often talk about having the kind of cataclysmic events are necessary in a sense. So the way I see it, I mean, it's not the only route. I think people can consciously just evolve and decide to change on their own. But a lot of times you will hear that as part of the journey, you know, the dark night of the soul or, you know, whether it's something objectively ended, a loss, things like that. So something I've always said and I've always noticed about people and change, and then I'm going to, I've come to understand why this is the case, but something I've always said is we have to feel like that we have no other option. Like the option of life as we know it now is way more

intolerable than the fear that comes along with change in general. And again, back to something I said earlier, we humans are habitual creatures. And to some extent, we view change or uncertainty as threatening. And there's a function now that I'm very much aware of the power of our subconscious. So the simplest way I describe it, and this is why I will always say change is hard. It's universally hard for all of us. I want to normalize that though. I mean this when I say this, because I think a lot of people become really self-deprecating. I'm lazy. I'm undisciplined. I just can't do this. I'm hopeless. When they realize change, when they live the experience of change being hard, the reason why

change is hard is so our subconscious, it's a silly description, but I say we each have a little avatar. You have a Lewis one. I have a Nicole one. So because what our subconscious has done, and this blows my mind, it has logged every experience that we've had on this far until today

and will continue to log every experience we have in life until we're no longer on this planet, which is a lot of shit. And because we're very habitual, it has, we need our subconscious. So this is me saying, thank you, subconscious. We need it to some extent because without some things automatized, some things in that program, if I had to wake up every day and remind myself and consciously think about being human, brushing

my teeth, I would be, I mean, we would be debilitated. So we need this. However, what happens is because we're so habitual, what is in there are our behavioral habits. It more or less knows what we do first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, knows the habitual thoughts that we think. It knows how those thoughts make us feel, right? So it has our little avatar. It registers things in a very black and white way. This is a very simplified description. It registers things in a very black and white way. The one end of the spectrum being familiar equals safe good unfamiliar equals unsafe possibly even threatening bad right so logically right you might sit across from me and you might say you know i i want to start this new habit first thing in the morning i'm going to start to say new affirmations i am good enough or

i want to give myself a feeling of peace all All I know is stress. Tomorrow comes and you give yourself one of those. You make the choice to have one of those new experiences and your subconscious is going to register that as unfamiliar. And then one of two, maybe both, things are going to happen. What I call mental chatter, the endless litany of reasons why not to do or never to do this thing again. It sucks, it's terrible, it's bad for you.

It's hard. Or dangerous. Oh, what are you doing? And or, because some of us get this, we'll start to feel, whether it's physiological and agitation, sometimes it'll be described, oh, I'm just crawling on my skin. Sometimes I just won't feel like me. I'll start to feel weird. And again, that is the power of the subconscious.

So for both of those reasons, before I know it, I'm right back in that comfort zone. I'm doing back what I'm used to doing, thinking, feeling, because it's familiar. So that's why change is hard. So how do we stay consistent with the change? So the language I use is a small daily promise. And I put emphasis on that small, because I know, speaking about expectations again, we as humans can tend to, and a lot of us, I'm a perfectionist. We set the bar so high up for ourself that that is so damaging because what we're looking for is consistency. I mean, that's what this means to heal holistically, to create habits. It's not every other day we do it, or

maybe this time and then next week I'll try it again. It's doing this each day, but the higher the bar is, if I don't meet that bar, I become so disempowered. I'm not going to show up and try to meet that bar again tomorrow. Hell no. I'd rather do any other thing on the planet. So setting up those small expectations. It's almost like, okay, instead of saying I'm going to work out every day, it's saying I'm going to put on my tennis shoes and I'm going to take one step outside. One step. Because that's going to ultimately lead you into doing more steps. As opposed to saying, okay, I'm going to floss all my teeth every night when I've never flossed. I'm just going to floss one tooth.

If you get out the floss and do one tooth, you're going to do another one. Maybe you stop after four or five, but at least you're doing half. Well, and even if you only do that one, this is also what I suggest. Notice each and every time you kept that promise because that's, you get it, what I say, getting past your mind. Because tomorrow when you go to floss that one tooth and maybe it just was one tooth, right? Your mind is going to tell you all the reasons not to floss that one tooth again, right? So the more you show yourself that consistency and the way I put it is we're

rebuilding trust in ourself. Most of us have, I say self-betrayal. Most of us have started to not trust ourself and not trust our word because we don't keep our word to ourselves because change is hard, right? So this is all interconnected. So we have to, to rebuild trust ourself and not trust our word because we don't keep our word to ourselves because change is hard. So this is all interconnected. So we have to, to rebuild trust, we have to show ourselves that we're keeping those promises and we can't expect our subconscious to get on board. I joke and I say we can't wait for that cheerleading squad and some of us wait to want to or to feel like we want to.

So I'm always on my story saying, I don't want to do this shit, but I'm doing it anyway because I've now built a trust in myself that I keep my word. And my subconscious still gives me all of the reasons not to do it even years later into this. But the more you keep those promises and notice yourself keeping them, you start to trust yourself and you start to get a little bit more empowered getting beyond that mind. And self-belief and confidence comes from keeping your word. Yes, that's right. The more you keep your word, you believe.

Trust turns into confidence, turns into empowerment. You believe you deserve abundance. You believe you deserve great relationships. You deserve better health when you fall through on that. Tell me about the inner child work. Every time I do any inner child work where someone's talking to me and I'm reflecting back and like holding my baby, myself as a little boy, looking in my eyes as a five-year-old, hugging my inner child. Like every time I think about myself as a child, I always get very emotional. And the more

work I do it, I'm like, wow, this is really powerful to heal, constant healing. Why is inner child work necessary and what is it exactly? Yeah, I think it's necessary because I think we all have a wounded child in us. Again, whether or not, and some of us have lived through those big T traumas, the abuses, the neglect, the big stuff. Some of us have just lived with an underlying unmet need,

a lack of emotional love, not just being, I see trauma in and of itself as not being seen just for the heard and understood, as just a unique being, as being enough without how you're showing up in the world. So I think we all carry a wound. So I think it's necessary. I think it's important because I know what's happening in those moments of reactivity where we're triggered and when we're expressing our feelings very outwardly, whether we're tantruming or dissociated. Those are all those old childhood reactions that we formed at that time. So we need to heal that and need to give ourselves some new options. I actually had someone ask me though, and I think this is really interesting to think about

whether or not we get to that place where that wound is gone whether or not it goes away is that our goal of healing and i i don't believe and i've yet to have any experiences or evidence that we get to the place where our wound is gone but i think our goal is to navigate life with that wound knowing when it's being touched knowing how to make ourself feel better when it's there knowing how to first and foremost, I should have said this, break that habitual way of reacting toward it and giving ourself a bit more new choices, helping our relationships in those moments. And then, like I said, giving ourself those deeper needs to be met on our own. But I think we're always going to retain some hurt. Things are always going to, mine's going to be something deeper and yours is going to be something else. And they're always going to be the event where it's like, oh, that hurt a little bit.

But we can still show up as our adult self in that moment and have a new choice. Yeah. How do we become a self-healer every day? Every day? Yeah. How do we become a self-healer every day? What can we do? Is it just simple practices we've been talking about?

I think it's simple practices. I mean, I think it's depending on what you're struggling first with, you know, if it is something that's, you know, kind of physiologically dysregulation, taking a look at the daily habits. How much are you sleeping? I was shocked about my sleep habits. I always thought I was someone who needed a lot of sleep. I wasn't getting consistently a lot of sleep.

My nutrition, now that I became aware of the gut and some of these gut damaging foods, I was eating a lot of things that weren't helping me. So I think some of it's just getting a look on our lifestyle, the choices. I think those of us who live in cities have endless options of food, ordering in food that we're eating a lot of, or just the way we're socializing with our friends. So modifying, I think anything anything that is lifestyle-based and small steps. I mean, you're not going to – some people might go clean out the pantry and have a completely different new set of options. Some people might just decide, make one nut choice,

eat one less thing that they know is problematic or eat out one less time or say no to one rager at the bar. I mean, whatever it is, right? It starts small. And then I always think consciousness, developing some habit of being aware, getting eyes, practicing that self-observation so that you can get clarity into your stuck points, into your subconscious, into those deeper wounds. And then you really can start to make those deeper level shifts, but it is daily so that's what

i think it is i mean it's it's picking just one area i always will say focused attention even though a lot of us like to think that we're great multitasking focus attention on one area and develop some consistency i know people hate this but you're not going to do things for three days and have it down and this is your new habit you're gonna probably i mean i don't look into the research and people go habits take 30 days, 20, whatever. Habits take as long until that's become into your life. You know what I mean? So just focus on one thing.

Remove one of the problems in your world in a small way for a consistent amount of time. Then build on it. I always do what I call a foundational approach. With the clients that I work with in my own journey, and I suggest we do that, just pick one area and you can always build and expand. It empowers you on the way. Yeah, it's powerful. What's your vision for the future now that you've spent the last year building years of work into and sharing it into the world? It sounds like once you set yourself free with these boundaries, you really set your ideas free to create an abundance in your life. So what's the next, what's the vision for you moving forward? Absolutely. So I'm hoping to release some

courses now to give some people a little bit more of a self-directed healing journey, you know, aside from just the squares. I mean, so all the content that I've always been putting out there was everything I would use in sessions with clients. I didn't have a secret arsenal that if you got to work, oh, there's a real magic elixir. So I was always putting it out there and I always intend to do that, but I want to come up with some coursework so that people can have a bit more of a structure, kind of workshop their way through subconscious, reparenting. I want to do some things on partnerships and relationships because I think these are all interconnected. So I'm going to fold out some courses. I've shifted away or i stopped taking individual clients about two months

ago now and i'm shifting into a group model i think humans heal very well in groups so i want to start to offer some virtual groups again where people can pace themselves through a healing journey so just pretty much expand the tools and the, the, I guess, reach of the tools in a way so that any human, I also want to, over time, start to shift into teaching a little bit more in a structured fashion, workshops and things like that for the practitioners. Start to update, you know, because again, I'm not trying to change the school system or the school structure. And that's just not my, my time on this planet, but I do want to make sure that clinicians out there are equipped to start to use some of these more holistic methods.

And you have a thing called the Future Self Journal, right? So how can people get this? It's free. You can download these templates. Absolutely, absolutely. So the Future Self Journal. So my main hub is the Instagram at the.holistic.psychologist. Do you have a website too?

Up there I have a link tree so you can get to my website at yourholisticpsychologist.com and signing up for the email list on that website. But I believe I have that in a link tree in my Instagram that you can also access that. And I'm always doing swipe up. So that is what comes upon sign up for the email. And it's a template. It takes you through what I call future self journaling, which is a bit of a spin on good old fashioned journaling, where we journal about our past, our daily experiences, our feelings. This was me really starting to make a pivot and explore ways to use a journaling practice to increase consciousness around future change. So it's powerful. It's a really cool. And people are really getting some pretty good impact with it.

But the same thing, like I always say, it's a tool to be used every day, to set ourself up, to be more conscious throughout the day, to make change. It's not a magic journal. I wish, I mean, believe me, if I found out the magic journal, I'd be releasing that, but it does not exist. So that's what I often say. But it's definitely, I think, an impactful tool. I used it myself in healing, and it's a cool thing. Powerful. So people can get that there,

yourholisticpsychologist.com. They can follow you on Instagram. You're going to have courses, workshops in the future. You just did your first kind of pop-up workshop in Venice. Hundreds of people came out, moved, inspired. So you'll be doing more of those. I'm sure you'll have lists of your events in the future on your website. For sure, yeah. I'm going to do one in Philly because I have to represent. You've got to do it. And I'm actually headed up to New York in a couple months, too.

And I'll do one while I'm up there. I bet you'll have your least amount of people that show up in your hometown. I'd like to see. For some reason, you always get the least. Maybe prove me wrong, but I always find. I'm actually interested because I have a couple colleagues and things that I know are

interconnected but I do have people randomly like oh you're Philly I'm Philly too or I'm New Jersey so I'm interested to see I'm actually

have to figure out where the hell I'm going to do it in Philly the beach was beautiful here I was like oh it's a beach

nice and big but I'll figure it out but I want to make that a habit of pretty much everywhere I travel my goal is to be able to provide

part I mean for me to meet people and to have that interface because I love meeting the humans behind the incredibly supportive accounts that are on the other side of the Instagram. But also to have, it was beautiful yesterday. I was watching humans connecting and exchanging numbers. It's amazing.

Maybe if you can get some support. It can be really lonely. It's something that I've lived to myself. As I started to evolve out of some relationships, I was looking around, I'm like, oh shit, I don't know how many people left, you know? So when I went on Instagram, part of it was a little bit of, you know, I wanted to find other people out there that were, whether or not struggling or healing in the same way that I was. Cause I would start to make, because I was doing, shifting the way I was living, that meant that I maybe wasn't at all the happy hours

or I'm not out with my friends doing what they're doing. So I was looking around and I don't really have that many people. So I think it's a beautiful way. And the community that has really been created, I'm mind blown every day. They're incredibly supportive. It's incredible. You're doing amazing work. Thank you. Why don't I acknowledge you for, geez, you just serve a lot of people, Nicole, and it's really inspiring. I think a lot of people are healing for the first time on Instagram of all places. They're able to find wisdom that you're creating, whether it be through your Instagram TV guided breathing meditations or just the

images you put out are so simple. You make complicated things so easy to digest where it's like oh yeah why did i think about this and so i acknowledge you for putting yourself out there for creating boundaries in your life and relationships that probably you felt very conflicted and guilty for years to decide that but creating freedom for yourself is now healing the world and i think i'm really i'm really inspired by your decisions and your consistency and showing up for all of us. So I acknowledge you for your gift. Yeah, it means a lot. And one of my goals was always to make, because I think, or I know, put it this way, that a lot of this material can feel overwhelming and confusing in the way that

it's talked about in some traditional ways. It's not understandable. And if it is understandable, about in some traditional ways. It's not understandable. It's not like, and if it is understandable, it's okay, well, now what? So hearing that I'm able, and I'll tell you, those cute little memes that now I can do very much efficiently were the bane of my existence. Took a lot of time before, hours. They were talking about like three hours, a goddamn little square when I first got on Instagram.

I was like, oh, I can't sustain. I made a promise to myself. I was going to post, I think it was like two or three, I might have started out with three times a day. And I was holding myself up to that promise promise to myself. I was going to post, I think it was like two or three. I might have started out with three times a day. And I was holding myself up to that promise. But my eyes were bleeding trying to figure out the program and how to present the content. Now I'm in a flow.

So thank you for saying that. I made it look very much easier than it was behind the scenes. I was like, kuh. Yeah, that's crazy. This question is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on Earth many years away from now. You get to pick the day. You can be 100, 200 years old, doesn't matter. But someday you got to go. You've created everything you want to create in your life. Your future self has been manifested.

You've healed everything. You've traveled, done what you want to do. But for whatever reason, you got to take it all with you. So all your work, all your messages, your Instagram account, books, everything you create, it's got to go with you. So no one has access to any of your content anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you would share with us. What would you say are the three things that you'd want to share behind what I'd like to call three truths? Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. So the first one that comes to mind most intuitively is how life in this moment is life. That was something that was really impactful for me when I first discovered the concept of mindfulness with this idea of just being present.

I think that's an incredibly powerful truth. And the more we can each embrace that, It's an incredibly powerful truth. And the more we can each embrace that, I think that that speaks kind of to life, really. Sure. So now, the present moment, I think that's definitely one of my truths. Another truth is that we're each unique, amazing, good enough, intuitive humans. I think a lot of us don't have come to be conditioned out of that belief. Me included as well. I thought I was a million things based on what I was told

or the experiences that I've had that aren't what this concept, elusive concept of authentic self. I don't believe that was my authentic self. So I think a truth is that we all have an authentic self beneath it all. And then I guess healing takes work. Life takes work, effort, consistent effort. I'm always the speaker of this truth. And, but I think that's a hard one. And honestly, this was not one that I came by easily. I, whether it's messaging that I've heard my mom's voice in my ear, I had all the reasons and, and

a lifetime of things coming easy. I'm going to be honest. School came easy for me. Sports came easy for me. I didn't have to work so hard in some areas. So this truth was a hard one for me to swallow was that things are hard and I know how to show up for hard things and to make a consistent effort. And it is incredibly valuable to do that. And I think that's the truth again of healing and of life really. Yeah. Those are great. Love those. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Yeah. So as per the end of this conversation, my definition of greatness is healing. I think our older wounds and being able to show up daily to consciously create ourself. I think that's incredible. That's empowerment. I think that's incredible. That's empowerment.

I think that's what the purpose of this journey is. And I would definitely call that greatness. Love it. Dr. Nicole, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Amazing, Lois. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

My friends, I hope you feel more at peace in your hearts. I hope you've learned how to heal yourself and break free of your emotional cycles, the boundaries, the other challenges that you've been facing in your life. And now I hope you have some tools and practices so that you can move forward and recover much quicker in your emotional life and in your relationships.

If you enjoyed this, do me a favor and share it on your Instagram story. Tag me at Lewis Howes and tag the holistic psychologist. Let Nicole know what you thought about this. Share your thoughts by leaving a couple comments on the page as well and send this to one friend, one friend you think this could help and support in their emotional day-to-day or mental challenges they might be facing. This is all about self-love, self-healing, creating boundaries, and waking up from the things that are holding you back, that are keeping you from the life that you want to live. So take this link, lewishouse.com slash 844, or the link on the Apple podcast or

Spotify, wherever you're listening to this and just text one friend, text one friend and say, Hey, I was thinking about you today. I think you'd enjoy this episode. Let me know what you think. What was the biggest takeaway for you? Send that text and connect with someone, be a giver today to someone. You can be a champion in someone's life. You can be the person that gives them a tool to help them improve their life. So be a giver today and share this with one friend. Also, if you enjoyed this specific episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review.

Leave your comments. Let me know what we can do to make this better and how we can improve. It doesn't matter if you leave a one-star review or you five-star review like most people. I just want to hear from you. I want to learn how we can improve. It doesn't matter if you leave a one-star review or you five-star review like most people. I just want to hear from you. I want to learn how we can improve and how we can make it better for your life. We're constantly looking to grow. We're constantly looking to help more people. So thank you for your reviews and your comments and for sharing this with your friends and on social media. Big thank you again to Nicole. She continues to blow up and

she is going to make a massive impact on the world. I know it. So make sure to share that with your friends. So she gets a lot of love as well. This week, we've got the summit of greatness happening in Columbus, Ohio. So if you are coming, I am so excited to see you there. If you haven't got your ticket yet, it's not too late. You can sign up, you can make it to Columbus and be there for the weekend for all the celebrations, surprises, the incredible people that you're going to meet who will be lifelong friends the speakers the workout leaders the workshop leaders the closing party it's going to be a celebration i hope to see you there summit of greatness.com get your ticket for this week

or get your ticket for next year you can sign up there for next year as well. And to bring it back to the beginning, Julia Cameron said, what we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours. Which do we want more of?

If you want more healing, focus on peace and love. If you want more chaos, then focus on the negative things in your life and keep thinking about them. Your mind is the answer. What you put in your mind, negative thoughts or positive thoughts, will dictate the environment and the results in your life. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Know that I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you. Bye.