transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] When we go in with an expectation that change is easy, that it immediately results in us feeling a new way, I will always be the one to speak on the reality of why change is hard to begin with, how much it already adds to an already stressed system, making us more likely then to return to old habits, which is why change needs to happen, and we benefit more greatly from not trying to change the most difficult habit to break to begin with.

Speaker 2:
[00:35] Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Speaker 3:
[01:19] There are ways we learn to survive early in life that work really well. They help us stay safe, they help us belong, and over time, they start to feel like who we are. But eventually, something starts to go wrong. In this conversation, Dr. Nicole LePera and I talk about what it actually means to re-parent yourself, the real process of understanding the patterns your nervous system picked up in childhood and how often they are still running the show today. We get into why so much of what we call personality is really just adaptation and why real change doesn't come from inside alone. It comes from small, repeated actions that slowly build trust with yourself. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is The One You Feed. One of the shows I admire the most is the Being Well podcast. Content about psychology and self-help is everywhere right now, but much of it is oversimplified or just plain wrong. On Being Well, host Forrest Hansen has spent seven years interviewing top researchers, clinicians and authors, serious people doing serious work, and he's great at translating their complex ideas into advice that you can actually use. Forrest is regularly joined on the show by his dad, Dr. Rick Hansen, a clinical psychologist and best-selling author. I've read his books forever. They have a great father-son dynamic and their warm relationship is one of my favorite parts of the show. I trust the Being Well podcast and I hope you'll give them a listen. New episodes drop every Monday and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4:
[03:00] No one goes to Hanks for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet. So, Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs, help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the $1 slice work. Now, Hanks has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza, Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com.

Speaker 3:
[03:30] Hi, Nicole. Welcome back.

Speaker 1:
[03:31] Thank you for having me back. Honored to be here.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] I don't know how many times this is. I think it's certainly the third, if not the fourth. I was asking you beforehand how many books you've had out, and this is your third full book with a workbook also in there. So, I don't know. Anybody curious enough to look, they can go find out. But this book is called Reparenting the Inner Child, The New Science of Our Oldest Wounds and How to Heal Them. And I'm looking forward to getting into it. But before that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild. And they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent. They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Speaker 1:
[04:38] I think that parable very beautifully summarizes my own individual journey. And of course, this now work that I am speaking to, which is, the wolf that wins is the wolf that we've been feeding, sometimes outside of our conscious awareness, many of us for a lifetime dating back into childhood. Because even, right, the bad wolf, so to speak, it has all of these negative characteristics or qualities, some of which think that they mean or they reflect who we are truly. In my opinion, at least all of those are beautifully crafted survival-based adaptations that, again, many of us have been feeding outside of our awareness as our nervous system has tried to find safety and security in moments where we didn't have that. And they became then our life force, our reliance, for some of us our identity. But again, my hope is to give listeners of any version of my work an understanding of the wolf that they might be feeding outside of their awareness and of course to give them some new tools to begin to better, to feed a more aligned wolf, so to speak.

Speaker 3:
[05:45] Excellent. So the title of the new book is the sort of thing that when I first got into recovery, this is a long time ago, when I started doing therapy work, this phrase, inner child, caused me to cringe. I hated it. And even now, all these years later, all these podcasts, there's still some part of me that's like, ugh. So talk to me about why that's the phrase that you use.

Speaker 1:
[06:17] So I think you're having a very common experience or reaction, I should say, to this concept, which I think for a lot of us has felt to be a bit abstract or even felt to be a bit cringe-worthy, right? This idea of, I don't want to, why do I have to? What role does my childhood even play in my current struggles? And so for me, truly understanding what the inner child was beyond, right? This woo-woo type abstract idea that maybe we can journal aloud to, I really began to map on conceptually what inner child is in terms of psychology. And the reality is, is that even if you do kind of feel very cringe or know that we don't want to revisit a past because it was very painful or maybe even decades ago, and maybe you're much like myself, we can't recall much of it. The reality of it is, is that all of us carry this part with us. It was a part that formed very early in life where we learned how to cope, how to handle unpredictability, how to handle conflict, how to navigate unmet need. And so to really nail down what inner child is in psychological terms, it's actually these memories, it's these sensory-based, reflex-driven, the word for it is, implicit emotional memories that become stored in our body and then come alive somewhere later in life, in our relationships, in our daily life. And those are the moments where we are compelled, right, into a reaction or maybe a daily habit or again, an identity that doesn't necessarily feel grounded in who we are, that might be disproportionate, right? Or having huge reactions to maybe things that aren't that big of a deal. And those are, I think, the daily moments where many of us, even if we don't necessarily want to look back, we are clear that something else is driving those patterns at that time. And again, from a psychological perspective, it is. It's learning that is wired into us, that is becoming reactive again, any time a current moment resembles something from our past that we've experienced.

Speaker 3:
[08:22] Did you say implicit emotional memory?

Speaker 1:
[08:25] Implicit emotional memory. Implicit meaning, right? Actions without words, often defying logic, again, wired in, often relived in big emotional reactions or even limited, right? Where we're not reacting in moments where we do need to assert or to defend ourselves.

Speaker 3:
[08:43] The way you describe that is similar to what my therapist told me all these years ago with Inner Child. And I believed her enough to really go into that work. And I did it, I did it a long time ago. And I mean, it's hard to say when you've been in recovery and on sort of like a journey of healing or whatever, it's very hard to unwind it and be like, well, it was this that did that. And then I did this and it helped with that. All I can say is it was a part of becoming the person that I am today, which I'm truly grateful for. And I do think that the work I did in that space was really valuable. And the work I continue to do in that space is really valuable.

Speaker 1:
[09:26] Absolutely. And I just want to be clear and speak to two, perhaps, categories of listeners. So one of which is, well, what happens if, like me, I can't recall much of what happened? So the response to that is, of course, there is usually a stress-based or trauma-based reason. When life becomes overwhelming, I can even talk about the science of kind of impact it has on the area of our brain, the hippocampus, that helps create the ability to recall later in life. But for whatever reason, if we don't remember, we can still begin exactly where we're at. And also, the other category I want to speak to is, we don't necessarily have to even trace back the timeline to say, well, this happened then, and this is what I did in response to that. We really can look more from a bird's-eye view and understand more global patterns. So for instance, if in childhood, staying quiet helped us to stay out of conflict, something as general, as consistent as that habit in childhood often then translates to an adult habit of maybe shutting down, even in conversations or arguments or conflicts with someone who is interested now in understanding our perspective or we can understand a more general pattern of hypervigilance. So if in childhood, life was unpredictable or chaotic, by bracing ourselves, by always waiting for that other shoe to drop, or by controlling what could be controlled can become a very beneficial pattern, which then translates into adulthood looking like social anxiety, overthinking interactions, feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions, continuing to try and grip tightly to plans, over-prepare, struggling to delegate. So again, we don't necessarily need to know because it isn't just necessarily one moment in time. It's consistent moments when we need it to shift or change ourselves to create safety or belonging that then become the consistent patterns. And again, we don't even have to go back to understand the story. We can start right now. Where am I stuck? Where am I having a reaction that feels disproportionate or just misaligned to how I would responsibly want to show up in those moments and that is then the place where we start, of course, to create change by beginning to make new choices or new actions again grounded in our bodies.

Speaker 3:
[11:52] I think that what you're talking about is really important, which is the inability to remember. I have almost zero memories from before about the age of 18. I seem to have a brain that does not hold on to memory well. I think, I just think some of that is the way I am. But I was able to know general things, right? Like I know that my father, Rest in Peace, was very angry and very critical. My mom would tell me that, both my brother and sister would tell me that. His second wife would, right? It was clear. Then I can see the ways in which I responded to that. I think sometimes the narrative is a little too tidy. To say like, I get anxious because my dad was angry is a little, like there's some truth in it and there's probably a lot more in there than that. But that was enough for me to start to unravel different things. I think the biggest thing for me was just this recognition that what happened back then had an impact on me in the same way that if I was in a car accident today, it would impact me tomorrow. We do know that children seem to be more imprintable than people my age are.

Speaker 1:
[13:11] These moments of adaptive learning are evolutionarily beneficial to us. These moments of learning even predate us. When I say that is the learning that is now we understand, epigenetically passed through generations, not necessarily changing our DNA, but changing how certain genes are expressed based on what? Earliest environments. This learning, if you just think about it from an adaptive standpoint, makes sense. If you are assumable going to be brought up in the same environment, which when we think about our ancestors, it wasn't until recently where we could fly through the sky and end up geographically in a completely different place. Chances were, your lineage was more or less growing up in those same environments. When there was say food scarcity, as there's a ton of now science that will show all of the different epigenetic changes that happen to, again, I'm really going to simplify this, but to hold on to calories and fat storage, to prepare for the next moment of food inconsistency or outright shortage, then that is a very beneficial adaptation for us to make. Then passing those on assuming that those same children are going to grow up in the same environment where food may or may not be present. Now, those offspring are more biologically likely to survive the next food shortage. This is the circumstances that all of us humans, no matter how close geographically or not, or how much even awareness we have of what our ancestors past looked like, these are still changes that we're carrying with us. Again, because biologically, those changes made sense, those adaptations were protective at one time and one space. Though what has changed categorically for the large majority of us is, our circumstances have changed, our relationships have changed. We have grown into a bigger body with more possible options. Yet, in these moments, biologically, we're not going to take the risk of trying to do something new in a moment that's stressful. We're going to rely on exactly what worked. According to our biology, what worked isn't what created a healthy, emotionally grounded, value driven response. What worked was the quickest way to ease discomfort, which for some of us means squashing it down, suppressing it or ignoring it entirely. And for some of us, we can do so in a way that society praises. For me, it looked like overachieving and excelling and never giving myself a moment to rest because why? In rest is where I felt the most uncomfortable. So when we understand that, I think the biology that again has been passed through generations, even if we don't have the information, like I don't as well, a large part of my life, even until recently is I can't call it mind, but I relive it in those daily habits and patterns in those moments. And even the identities and roles that I could sit here and say, I understand I'm worth so much more than how I perform. Yet there's still a little, an inner child inside of me that struggles to be seen in sharing my thoughts and ideas and definitely struggles to hear anything that could possibly land, even if it's not meant to be a negative feedback, right? As possible negative feedback, because right, excelling to earn praise in childhood gave me attention, it gave me connection, it felt like love in my family. But now it's kind of driven me on this endless exhausting roller coaster. So again, even things that are societally celebrated, often we're grounded in our best opportunity or the best choice we could have made at one time. But then we keep relying on those same habits because they have become habitual reactions and then we struggle to create change, even when we've become really clear that those habits don't serve us anymore.

Speaker 3:
[17:41] I'll admit I'm a little spoiled. Ginny does a lot of the cooking, and she's great at it. However, she has been traveling a lot lately, and I am really busy launching a book, which has made me really glad that I have HelloFresh. It saves me going to the grocery store, and they have so many different options. I'm kind of particular about what I eat, and yet I still find tons of things that I'll eat on HelloFresh. I'm able to order delicious, healthy, high protein meals that are enjoyable to cook. It gives me something to do with my hands at the end of a long day sitting in front of a screen. So go to hellofresh.com/feed to get 10 free meals and a free Zwilling knife, which is $144.99 value on your third box. All for valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. There's been times where I knew I could use some extra support, some therapy, and then I would start looking and it's like who's a good fit? Who takes insurance? How do I even sort through all of these options? And that's why I love what Alma is doing. They've built a network of over 20,000 therapists and you can browse their directory without creating an account. You can filter by the things that actually matter, like what you're dealing with, the therapist's approach, even background. So it feels a lot more human and a lot less like guesswork. And one thing that really stands out, most Alma therapists accept insurance. On average, people save about 80% on sessions, which makes getting help feel a lot more doable. Because for a lot of us finding therapists, we just don't know where to start and we worry about the cost. So if you've been thinking about therapy but haven't taken that first step, this is a good place to begin. Go to helloalma.com/feed. That's helloalma.com/feed. And find a therapist who fits you. Just for fun, let's pretend, and this is not the case, but let's just pretend that I said to you, Nicole, I've read a lot of books. This one's really not very good. You have the insight that you know, like, okay, I don't handle that well. How would you work with yourself in that moment if it triggered you? Like, walk us through, like, what today, and today may be different than somebody who's newer in the journey, but today, what would you do?

Speaker 1:
[20:08] Well, what I would do would begin maybe even before I put myself in a position and or asked for feedback, right? So, me taking a moment to, of course, we can't always, you know, we might see someone on the street and they might come up to me and say, your book sucked, right? So, I can't control maybe that because I put myself in public and I don't want to say, but I'm meaning when I say this because some of us, right, we feel like, oh, well, this just this negative feedback fell into my lap when really I went scrolling on reviews and found it, right?

Speaker 3:
[20:41] So, that's a bad practice, right? You're telling me don't do it.

Speaker 1:
[20:45] So, those are things to consider, right? Is that we could know, right? Or even just asking, hey, you know, if you want even from a loved one, hey, what did you think of my new book? Right. I'm kind of laboring on this because some of us don't even like hit that pause and say, can I handle if what you think of my new book isn't going to be positive, am I going to be okay to then do whatever I might now describe can come next? But emphasizing that first point, because there are a lot of moments where I don't have the bandwidth to be able to do what could come next. And without that bandwidth, because again, I would be doing something new, which isn't completely breaking down and determining that I'm never going to do the thing again that elicited the negative feedback, which is what my inner child wants to do, run away and say, okay, well, it wasn't good. I'm never going to put myself into a position where you could tell me anything I do isn't good ever again. So we get very black and white, very extreme. And now, so I determine I'm never going to put out a piece of work. That's the way my solution is going to avoid negative feedback. I won't give you anything to give me feedback on, right? So that is typically behind the scenes what would be happening, but making sure that I'm resourced enough that if you were to say, for whatever reason, you don't like the book, that I would then be able to pause, kind of maybe hear that cycle of negative criticism, where my kind of internal critic is already saying, yes, exactly, Nicole, this is why I told you not to put yourself out there, because it's safer back here when no one knows what you think to give you feedback on. Right, so all of that will still happen in those moments. There's not a magical wand that awareness kind of removes all of this wiring, all of even that voice is wired into us again, because keeping myself safe meant not saying anything, because if I don't say anything, then there's nothing for you to give me negative feedback around. So the voice is there intending to keep me safe by not putting myself out there, will still be there in this moment of negative feedback. I get to determine though how much attention that I want to give to one possible version of what comes next, which is I stop putting my work out there. Or I could pause, I could acknowledge the role that this protective voice is played, which is to keep me safe. I could remind myself of a couple of things, what my intention is, why do I put up work? What is the bigger value for me in doing this? For me, it's very much a passion, a purpose. I want to impart people with something that helped me on my journey to help them on their journey. And there could even be a pause where I hear what the negative feedback is saying, right? Because sometimes negative feedback can be very helpful, right? It can point out a perspective, a reaction that I wasn't anticipating that could actually be valuable for a future draft, my future work, whatever it is. But without pausing to make sure I'm resourced, make sure I'm grounded, right? Not letting my body's reaction where my heart will start to race, right? I'll start to get sweaty. All of that fear of, are you rejecting me because you're saying something about my work? Right? So much of that is tied to my identity, right? If you give me negative feedback, that's why it feels so intense because it doesn't feel like you're saying, hey, Nicole, like, you know, this works pretty good, but you could have maybe, you know, worded it differently or covered some different topics. I'm hearing it as you are a horrible person, right? So all of that then makes us understand why the reaction feels so big, why I want to run away and say, well, okay, well, I won't show you any of me anymore. But it's in those moments of pause, right? Of maybe slowing down my breath, maybe kind of reorientating me to I am an adult in a room, I can hear feedback, I'm safe. Maybe even reminding myself, right? You're just, you're giving me feedback about my book, not about me. And then giving myself the opportunity to determine if I want to take the feedback or leave it. But again, all of that happens behind the scene and often right after that most pivotal choice, which is sometimes we throw ourselves into situations that we're not resourced for. And then we feel even more shameful when I spiral down the pit of despair and decide I'm gonna quit the job entirely, when really I should have maybe paused on asking for the feedback or not, right? On a bad day, gone into a negative comment section and spent too much time there.

Speaker 3:
[25:13] Not that I could be worried about anything like this happening in my own life. And I have to be explicit. That was an example. I had to don't take any meaning. The negativity bias will say like, did he mean it? He did not mean it. He did not mean it. All right, onward. So let's talk about something you've created called the individual development model. And I'd love to just move through these five spheres relatively quickly. But tell me what the individual development model is, and then let's kind of walk through the spheres.

Speaker 1:
[25:47] So individual development model. I had been thinking about childhood development for a very long time, likely when I was in school and we were presented with different theorist ideas about how development happens, and more so what impacts the development of an individual being. And so I was very fascinated by that. I love learning, you know, if there's a way to, you know, see a pattern or an archetype in something or something developmentally that we can kind of track on that captures more people than not. I think those can be very helpful to learn from. So I dove right into a lot of them and continued to find that none of them seemed to deal with two things that I was becoming aware was incredibly important in our development. The first thing being not just us, our relationships. And we now know from all of the extensive research and attachment theory and even biology and nervous system development, we understand that humans, while we are a being, a one entity and an individual, so to speak, we need relationships. So the large majority of developmental models, we're leaving out the fact that we are greatly impacted our development based on how others around us or how safe we feel relating to those around us. And another big piece that most developmental models left out is the body or how those environments, including our relationships, impact the wiring in our body, which then, of course, impact our development. So for me, I wanted to think about, right, is there kind of an easy way? Because I think this is a difficult question. We don't even really know what development entails, what is needed, right, how much of it is natural, and it just happens, right? We have this idea to some extent that parenting and things like that just happen, and I think some others, right, are becoming, myself included, of the belief that, wait a minute, these things, yeah, some things naturally have biological sequences, but again, they are then greatly impacted by the happenings around them, like the people and the environment. So for that reason, I put out, again, a model that I hope can allow the readers to generally understand what impacted, again, their earliest development, that might still be habits that are impacting them now, but also then as we enter the reparenting stage of the book, mapping those really general spheres, as I call them, onto practices to then begin to develop new habits for ourselves. So quickly speaking, foundationally, without safety and security in our body, a nervous system that can become stressed when we need to, accurately determine when to become stressed, and then quickly be able to calm down. That would be the most foundational first sphere. Of course, it happens in infancy. Hopefully, if we have an attuned caregiver who shows up when we're upset, distress meets our need, calms us down. Over time, our body then learns to do that with or without support of someone else. So, on that then foundation, right now, we get to begin to develop a little more uniquely who we are. With safety and a home base to return to, we can now explore boundaries, edges, discipline, the discipline to keep going in a certain direction or to come back when we need support. This is another huge area where few of us were parented with the boundaries and the discipline that we needed to keep ourselves, because this is another version of safety. I want to be able to venture out into the world where it might be unsafe, but to do that confidently, I have to know that I can return back to a safe home base, a person, a space where I can calm down, get support when I then need it. Then following development along the lines, once I've separated a bit with boundaries, with discipline, now I'm starting to relate to other people, and now we can enter the world of very complicated emotions. And now we can start to develop tools to understand our emotions, regulate our emotions, attune to other individuals and their emotions from a safe distance, but understanding that there's connective space there where intimacy is born. So this is kind of sphere three, is the language of emotions, which happened to be the language of relating. Then we can shift into what I call authenticity, really learning and discovering our unique voice, our unique purpose, like what is it, how am I in the world and what impact can I make on those around me? And then that expands us into the fifth sphere, which I call transcendence or essentially connecting with the greater picture, where we get to access or re-access joy and playfulness and all of those emotional states that so many of us have, again, been closed off to because somewhere along our development we've created habits that have kept us disconnected from those kind of foundational areas of development.

Speaker 3:
[30:48] So I'd like to move into some of this process of re-parenting. Is there a way you could sort of present the broad strokes of what this looks like? You know, we're going to start here, we're going to do some of this, then we're going to do some of that. And, you know, help me see the journey as a whole before we drill down into particular parts of it.

Speaker 1:
[31:09] So from the bird's-eye perspective, what re-parenting is, is learning how to show up as a safe, nurturing, connected, compassionate caregiver. It's to show up for our own selves in certain ways, right, that will help us. So the most foundational practices of any re-parenting journey, right, are going back to that first fear, which really have everything to do with creating safety and security in our body, right? Being able for some of us to even reconnect with the fact that we are living in a physical human body, saying this is someone who spent the large majority of my life away on my spaceship, kind of zoomed out in a disconnected or dissociated state. So often, right, those habits of distracting from a body, of being disconnected or dissociated, are borne out of the lack of safety and security in the body to begin with. So, reparenting looks like, again, moments throughout the day where we're just kind of tuning into, assessing, right, are the biggest, the three main areas that shift and change when our body is having either a stressful or an emotional reaction, our muscle tension, our breath, and our heart rate. So, those are great markers even throughout the day, setting an alarm on our phone for a time or two, right, taking a moment to pause, right, to refocus our attention on our body, away from our distracting thoughts or away from the care that we're given to someone else because that's the role that we've learned and really just tuning into ourselves, right, and creating safety, slowing our breath if it's starting to be quickened or if we're holding our breath, releasing some tension in our muscles, right, over time helping our body downshift into that very grounded, connected state of our parasympathetic nervous system. And then on top of those habits, right, we can begin, if you're someone who struggles with boundaries, right, the re-parenting journey will mean on a daily practice of reconnecting with our own boundaries in terms of physical space, emotional space, mental space. And then of course, learning some emotional regulation tools. What do I do when I'm upset or overwhelmed, right, teaching ourselves some new habits because what parenting allows us to do through new daily choices is instead of just coping, right, in the way that we've learned how to cope with our discomfort, which many of us have gotten very savvy at it, right? Some of us have become identified with how we cope, right? We become the caregiver because we're always attuned to someone else or like me, the overachiever, because I'm always worried about how I'm being perceived by someone else, right? So that's coping. We've all gotten very good at coping with our earliest circumstances and our continued distress, but re-parenting allows us to truly heal, which means in those moments, right? Not just falling back into old reactive spaces or continuing to play old outdated roles that no longer fit or allow me to feel fulfilled. It's actually changing how we're experiencing the current moment, experiencing it in a more grounded way, right? Where we can be more responsive in our choices, not just reactive doing what we always do in that moment, then feeling shameful after the fact actually intentionally showing up. So re-parenting, in my opinion, is the most transformative journey that we can go on because that's quite literally what we're doing. Those older habits aren't working. I mean, they're working to the extent that they're sustaining life, right? That many of us are barely hanging on. We're in survival mode, but they're not changing how we're experiencing the current moment. So the next time that you don't get a text back as quickly as you want it, and to you, space or silence means rejection or abandonment. So you start spiraling and firing off text or rethinking everything you said and convincing yourself that they're upset with you and probably leaving you. The difference that re-parenting allows you to do is to pause in that moment. Understand, not invalidate that part of you that is spiraling, because that's a part of you that again, lived that experience before probably where distance or silence did mean rejection or abandonment. So even if again, we don't want to believe the inner child is alive and well, and we don't want to look back, that is the moment where we want to show up differently. By not shaming, by not doing the things we always have done, which is pursue, close the distance, by harassing your way to getting a response, or maybe doing the other end of the spectrum, which I often do. Oh, you're not going to respond to me? Well, you don't have a relationship to come home to because I've left you already. So now we're running away. Instead, in the moment, being with ourself, all of our parts, the part that's scared and convinced you're being left, slowing our breath, reminding ourselves that distance or silence doesn't mean rejection or abandonment as it once did, and maybe giving yourself the opportunity to hear back from that person and actually live that new experience. Where on the other end, in reconnection, they're not mad, right? Something probably very logical has happened with why they have not responded to you in a timely manner. But if we would have spiraled, right, and not allowed ourself to show up differently, then we wouldn't have been able to literally lay down a new experience, which is what we need to do to create the change that we want to. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline?

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Speaker 3:
[38:01] So that process is difficult. And part of what I think is most difficult about it is that the first time we often do it, we don't feel necessarily that much better. Right? Like, and this is just from personal experience, but if I get into a hyper activated state and I try and sort of slow my breath down, I'm going to relax, I'm going to think maybe there's probably a good reason, you know, that I might feel 5% better. How do I believe in the process enough to keep kind of doing that? Because I think that's what ends up happening in a lot of cases, certainly was the case with me at different points in my life. I'm like, well, this isn't really doing anything. Like, okay, that's a great idea, but she says I do it and I'll suddenly feel connected and grounded and I don't feel connected and grounded.

Speaker 1:
[38:54] What you're describing is the lived experience of change, right? If we just think about kind of categorically or even amount quantitatively, I think that's maybe the word I want, quantitatively, how many moments have led to you feeling, generally speaking, that bad, right? Whatever bad is for you in that moment. How many moments have led to that depth or degree or bigness of the feeling? So many moments that we can't even remember, even if we could recall them, we physically would not be able to. So just in terms of sheer quantity, understandably, of course we want to wave the wand, do something new and categorically feel different in the next moment. Of course we want to, especially if how bad we're feeling or the bigness of our suffering is that great. So I don't want to kind of shame that very understandable, hopeful part that is so desperately wanting it to be different, though it is really important that you and I are both speaking very honestly here. And going as far to say, so many of us wait to change anything in general until we feel inspired in the new feeling state already. And that just simply isn't the way change happens. Change happens through the moments that you're describing, where even when we just think about change in the most general sense, doing something new, making a new choice, however did you define change, we are already activating our nervous system. Because the unknown, that's why we prefer these habits and patterns, even the dysfunctional ones, because they're predictable. And our nervous system finds nothing safer than that which is predictable. Again, even if what is predicted is the negative outcome that we know is on the other side of every time this happens, we know. And so that already cuts down on the uncertainty. So the courageousness and bravery that it takes to make one new choice is quite literally challenging what for many of us is already an over overtaxed, overwhelmed nervous system that doesn't actually know how to return to calm. So then we pour more fire, right? And more frustration and even more shame on a system that's already overwhelmed. When we go in with an expectation that change is easy, that it immediately results in us feeling a new way, I will always be the one to speak on the reality of why change is hard to begin with, how much it already adds to an already stressed system, making us more likely then to return to old habits, which is why change needs to happen and we benefit more greatly from not trying to change the most difficult habit to break to begin with, right? To create a little momentum and even rebuild a little trust in ourselves to even be able to create change in kind of like periphery type moments. Knowing of course that this is the really the area where I want to see impact happen eventually. But if I start to just create a little momentum, right? Making new choices that are not fully pushing me into extreme stress, right? Because again, most of our hardest-wired habits, for lack of a better way to describe them, are the ones that are protecting the greatest vulnerability within us, right? So to then expect us to completely show up newly in this moment and feel so great about doing it and feel so differently, right? That's just very unrealistic. But what happens when we change in other areas, right? Creating momentum, we're rebuilding trust, right? We're showing ourselves that we can do slightly difficult things, maybe not the hardest thing ever just yet, but once we show ourselves that we can work through resistance, right? All of our mind and body screaming and yelling and telling us, no, not to do this thing, right? Maybe not fully feeling differently, but showing us alignment and intention, right? That's where we're building trust in ourself and also capacity. Because we're doing hard things and we're not falling back on old habits. And then the more we kind of sequence and consistently create change in other areas, right? Now we have a confidence and also a greater bandwidth to begin to dive into the deeper, more kind of stuck habits. So, but I think it's important to have these conversations and speak to the honesty of it, because nothing stops a transformation journey, right? Then at high expectation, then waiting to feel inspired or feel differently. And I share this often. If I waited to be comfortable speaking publicly on these topics, there would be no books, there would be no holistic psychologists, because even now to this day, I have an inner child who, while I think I have some things that I might want to share with people, I'm convinced, right? Then unless I say it in the most polished, perfect way, right? That you don't want to hear from me. So being public and speaking, right? If I waited to be comfortable in doing all of this, again, nothing that is now what I feel like a guiding light, a passion, a purpose of my why that will continue with me well into the future, if not until I'm done here on this earthly journey, I would not be living into any of that if I was waiting for it to be easy, for me to be comfortable, for me to have confidence. But what I was building again behind the scenes is I was rebuilding a trust in myself that said, you can do something hard, you can do it publicly, you can hear people's opinions. I have moments where we're both joking about, I do spiral, I do know where to find all of the things that kind of validate not the way I want to be seen or who I believe myself to be. All of that exists, but I am able to navigate it a bit differently. And when I'm falling back into old habits, which I still do, I have an awareness that I can grab onto. I have a reminder of how much maybe better I feel with, say, boundaries and distance. And then I'm able to kind of return to habits that help me feel and operate and do the things that are important to me to do.

Speaker 3:
[45:13] So one of the things I think a lot about is in our culture that has become very psychological, I think about where are we sort of pathologizing normal human emotion or how we actually are. So I want to give a couple of examples to lay out my point. So the first is in your book you describe being a young person who was filled with energy. Just always go, go, go, go, go and you filled up your schedule and you were always bouncing and jumping around and there's a way to view that as well that was a response to something happening in your environment where you didn't feel safe enough to sit still. There's also a way of framing that like that's part of your essence a little bit too. Or to take a later example you just mentioned showing yourself in public putting it out there. I think most everybody is going to be somewhat nervous about taking something personal and putting it out to the world and saying hey what do you think about this? Now again that's a normal human one but it may be amplified by certain things that happened to us in the past. How do you think about that question?

Speaker 1:
[46:27] I'm kind of shaking my head because I think what I'm hearing is a version of the chicken or the egg, nature nurture type, right? Is there an intrinsic essence that in absence of out there environment, something that's not me, right, expresses itself undeniably and or, right, is all of the influence coming from out there, right, to then impact or influence how one is expressed? And I think we can kind of spin our wheels to date and kind of find our way back to what is the original state, right, out there in here. And I kind of believe it's both. I've come to believe based on, you know, science and research and what I've observed in my own self and other people's patterns is that an epigenetics even, right, which is the science of that connection, right? How individual genetics, so to speak, change based on environmental impact. So my response is that it's a bit of both, right? We each have our own kind of, if we want to talk in terms of energy or footprint or, you know, fingerprints, like our unique signature of the belief as science kind of affirms, right? We live in an energetic universe. So the signature I'm always kind of landing on in my head is like, I'm a certain vibration and energy, right? That would impact the environment, the physical environment in a different way. Though I am in interaction with that physical environment. So I do think, and what confuses this question for a lot of us, meaning we see the patterns passed through our families, the cycles that many of us are now determined to break. We see a similarity that can confuse for inherent intrinsic, right? Genetic, because we see the same patterns in our family. We have the same personality characteristics. We have the same energetic expression. So it can seem on the surface, oh, well, that's because, right? Intrinsically, we share the same percentage of genetics. So this is that genetics and expression. But as I've been hopefully kind of communicating and describing all along is, we now understand that even that, right? Familial energy that very much looks like the cycles that are genetically passed on were impacted again epigenetically by the environment. So I think we're both. We're walking interaction, expression, whether we're interacting with other human beings or whether we're interacting with just the natural world around us. I do think that we have kind of the things that make us us that have also been in connection or operation with the environments that have been unique to us or our families, or even our cultures, really.

Speaker 3:
[49:14] Right. I don't think there's any way to unwind it. I don't think there's any. I mean, that's why I said earlier, like tidy narratives of like, well, I'm this way because my dad was that way. I'm like, well, okay, hang on. There's about a thousand other factors woven in there. I think what I'm pointing to more is how I choose to frame something says a lot about how I view it. So if I view my fear of public speaking as, you know what, everybody feels a little bit afraid by public speaking, I'm like everybody else. Versus I say, oh, I am kind of effed up from this thing in the past and now that's why this is really hard for me. And again, I don't think I'm not asking for clear answers here. I'm just asking for how you think about when it's helpful to take on these ideas of what happened impacted us and when is it helpful to go, well, that's being human.

Speaker 1:
[50:06] That's an interesting kind of lever is kind of how I'm thinking. All right. When is it that challenging and pushing our edge and growing into or seeing an opportunity is evolving or growing versus when does it maybe pushing us into stress or misalignment? I think that it's kind of individual for each of us, kind of determining how then am I experiencing the thing in which I'm doing? What is driving it? If it's something that's important, so what's driving me to continue to public speak or putting myself in an environment that's slightly uncomfortable is, what's driving it for me is the value of wanting to impart information to someone else that they could then gain benefit from it. That's not to say, though, and it's not to say that I don't do, which I do, I can try to manipulate and make an environment where I'm speaking publicly more comfortable. Presentations with slides or conversations with another human versus keynote speaking, less comfortable, so we can then curate our space. Not to say that there's not some level of discomfort, but I can modify what I'm doing individually, so I can do it in a way where the stress isn't overwhelming or taking away, or misaligning me now with the action I want to take or with the role I want to take. So I think it's like the process of finding where our edge is, determining how comfortable we are with tolerating the discomfort of getting to our edge or stepping over our edge, and then getting really clear on what is compelling us into that, into starting or maintaining that action at all. You heard me, it was me, it was my desires, what's important to me, right? I wasn't saying, oh, well, I'm doing this for someone else or for prestige or for, you know, perception, how someone might view me. And I think those then, that is giving me the permission to say, okay, well, this is important enough to continue to push that edge. I'm not kind of putting a round peg in a square hole or square peg round hole, whatever the statement is. But I think it's our own kind of journey of reconnecting with ourself, our values, our edges, resourcing ourself so that if something is a bit uncomfortable for us now, but we want to grow into that space. So, and similarly, I'm having the same thing, right? Because I can maybe speak publicly, like what kind of speaking do I want to do? Is it important for me to push myself into the edge of learning how to do a keynote? Or is that maybe just not me, right? And my energy is going to be expressed in conversation or in more teaching moments. So, it's interesting you're bringing this question, because I'm kind of feeling my way into, right? Or is that just a cop-out and really that's who I am? And I'm kind of feeling like, no, I think what we're talking about here is exactly what I'm feeling into, which is something about my energy loves a, what I'm calling a co-create or what I experience as a co-creation, right? Where I'm teaching concepts or I'm communicating with someone else. And the thing takes on a life of its own because I've interacted with the ideas in the slides or you talking different then. So funny, I'm living into, I think, this decision and I'm kind of talking my way through, I guess, how I'm making it because it might come, right? Where it's, that's not, that's just not an uncomfortable edge for me that maybe isn't how I am best expressed. And so that might not be then an edge you see me push into while I still could push into the edges that come along with this version of public life.

Speaker 3:
[53:39] I love that whole description because it describes the fact that we just, it's hard to figure out, right? Like, you know, we do our best to try and go, all right, I think it's, it's just not clear. And I love the fact that you're, you're honest about how it's not that clear because it's just very helpful for everyone to know that none of us really have it all figured out, right? I'm a far more emotionally and mentally healthy person than I used to be, far more. And life just keeps presenting new challenges as soon as you're like, okay, something else shows up. So I want to move on to something else here, which is shame. Shame is one of those things that I have seen in certain cases be one of the most intractable, non-responsive, like it seems like for some people it moves, and I see other people where it just feels like it just still has them in their grip. And I'm curious what you think are some of the biggest things in helping us move forward with shame. And then I'd love to talk specifically about a practice you have in the book about stopping a shame cycle.

Speaker 1:
[54:57] So for me, shame was one of those immovable pieces, because I simply was not fully aware of how baked in shame was to the identity, me, who I came to know I was, right? I was not someone, let me word it this way, maybe it's a bit clearer, I'm not someone who kind of like on the daily or weekly even was aware of traditionally, I think those shameful moments, right? Where we feel embarrassed or we feel like, you know, left out or like shamed by someone or ashamed of ourselves when learning and hearing right about what shame is and could be. I didn't relate to very many, if any of those moments. So for a very long time, right? I would have never been like, oh gosh, shame is so foundational to who I am as I've come to discover that it is. Because for me, right? Shame, like I said, became big. I got so good at determining as we all do, right? Based on direct or indirect things that are said to us, ways that we were treated or not treated in childhood, we become very attuned to how others are experiencing us. And shame is a natural human emotion, evolutionarily, that we will all feel when we are getting sent signals that we are being rejected or excluded or abandoned or pushed out simply, if we want to talk in evolutionary terms, of the group. Right? So shame is a socially binding emotion. And understanding that all of us humans, especially us in infants and in childhood, we need to be a part of the group. We are safest. Even adults are safest in a group of individuals. So shame, right, in those moments where we're not feeling belonged or connected, and we, you know, maybe we have kind of the thematic experience of our cheeks blush and we kind of like try to divert our eyes and kind of hide. Sometimes we make ourselves actually physically smaller because we feel ashamed. We want to like shrink back into the wall behind us. Those moments are very valuable because they teach us what we need to do more or less of to avoid being excluded or avoid or to keep ourselves connected with safety. And so, as we will all do, we're very attuned in childhood, we learn. And some of us, like myself, right, I got so good at so quickly determining what granted me attention and validation from my parents in childhood. And I got very quickly clear on what didn't, right? Things that they just weren't traditionally interested in, you know, celebrating things that maybe I was interested in, but didn't map on to a more traditional version of success, right? So that shame, and then I got very savvy, I only presented myself in the way that would maintain the accolades, the validation. So shame for a lot of us isn't the moments where we're like, oh, I feel ashamed. Sometimes shame was such a part of the construction of all of the parts that we hide or don't show, even the emotions that are natural and human. But again, if in childhood, any emotional displays or sadness, we're told not to be dramatic or anger is dangerous. And so for all these reasons, we can become very shameful about natural aspects of our human experience. Because what shame does and the message that shame is sending, unlike guilt, which is I feel barely about something I've done, shame gets attached to our identity. I feel barely about who I am. And again, shame forms in our childhood environment for most of us, because when a parent, for whatever reason, wasn't physically present or emotionally wasn't able to be attuned, when they weren't able to show up to meet our needs, the only way that developmentally our nervous system and our mind, right, we couldn't zoom out, understand all of the complexities about being an adult and all of the reasons why they weren't able, our parents, to care for us in the way that we need it. We didn't have the developmental understanding. And also, in a childhood where we literally can't pack a bag and leave and go to a new home, it is of great benefit to land on an explanation that involves us, meaning we become the cause of our unmet needs, meaning we begin to assign whatever it is, us being too much or too little of whatever it was, right, becomes then the cause of our parents' inability to meet our needs. So we become unworthy, unlovable, right? Whatever it is, we are the cause of the lack of connection, the lack of safety, the lack of support that we need. And then we, right, we develop all of these, based in the lived experience, real theories of why, oh, well, because I was too much showing emotions, or for me, I didn't get a straight A. And then we, right, try to hide all these shameful parts. Yet, for many of us, they drive our identity, they drive our reactions. Shame keeps us disconnected from ourself. It's quite literally an emotional, nervous system driven state of shut down, where we become less and less connected to our body, to ourself, to the energy that allows us to express ourself or defend ourself when we need it. So the consequences then of shame become very long lasting and pervasive. But again, oftentimes it grows in a childhood where there are unmet needs, where we didn't have the ability to separate out the fact that we were never the cause of someone else's actions. And again, for some of us, it's so baked into just how we show up that we're not even aware that for a lot of us, it's shame that's driving those habits.

Speaker 3:
[60:38] So how do we begin to unwind it?

Speaker 1:
[60:41] So beginning to unwind shame is beginning to acknowledge the moments where shame could be driving our actions, right? Where we, most often, right? Where we become shameful of ourself, right? Where we begin to speak to ourself in shaming ways, to treat ourselves in shaming ways, to shrink back in action as opposed to speak out. So all change will happen when first we see ourself in action of that old shame-driven habit, right? So in real time where I'm starting to spiral, shaming myself in my mind or, right? I find myself wanting to speak up and say something, but I'm thinking about all the reasons, right? Why they're going to be rejected or shamed if I, you know, share my feelings or share my real thought. And then pausing in action in those moments, right? If our body is beginning to kind of spiral into shame as well, our heart is beginning to race, right? We were starting to actually feel shut down, feel numb, right? We might want to shake some energy back into our system. And then we want to show up, right, in action. We want to express ourself, right? Do the thing that shame is essentially telling us to avoid doing. And then all of this, though, happens when we become, oftentimes outside of those acute moments, right? Clear, right? What is it that I have learned was bad, is unworthy, not to express. For some of us, right, it's all feeling, certain feeling, some aspects of, right, my self-expression when I'm too loud, or when I'm, you know, so we can understand, I think, outside of those acute moments. And then in those moments, we really do want to tune in first to what's happening in our body. Because if we go too far, right, too stressed out, too overwhelmed, we're going to rely back on those old shameful habits, which end up only compounding them, the shame we're feeling.

Speaker 3:
[62:40] So how do we stop a shame cycle?

Speaker 1:
[62:42] So the shame cycle is, again, knowing the points of the cycle, right? Knowing those markers, those moments that activate our shame, the spiraling thoughts, the racing hearts, right? The desire to run away, kind of all of those distancing things that often we will do when we are feeling shameful, beginning to see, right, the pattern. Is it feedback? Is it even just self-expression? Sometimes it's not even the absence of someone saying anything to us. It's a moment where we feel shameful about having a need, wanting to express a need, having an emotion, having an opinion. So, right, getting clear, noticing in those moments where we're becoming reactive, when the shame spiral begins, so that we can note, right, if we're going into a moment where feedback or self-expression is, you know, part of what we want to see happening. So we feel armed and ready that we could begin the spiral then, knowing again that the spiral will involve somatic actions. Our body will begin to become stressed. The quickening of our heart and the tension in our muscles and the quickening of our breath, we want to slow down, right? If we're at the last stop, though, of shame and we're not necessarily feeling a quickness, we're feeling numb. We're holding our breath. We don't have any energy, right? Then as opposed to slowing movement, we want to begin to safely kind of re-initiate or re-engage movement, so slowly maybe doing some circles with our wrists or our feet, slow walking, slow stretching. Kind of we need to get our body moving again safely, so that for those of us, right, who when we are shameful, we shut down, we don't speak up when we need to say something in defense of ourself or when we need to remove ourself, right? To do that, we need to stimulate, safely stimulate the energy to do that. So again, when energy is moving quickly and tension is amplified, a great way to remind ourselves is we want to slow movement, slow energy, release tension. If we're on the other end, again, we're feeling cold, numb, detached, out of body, right? Then we want to, as opposed to slowing, we want to begin to slowly stimulate, add action back, right? Stop holding our breath, begin to allow our body to breathe, right? Begin to allow again movement and energy to safely activate, so that then if what we need to do to interrupt the shame cycle is to say or do something in action, right? We have energy. But it begins with noticing the cycle in real time then noticing when it's starting to go into that shame spiral portion, pausing, slowing or moving depending on what we need to have access to, and then showing up again in a not shameful way.

Speaker 3:
[65:34] You end the book talking about resilience. And you say that resilience is not toughness, not the capacity to soldier through, not the absence of pain. It is our capacity to stay present in our emotions so we can adapt to our changing circumstances. Leave us with a couple of words about resilience.

Speaker 1:
[65:54] Again, I think resilience is one of those words that thankfully it's being talked a lot about. However, I think sometimes that there's a little bit of misconception, perhaps hopeful idea of what resilience really looks like and feels like. Because sometimes I have the idea that some of us hopefully wish for resilience to mean life becomes easy, breezy, never really having our feathers ruffled or having emotional moments. And the reality is resilience is actually expanding our capacity to feel more emotion, to feel more types of emotion, right? Not cutting ourselves off and determining that some emotions just, you know, are too uncomfortable or too inappropriate to feel, really allowing in the whole spectrum of human emotion. And also living in the reality that human emotions will always be a part of our lived experience. We need them to be. They're what gives us life. They're what sends us sometimes very important information about how we're experiencing our current environment. So understanding first, again, what the expectation is, right? What is the point of doing all this work? If you believe the point is to get to a place, right, where you're never upset or bothered again, or where you only feel calm or okay, then that's not going to be exactly where this journey, you know, takes you to. The journey will take you to, again, a life that still is uncomfortable, still has moments of conflict or disagreement. However, it has life in it, right? It has all of the different human emotions. It has the ability to process difficult human emotions, to hold space for different opinions, different emotions around a certain experience, to learn how to truly connect and collaborate and feel intimately close to other people. So that's what resilience, again, if it is not yet clear, resilience isn't something that we just wish for in our mind or affirm our way to. Resilience is quite literally all of the actions that we've been speaking about over the duration of this podcast and of course, you'll read about in the new book as and or in all of the work that I talk about is the daily action of showing up in new ways, right? Not relying on those old ways that we've learned to cope, the quickest way to ease the discomfort as fast as possible, but to expand our capacity to be present to discomfort because discomfort, the hormones, the energy, right? Whatever it is that really makes up all of these emotional experiences, thankfully, it goes away. Our body always wants to go back into what we say homeostasis or balance. It wants to metabolize neurochemicals and hormones, right? A nervous system that's activated wants to become deactivated and calmed down, right? So we do eventually, our body always wants us to kind of be balanced and even. And we need to see what's gotten in our way, what's keeping us stuck, what's keeping us not kind of completing our stress cycle or not being present to any of our emotions because we haven't learned how or we feel that, or have been taught that emotions are to be avoided and to actually change our relationship with our whole body, our emotions included so that we can be more and more present, more and more able over time, more and more responsive, again, to emotions that will always be a part of our human experience.

Speaker 3:
[69:39] I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue talking in the post-show conversation where you're going to lead us through a practice, an imaginative practice, where of connecting to the inner child. Listeners, if you'd like access to that practice, you'd like ad-free episodes, if you'd like to support the show, which is very important, you can get all of that by going to onewfeed.net/join. Nicole, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to have you on.

Speaker 1:
[70:09] It's always a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me back again, Eric.

Speaker 3:
[70:12] Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of The One You Feed community. If you've ever put your phone down and felt better almost immediately, and then picked it right back up 10 minutes later, you're not alone. Researchers around the world are finding that social media is making us less happy, and most of us already know this. The harder question is why we can't seem to stop, and that's exactly what Dr. Lori Santos is digging into on the Happiness Lab. She sits down with the authors of the 2026 World Happiness Report to unpack this year's biggest findings. What's happening with young people's well-being, why the rest of us stay glued to our feeds, even when we know better, and what the science says we can actually do about it. I'm a really big fan of Lori's work on the Happiness Lab because she doesn't just tell you what the research says. She helps you figure out what to do with it, and that's the part that most people skip. Listen to the Happiness Lab wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 7:
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