In this episode, Nikki Eisenhauer shares the #1 mindset shift to stop overthinking and start living. She explores the profound role of insight, emotional maturity, and personal responsibility in personal growth. With her extensive wisdom gleaned from her 17+ years of experience working with highly sensitive individuals, she dives into why some people change while others remain stuck, how overthinking can become a trap, and the importance of balancing self-compassion with accountability.
Key Takeaways:
- 00:00 Insight is the Key to Change
- 04:37 Maturity Matters More Than We Think
- 08:37 Your Feelings Don’t Have to Drive the Bus
- 14:09 Overthinking is a Coping Mechanism
- 33:40 Stillness is a Superpower in a Distracted World
- 45:41 Personal Responsibility is Empowering, Not Harsh
Connect with Nikki Eisenhauer Website | Instagram | Emotional Badass Podcast
Nikki Eisenhauer is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) and has been in private practice since 2009. She is a passionate mentor, teacher, and healer who transforms head knowledge into heart knowledge to help Seekers move from surviving to thriving. Nikki is also the host of the podcast Emotional Badass: Where Moxie Meets Mindful, which has over 3+ million downloads in 100+ countries. She shares her recovery story as a mentoring healing tool to empower highly sensitive people (HSP’s) to embrace who they really are in this one precious life.
If you enjoyed this episode with Nikki Eisenhauer, check out these other episodes:
How to Harness the Chatter in Your Head with Ethan Kross
Overthinking and Internal Soundtracks with Jon Acuff
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 01:48
Hi, Nikki, welcome to the show.
Nikki Eisenhauer 01:49
Thank you for having me.
Eric Zimmer 01:50
I’m excited to have you on and talk about all kinds of different things, you have quite an interesting background as a psychotherapist, as a coach as a podcast host, and you cover all kinds of topics. So it’ll be really interesting to see where we end up. But we’ll start in the place that we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, they say in life, there are tools inside of us that are always at battle. What is it 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. Think about it for a second, they look up their grandparents, they say, Well, which one wins, and the grandparents 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.
Nikki Eisenhauer 02:39
It means so much I used to teach a group with that parable. Well, before I even knew what a podcast was, it hits me in a lot of ways, I think we have so much power to feed the good to feed what serves us. I think the confusion is that sometimes we don’t know what we’re feeding, or we don’t know that we have that power to feed different beasts inside of us, if you will. And so to me, that parable is all about the empowerment of that choice, and being mindful and intentional, so that we’re feeding what we really want to feed so that we’re growing in a direction of lightness, of ease of peace, of joy of really experiencing what is good in this one precious life and letting go of the rest.
Eric Zimmer 03:25
Yeah, you know, as I was listening to a couple of recent episodes of yours, they were what 17 years of working with my clients has taught me and there’s there’s lots of interesting lessons in there. But I kind of want to pivot a slightly different direction off of that, which is that 17 years of working with clients is a long time, you’ve worked with a lot of people. And in that time you have seen people grow and prosper and change and just beautiful stories. And you’ve seen tragedy and heartbreak. You’ve seen people who don’t change people who die all the negative outcomes we could think of, and I’m curious if you have any wisdom about what it is that allows some people to change and others not. Because any of us that are in this field for very long, or even if you’re not in it directly, if you observe people in your own life, it is a mystery, right? Like, why was Bob able to, you know, moderate his weight and his health and his cholesterol and become healthy where Sam is now a type two diabetic and only gets out twice a week? Like we see it all around us? And I’m just curious if you have some thoughts on what are some of the key factors in people’s ability to make change?
Nikki Eisenhauer 04:37
That’s a great question. I think the main thing that is so hard to put our finger on or name about that difference that is so easy to see. Because you can really see it especially when you do this work over and over again. It’s like what is that stuff that that one person has that motivates them towards this change? And what is the stuff that this other person is missing? That doesn’t seem to be able do that work or to let go of what isn’t serving them? To me that stuff is insight. And insight is one of those things that we can’t really teach. And we don’t really know why. This is something that I had professors in my counseling program when I was in my master’s program, teach and what they taught brand new green therapists was that we were really going to try to hammer in insight to people that just didn’t have it. And their intelligence level would make it seem like they should be able to connect these dots and make these changes and go forward. And that that very thing that seems to motivate changes in sight and its sight. And just like our eyeballs, like if you and I are standing next to each other, looking out at a landscape, I live in the mountains, I can see the mountains right now, as we’re talking outside of my window. If you and I are standing there looking at those mountains, we know very well that you’re going to have a different sight ability, I’m going to have different sight, maybe one of us has glasses. But when it comes to things like our intuition or our insight, we can’t really measure it like we can to get prescription glasses. So I think it’s harder for us to really understand that other human beings have different parts of them. And it’s part sensory, maybe it’s part spiritual, maybe it’s the different karma so that we’re living out why some of us are born with insight. And some of us aren’t, I tend to work with very high insight people that come from family systems, where most of the players seem to suffer from and really suffer, whether they know it or not, from low insight. And that’s just our ability to look inward, our ability to observe ourselves, our ability to see our own patterns, our own inclinations, our own motivations, our own desires, and question them that if we can’t see those things, then it’s not going to be easy to question those things, or to change them. So I think the stuff that you’re talking about insight, and you and your work, I’m sure of it. And me and mine, we do insight oriented therapies, or coaching, or we’re helping people who already have insight connected, and many of them are hurt in the world by people that just don’t seem to have that insight. And likely never will, which we don’t like, right, like I’m all about hope and change. And so one of the things I teach in my boundaries course, every October is that we also have a dysfunctional hope. You know, we’re kind of supposed to give second chances, not infinity chances. So I think there’s a lot that plays there about that ability, that willingness, that seeker spirit that drives us to change.
Eric Zimmer 07:47
I have 1000 Follow on questions about that. So when we say insight, I think it’s worth talking a little bit more about what that is, because I’m certain that you see this and I’ve seen it, I got into recovery at 24 years old. And I’m hate to say 52, right. And so I’ve been watching some people change and other people not for a long, long time. Right. And what I have seen is people who show up and put in effort, who appear to have some degree of insight because they wouldn’t be there putting in the effort if they didn’t have some insight, or they can pare it back some insight maybe. What is it you think that they need to be seeing that oftentimes people are not connecting or are not seeing more deeply?
Nikki Eisenhauer 08:37
Maybe it’s how deep our personal responsibility really runs. And I also think we’re not so aware naturally, of what our motivating factors. So I’ve worked in addiction, where people live for residential treatment, and I did intensive outpatient. That’s where I started my career. And very often someone could speak the speak, right talk the talk. And the truth is, as a trained therapist, we want tangible evidence based stuff to help people with and to speak from what I learned as a human being going through that experience beyond a therapist going through that experience was that I had to decipher and it was a feel is very hard to put into words. It’s a feeling because two people can stand next to each other and utter the same thing, the same desire. But I can feel the difference between someone who is genuinely passionate and driven about going after the very behaviors and mindsets that will serve them and someone else may say the exact same phrasing, but it feels empty, it feels hollow. And often the difference there is they’re not really motivated to do it for themselves. We don’t understand motivation. And when we have lower insight, we also tend to have a lower empathy and a lower maturity. So So often what I think is at play is a lower maturity. And we don’t do a great job in mental health. I think even in spiritual circles, just as people, I don’t think we talk about maturity in any kind of self development space. But we can see that there was a philosopher that I very much identified with when I was going through my schooling I think of as Erickson. But I’m not great at remembering the names and pairing them with the right information. That’s not my strong suit, my strong suit is the how to heal. But in that one of those philosophers theorized that most people did not truly emotionally develop into adulthood, most stayed kind of stunted in adolescence. And for me, that was a gobsmacked moment to hear that information, because I could see in my own family system that was very dysfunctional. And in the family systems I was working with, and learning about at the time, that that was very, very true that often there was a younger person who had been parentified, who seemed to be born an old soul, like just born with some kind of maturity. And we can really see that a lot of people have parents, a lot of people have family members, a lot of people themselves, may really be operating emotionally, like a 12 year old, they really may be operating like a 16 year old. And some of that is temperament. Some of that is experience. Some of that is nature, some of that is nurture. Some of that is drug and alcohol use stunting emotional development, we certainly know about that. But I would also say growing up with chaos, for certain personalities can stunt that development. So when we say trauma or dysfunction, those are overused, they’re overplayed. They’re almost like the word good at this point. It’s like we all know what it means. But it doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. Things that would not traumatize us today that would just be annoying to us today are truly traumatic for a child, we need a certain amount of peace. So if we grew up with chaos, that may become traumatic in a way that today would just be annoying. But for the child, we were was really unfortunate for the development of our own maturity, our own ability to communicate with more and more age and wisdom instead of reaction, being able to really respond with greater wisdom. And if we come from people that functionally didn’t mature, I can very much say that’s true in my family system, that is so confusing and frightening. And so if we have a portion of the population that isn’t emotionally maturing, then of course, that’s going to affect how they grow and develop, because an immature person is going to want to eat that whole bag of Oreos, it takes a certain amount of maturity, to go wait a minute, even though part of me wants to just stuffed my face with all those Oreos, another part of me has to step in and know Hey, that’ll make me sick. And we need to know that about all these more complex interactions and dynamics and motivations and desires. Who are we doing things for we pleasing the people in our family? Because they want us to get sober? You know, we want them to quit ride in our asks. So we learn to say the right things? Or are we really cultivating an inner drive towards expressing in this life to to our highest potential is that our driving force? Are we just trying to get by and feel good in the moment. And if we’re immature, I suspect we’re more likely I know that we’re more likely to reach for those in the moment feel goods that really support our personal development and our security, and our groundedness. And even developing things like a certain amount of wealth and financial stabilities. Because money is choice, and its power, and its comfort, it’s so many things. So I think so much plays on what comes together to really drive a person towards seeking and working and it’s work. And again, if you’re immature, how do we convince somebody that the work is worth it? If their immature part is just like, I don’t want to do that uncomfortable stuff? I’d rather sit and watch TV, how do you motivate that if we’re not really talking about maturity in these spaces, too.
Eric Zimmer 14:09
So I think there’s a lot to be said for this idea of maturity, when you’re talking to made me think of Ken Wilber who formulated that sort of, we need to clean up grow up and wake up, right? There’s these three elements. Some people even include showing up in that. What I think is interesting, though, is that by definition so many of us arrive at the process of change, very mature though, growing through and maturing is part of it. But is that the essential element because many of us don’t have it when we get here. I know I didn’t write you know, when I got sober. I’m a little bit grateful. You know, I got sober and kind of a hard ass a environment and today’s world it would not be smiled upon too much. Maybe there were some things about it that were not great, but there was a real strong gonna focus on personal responsibility. And growing up and being an adult and taking care of your business. And that was really good for me, I really needed to see that element of like all the different ways that I show up in life. But the other thing that that time really taught me that I think is interesting about thinking that insight is the stuff was, you know, what I was really taught was, sometimes we can’t think our way in the right action, we have to act our way the right thinking. And so my focus was always on, like, let me just do what I’m being told to do. Let me just try and do the thing, even though my brain still feels like an angry four year old all the time.
Nikki Eisenhauer 15:40
So I work with a lot of highly sensitive people. And often I think I shocked them, when I say you cannot be so feeling driven. Our feelings are liars part of the time, we have to do hard work, despite how we feel. We cannot let how we feel drive the bus of our life. Like I’m from New Orleans, it is the land of vices, we eat, and we drink, we feed people, we hand people drinks, we almost don’t know how to socially relate unless we’re doing it through food and alcohol. So we have to be able to get real about the difference between what we want, and what we need. When I’m talking to highly sensitive people. That is shocking. And it used to not be shocking. I’ve been doing this for 17 years. And it used to not be shocking. And I think it’s part of, frankly, where mental health has failed in the last two decades. It’s becoming so soft. And so listening of emotion, that we’ve forgotten that we need a balance between Yes, of course, we need to listen to ourselves and each other. We need to pay attention to emotions and their inherent information. We need to check those things out. But I believe we very much need to have that real world grounded basic, Hey, you are going to have to grow up, hey, you can’t give in to every feeling you have if you want to have a really good life. It is just that simple sometimes, and I believe sometimes therapists to get caught in overcomplicating what really is simple in this way. That’s why AAA has saying it’s like just do the next right thing. No matter how you feel. Stop paying attention to how you feel in that moment and just do the next right thing. So as a profession, I think mental health has gone way too far into holding space for emotion, dropping the ball of that personal responsibility. And I think that is why we are seeing skyrocketing depression, addiction and suicide. We need to tell people that they must take responsibility for their lives. There’s no getting around it. There are no people with white knights that will come and save us. I know I waited for one for a while I hoped for one I fantasized about somebody coming and doing the work for me. That may be part of the grief process, the bargaining stage of grief. But to get real deep down into the nitty gritty of my life comes down to me no matter what happened to me in childhood, no matter what choices, my own immaturity made. If I want a mature life, I have to actually take myself towards that maturity. And as myself sees me do those actions, I will mature. I also think like in your story, yes, of course you came to it with a maturity. But whatever that stuff was that insight that went, Hey, this isn’t right. For us. This feels icky. There’s got to be a different way. That desire to want to mature, I believe is the insight.
Eric Zimmer 18:38
Yeah, there’s a few different things there. I tend to agree with you. I’ve been doing this podcast about nine years, I feel like even just in this nine years, I have seen a shift where I can see it even in the answering of the wolf parable, right? Because on one level, the wolf parable is a simple parable about choice, right? Our actions and our thoughts and our behaviors, they all matter. And we have a choice in them. Right? So on one level, it’s a very straightforward and simple parable. And once upon a time, that was how most people would answer it. More and more. Now the answers are about how we need to embrace and love our bad wolf. And I think that’s an insight that’s important and useful. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing that. But I do think we need to listen to our feelings. I do think we need to hold space for emotion, all that stuff. But I agree with you. I feel like the pendulum has just swung a little bit too far in the direction of being a victim of being traumatized have not been able to do something away from empowerment. I mean, I don’t think we want to go back to something that’s very extreme and I don’t think my early days in AAA were great right? I had to actually move out of that for a period of time where I was like, You know what, they just keep saying it doesn’t matter what happened to you just act like a certain person. I was like, Well, okay, but at a certain point certain level of healing. I’m Gonna have to deal with what did happen to me I have to deal with trauma, I do have to deal with the ways in which I didn’t develop. So it does feel like the pendulum is a little over too far. And I’m waiting to see it sort of start to swing back because I feel like it will. I think it has to, I just hope it doesn’t snap back. Right. So I think it’s, you know, let’s kind of come back in the middle, because I think that actually the answer is, it really is in the middle, right? It is a case of like, yes, we’d need a really strong sense of personal responsibility and accountability, and a real focus on like, here’s the right thing to do, here’s the right action. And we need to be compassionate and kind to ourselves and others about the challenges we faced and the ways that we haven’t developed, I think your work actually strikes a pretty good balance between those two things, which is partially why I wanted to talk to you,
Nikki Eisenhauer 20:49
I’m passionate about that balance. I mean, for years, my clients would probably tell you that balance was the word that came out of my mouth the most. And we’re complicated. And it’s something that I’ve had to work on accepting myself, I think most highly sensitive people walk the world, like, Hey, when are you going to accept me, and then tell me that I’m okay. And it doesn’t work that way. If it did, I wouldn’t be uttering these things out of my mouth, what works is to work on accepting who we are. So I had to do a lot of work on hey, I’m an intensely feeling person, hey, I have had a lot happened to me in my history, I have survived the abandonment of one parent, I have survived the sexual abuse of another parent, I have survived a mother that is a sociopath and an ice queen and not warm with me, those are things that need to be considered and who I am, how I developed, how those shaped me what I want to let go of what I don’t want to take forward. There’s a lot there. But there’s also a point at which I just have to do the next right thing in this present moment. So talk therapy sometimes gets people lost, I see people sometimes partnering, like you said, embracing our inner dark parts, or our inner dysfunction, I see people more in the last three to five years, partnering with their depression, instead of seeing it acknowledging it and then fighting their depression. Yeah, so there’s nuance there that I think gets missed, you know, like the internet connected you and I, you know, there’s so much power. In this technological contraption, we’re all using way too much. But there’s also downside. And so as much as these messages get celebrated and shared more, they also get watered down, the nuance gets lost. And you have to be really real with yourself. therapists have to be real with themselves. Are they enabling people to just keep circling their story? Are they helping them really connect the dots and move forward? And as a patient or a client of a coach or a therapist? Are you asking that person to challenge you to help you get unstuck? Are you helping them just kind of circle and circle and circle like, everybody has to take responsibility for their part and their role, and I’m passionate about if we do that, we really are healing the world, one person at a time, as corny as that might sound. And that is our job. It is your one precious life, you’re responsible for it. If you keep trying to farm that out. I think you’ll just be resentful later for the time wasted, not taking responsibility. I don’t live with a lot of regret. But if I could go back in time, I would tell myself, stop thinking so hard, do some of these healthy things and move forward, you’re gonna have a chance to process but move. Yeah, like with trauma. Yeah, you have to move slowly, sometimes, but you got to move. And too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings. And in swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really move forward.
Eric Zimmer 24:02
It makes me think of one of my favorite tropes about depression, which is depression hates a moving target, because that’s just been my experiences, I just have to move. You know, whether that be physically emotional, I mean, it’s it movement in all the different ways you can think of it. Now one of the cruel paradoxes of depression is it sucks the energy out of you, and you don’t have much energy to move. And so I think sometimes we have to recognize what is the next right thing for me and my actual real capabilities, right? So the next right thing for me, I may be able to take a bigger next right step than the next person or vice versa, right. But I do strongly believe there are always positive steps to take, even if they’re really, really small, and we need to be taking them. And one of the other things you’re talking about made me think of is I interviewed a guy named Ethan Kross. He’s a University of Michigan researcher and he wrote a book called Chatter, which is all about kind of the internal chatter, but he references a study in there that has really stuck with me. Because the question was, when somebody comes to you with a problem, what is more helpful? Is it more helpful for you to listen? And empathize? Or is it more helpful for you to offer solutions and advice or to give them a gentle nudge? And what this study found was, surprise, surprise, it’s both. Right, that what’s actually most helpful is both, you have to start at least my experience has always been you have to start with the listening and the understanding, and letting someone know, they’ve really been heard, that is essential. If that step is skipped, the next one simply won’t work. But then there is a point where sometimes we need a nudge from the people who care about us.
Nikki Eisenhauer 25:50
Yes, it’s interesting to hear you use that language that is almost verbatim the language I use with individual clients, I will often at the beginning of a session a couple of minutes and say, What do you need today? Do you need to vent? Do you need to talk this through? Do you need some strategies? Do you need some tips? What do you want? What do you need? And the interesting thing about me leading with that question frequently, is that I can see and people will tell me, ha, they basically don’t realize that those are the two options. So a lot of people I think get caught in that story or that venting as a mode. When I asked that question, it’s also a teaching of, hey, you have the empowerment to decided. And you need to be mindful about what you’re doing there. Because there needs to be a time to be done with the venting, at least in this day and this season. Sure, we might revisit it if it’s impactful for something that’s happening in our in our future. But there’s a point at which is that enough? So that’s another question I will ask them on is, Hey, have you vented about that enough? And watching the wheels turn off? Have I? And sitting with that question, Have I does that ego want to just complain about this some more? Because you can start to feel it if you’re paying attention to it. There’s a point of diminishing return for all things, right? Yes. So I want my people I want anybody listening to me to know that you have the power inside of you to start sensing, is this useful for me and helpful? Have I said enough, then let me be done with that venting part and move on. And that’s the kind of nuance skill that sounds so freakin simple when I say it out loud. But it’s the very thing that somebody doesn’t ever intentionally teach us as a kid. Unless you’re doing this kind of process with me, and then you pass it on to your child. Most of us did not organically come to that kind of nuanced, emotional education about sensing yourself.
Eric Zimmer 27:46
Yeah. And what’s interesting is that it does seem that people by default fall to one side, or the other of that more naturally, one side is the stereotypical man who just doesn’t think about or process emotion at all. It’s just here’s what we need to do cuts right to it, right. And then the other would be the person as you’re describing the classic ruminative person, right, who gets completely stuck in their head, and it just spins and it spins and spins. And what we’re looking for, at least for me, is sort of like you said, it’s that middle ground that middle way between those two things, where we’re able to do it, and I agree 100%, there is a point where the thought processes has diminishing returns and use one of my favorite phrases in there, which is useful, right? With thoughts is this useful? Because there are some very difficult negative thoughts that are very useful at times, they are very helpful. They have a lot to teach us, you know, we can be very uncomfortable. And then there’s a point where they’re no longer useful. And you know, knowing that point can be really helpful. I mean, for me, I’m kind of looking at like, am I covering the same ground again, and again, with no new back to your word earlier insight, like nothing new is popping up like the first five times I thought about the conversation I had with my partner. Each time I went through it, I saw something slightly different. So I went back through it and all I saw this and Kai, that makes me cringe, but at least I know, you know, but now, the last five times that my mind has circled it, it circled it in the exact same way at which point diminishing returns. And now it’s moving into okay, this thought now is becoming not useful, even possibly destructive and harmful. Now, how do I move out of that
Nikki Eisenhauer 29:34
I am passionate about helping people understand that if they’re over thinkers, likely they’re very smart. And likely they started overthinking as a kid in my own life. Because I didn’t have a lot of emotional nurturance or understanding of what I was going through that could help me understand what I was going through. I believe I had a lot of intuitions that I could do anything with because my intuition would say, Hey, your mom’s real scary right now, maybe you’re about to be hit. And as a child, I couldn’t do anything with that intuition. I couldn’t get in my car and drive off. You know, I couldn’t handle the situation any better than just taking it because I was a kid, or trying to mouth off and rebel against it. But I was a pretty good girl growing up in the South to good good southern girl, like you just don’t fight back. So if we really understand that concept, if we grew up with a lot of stress, if we grew up with a lot of unsafe parenting, or immature, inadequate parenting, and you’re really smart, your energy had to go somewhere. So I think it leaves the intuition and goes to the head. And we start overthinking in those moments where we can’t escape with our bodies. So when we start to understand that, I can help people manage their own inner child, and be able to say in that moment to themselves, when they catch that cloud of overthinking that starts, or Oh, this isn’t useful. I’ve already thought this, from the beginning to the end, and through 10 different times, I don’t need to think about this, again, that it is your job. And it’s it’s a gift, it’s a gratitude that it gets to be your grown up job to do for your own inner psyche, your own inner child, what your parents or your childhood situation didn’t know how to do for you, you get to step in now and go oh, sweet boy are all sweet girl in there. This is a time where grown up me says we don’t need to overthink this, we’ve thought about this enough. And learning how to internalize enoughness with the overthinking that so many of us do when we have a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, a lot of intensity with who we are. And we’re really smart. And the way I say it a lot is you gotta be smarter than your smarts. Because your critical voice and the overthinking part are going to be just as smart as you are. So we’ve got to out think you’re thinking parts so that you stay sort of in the integrity of using your intelligence for your own greater good, and not letting your critical voice or that overthinker grab your intelligence and you know, dig a hole into the ground with it.
Eric Zimmer 32:07
That’s really great. Because oftentimes, I naturally go back to my sort of early recovery days, right? And there was a real sense there that like being smart was a bad thing. Because of what you’re describing, right? Because you would just overthink things. And this is not a time for overthinking. Right, this is a time for taking the actions that will keep you sober, right? It’s time to stop the overthinking. But it’s sort of cast that thinking as a negative, it’s one of the things that ultimately sort of pulled me away from that place. And I’m not saying all 12 Step programs or a are like this, by the way, I want to be extraordinarily clear. This was a particular group of people at a particular time and place in history, you know, 2526 years ago. So don’t think listeners that all 12 Step groups are like this at all. So I just feel like I always have to say that, but knowing that I was somewhat intelligent, you know, it ultimately sort of drove me away, because I was like, But wait a second, my goal here is not to dumb myself down. Right. My goal here is not to cut out my thinking brain. Right. So to your point, it’s how do we do it? So let’s say that we have realized like, okay, too much enough? You know, I am past the point of usefulness in this thinking, what are some of the strategies that you recommend that people use to try and deal with that inner chatter? Because just because I’ve realized that I don’t want to think about it anymore, certainly does not mean that I have the skills to not think about it.
Nikki Eisenhauer 33:40
So I can answer that for the next 1400 hours. Okay, I don’t think there’s any one tool I think it’s actually about wrapping our minds around a lifestyle change, like this is how I live now. I think the world is also speeding up so much, and requiring so much of us that no matter what our childhood state was like, or our addiction history, it was like we are really being brought into realms of just ridiculous levels of expected franticness, for lack of a better way for me to say that. So I think, yes, there’s healing childhood trauma. Yes, there’s healing and learning how to take care of yourself post addiction. But just being a human being right now, in this time period, I think requires very similar strategies. I try to live slowing down now even if that means I’m doing a lot that day and I’m moving fast. I want to understand that I don’t want that sort of frantic Go Go Go rush rush rush to be in my brain, in my mind in the tissues of my body. Yes. So it’s a lifestyle choice of practicing slowing down I’m actually it might be releasing today as we’re working According actually, I have a emotional strength training 30 days to piece course. Because it takes repetition, I can tell by the things that you offer you very much understand that it takes repetition of what it is to calm, to internalize peace and to actually value stillness in this world that gives stillness, the finger, it doesn’t value it, it dismisses it, hustle culture work harder, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. If you’re trying to heal your nervous system to that is a way to feel fried and burnt out, and how are you supposed to evolve and be your best self if you’re living from a place of fried, and burnt out. So just having a framework of I want to fold the laundry, like a Buddhist monk eats, they sit down, they don’t multitask, they sit down, they pay attention to every bite going into their mouth, when you really think about that, versus our American eyes eat while you’re driving while you’re balancing your checkbook. I mean, you know, while you’re doing a handstand, on one hand, I mean, we are expecting out of ourselves to do really a ridiculous amount of things. So that’s kind of my framework for just, let’s in general, understand the forces at play, no matter what our history was. And we have to understand that we have to combat those forces or those forces are going to take us down, we have to limit the scrolling. You know, it’s like a slot machine, you guys, and especially if you have addictive history, it’s addictive to all of us, you know, we have to do simple things like that, that our inner adolescent doesn’t want to do. It doesn’t want to put down the phone. But putting down the phone, stopping and taking a breath, meditation. And when I say that, on my show, I go, I hear the eye rolls, I feel the eye rolls, because every spiritual, psychological teacher just says meditate, meditate, meditate, all forces out there are the opposite of meditative energy. But if we really understand that, then I think it can give us a permission. Yeah, we need to counterbalance those forces in the present. And we need to do some counterbalancing of our historical forces, also. So slowing down, I try to fold laundry, like that Buddhist monk eats, I try to drive slow and calm and use each experience to be the practice of calm, instead of giving yourself five different piece practice tasks, or mind quieting tasks to do, which is just adding more things to your to do list, which, you know, technically, is correct and right, you can’t find something wrong with. But in terms of the spirit of what I’m saying, adding to your to do list, isn’t it? You don’t need 10 more things to do.
Eric Zimmer 37:44
That’s right. I mean, that’s the whole focus of the spiritual habits program that I created, which is, as we go about our day to day lives, how do we do some of these things that will allow us to access more peace without adding a lot to our to do list because there’s just no more time, there just is yes, that’s what the cause of a lot of stresses and to be told, Well, now you need to, in addition to eating right, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking care of your children having a career now you need to meditate for an hour a day and journal for 30 minutes. It’s just like, you know, it just isn’t going to happen. So there’s got to be a way to integrate more of this. And, as you said, there is something to some time and stillness, I think, being really beneficial. Whatever that way of stepping out in into stillness is for you. It could be meditation, it could be sitting quietly, it could be listening to a piece of music you love very focused and intently, but it is slowing down, nowhere to go. And some attempt to sort of put our attention on something and keep it there. I do think that is a foundational skill for humans, and one that is becoming even more important, as you said, as we become increasingly distracted and fragmented.
Nikki Eisenhauer 39:06
Yes, I think people like you and I are doing the work to hold on to that art form. So it doesn’t become a lost art of knowing the value and stillness. So many of my clients at a point wound at wind up laughing and going Nikki, am I really paying you to teach me how to just be still and do less? And in some ways? Yes. Yes. And it sounds so it sounds like the simplest thing we could possibly ask ourselves with. But it really is something that I find we need help with. I didn’t see anybody value stillness growing up not one time, not for one minute. It was doo doo doo I was raised by a German descent grandmother, who if I got still, if I just stood still for a moment, she would say what is the purpose of what you’re doing? And as a child, I could not answer that today. If she was still alive. I’d go aha, I finally know the answer that question I’m centering I’m breathing, I’m giving my nervous system a chance to just ground itself good. Yeah, I’m being a human being instead of a human doing so it’s looking at those dynamics, to understand, oh, oh, I was really taught that it was wrong and bad, to have stillness, you take that old teaching on top of what’s going on in modern life. And my goodness, of course, I have to intentionally bring in stillness. And I have to talk to my inner child, because I’m going to hear that critical voice. In some ways, I was raised by very critical people. So in some ways, that’s like my original language. I only speak English. But what we know that other speakers who speak multiple languages, they tend to think in their native language. I’ve accepted that, in some ways, I may think, in my native language of the critical voice. And so I have to know that when I get still, that critical voice might show up and go, really, again, you’re being lazy. What are you doing, and I need to know about how that voice works. Because in that moment, I’m being different. I’m being intentional. I’m doing something against my original programming, and the programming that’s going on right now. So of course, that voice is going to show up and go, ooh, Nikia. I don’t know if this is right, bad, bad, shame, shame on you. And I have to know how to feel that vibe, wash over me or hear that voice so that I know exactly what my job is, and how I can effectively combat those forces. And in that moment, if I’m on my game, I can turn to my own inner self and go, Oh, no, that would have worked before. But now I know the value in the stillness, that’s what I’m doing. And we’re going to be still grown up WISEWOMAN me decided that this is a smart, right practice for us. So we’re going to do it. And the more I do that, the more that that voice lowers and intensity and frequency, and kind of steps to the background, whereas it used to drive as the primary driver of my life.
Eric Zimmer 42:30
You said a whole bunch of great things there. I think one thing that we sort of hit on briefly was repetition and quieting the inner chatter, or quieting that inner critic, at least for me has simply been a matter of just more times than I could possibly begin to count at this point, recognizing that voice and doing something different with it, like, over and over and over. And I think one of the places that people get discouraged is they hear stuff like this, and they go, Well, I tried that last week. And I’m not better. And I do think, you know, if we want to talk about maturity, that is another sign of maturity is recognizing like, Okay, this is going to take a long time. It’s the only game in town, really, there are no other good choices, I can continue to try and believe that it’s this supplement, or this one magic trick or this one thing. But once we realize like wellness is a thing that takes a lot of repetition, a lot of time.
Nikki Eisenhauer 43:29
It’s not a thing you do. It’s the way you live. Yes. I think that is what traps people, they’re like, Hey, I went to the doctor. They gave me these meds. Yeah, okay, I did this, I did this health thing, when am I going to feel better? Living Well, is what makes us feel better. So a lot of people show up to a therapist or a coach basically saying this without realizing they’re saying this. Hi, will you please help me change? While I try to remain the same? Gee, why is this so hard? Why do I feel like I’m spinning my wheels? Why do I feel like I’m stuck in one spot? Well, because you’re trying to hold on to the sameness while you’re just using language and telling yourself thoughts about wanting to change. If we take that thought process away, what are you doing? Because you’re living the same as you’ve always lived? Or the same as you’ve lived in this last season of your life? You can’t be different in the same at the same time. What are you willing to change? And that’s not unique to any individual. That’s the human experience. There is something about being a human, where our egos, they don’t go, oh, wow, this change would be great for us. Let’s dive in. That ego really grips sameness, and I think that comes from survival for centuries since the beginning of time, the beginning of humanity, because stepping into an unknown was dangerous. And so we learned at a very deep level to just hold on to sameness, even when that sameness is screwing us over is not working. So it takes a lot of Have courage and a lot of I think just seeing and that might be insight again. But seeing Oh, that is what I’m doing. I’m trying to be the same and different. No wonder this is getting weird. And struggle Busey, let me let go of that. Let me just try to be different in these simple ways. It’s why I’m so passionate about offering simple strategies. And it’s simple. It’s not easy. But if you let it be simple, you stop chattering in your mind about it, and you just go do this stillness thing. Let’s just do this thing, Nicky or Eric suggest it, let’s just do it for a while, stop thinking about it, and do it, then you can see yourself in the change. And that becomes its own self motivator.
Eric Zimmer 45:41
Yep. I think what gets so difficult is that we have all these inner voices that often want different things. And they all sound like us. You know, I mean, that’s been one of my, my insights as well, whether it’s my alcoholic voice or my inner child voice, or my grown up voice, my er voice, whatever, they all sound like me. They all know how to impersonate Eric very well. And so what gets hard is it’s like, well, I decided I’m going to do this change. But now the same voice that decided I was going to do that change is now telling me that that stupid and it’s never going to work. And so then I believe that I often think about like, when I got sober, I sometimes feel like, like 51% of me, wanted to give up drugs, and 49% of me did not. And those two were engaged in moral struggle for a while. And eventually that proportion is changed right now. It’s like 99% does not 1% still like, wow, come on, let’s we need to think about this. But 99% of me notice, it’s a terrible idea. And I think when those things are closer to 5149, which is often the case when we start to make a change, because we’re still getting something out of the old thing. sorting those voices out is really difficult. How do you encourage people to be able to sort that out and know what’s their wiser voice? What’s their truer voice?
Nikki Eisenhauer 47:08
I think when people listen to my show over time, that starts to clarify, because very often I am speaking to different parts. And in the work that I’ve done with my clients and myself over the years, it’s in really differentiating, and learning to hear the difference in those voices. Okay, I have trained myself into nothing’s 100%, right, but damn near 100% Where I don’t make a decision. I don’t mean like what she’s do I want to buy at the grocery store, not just big decisions, I basically don’t make a decision without the check in which part of me is at the home. So that I have learned to distinguish the difference between is that an inner child part. And in that moment, I might, given what my inner child wants that might very much fit the situation. But the person that I give the power to the part that I give the power to is my wise woman. So there’s always the check in there for Hey, wise woman, what do you think about this, because my wise woman is always going to want what is best for me, because she is the wisest part of me. And I’m checking in with her for her wisdom, her hard earned wisdom and the easier wisdom to I can differentiate my inner child from my inner adolescent. When people work with me, I’m often pointing that out, because I can sense their resistance. If I throw a suggestion, I’ll go, what did your inner adolescent think about this? And they’ll go, how did you know that? I had that kind of reaction? I saw it. I felt it. I sensed it. Did you feel it and sense it? Yeah, I did. All right, what makes me call that the inner adolescent. And that’s just my name for that resistant part. And if you were neglected a lot as a kid, if you were parental FIDE if you were abused a lot, like I was, you got to deal with your inner adolescent, when therapists would tell me things that I knew damn good, and well would have been good for me to do, I would feel my inner adolescent resist. And there were not very many skilled therapists that could call me on that. It’s part of why I do. Because that inner adolescent basically pokes its head up and goes, Excuse me, you basically raise yourself. Now this therapeutic Bozo is going to tell you to do something, and what you’re just gonna do it, you raise yourself, you don’t need this shit. And that really is the vibe. Sometimes you can hear that language, but that’s really the vibe. It is a feeling that washes over. And if you don’t know, how to wrangle that how to start attending to that. I think that’s where people have tons of relapses. They have tons of slips and all kinds of different behavior not just addictively. Because they don’t understand when that part sort of takes over. And then after when your wise part comes back and you look at the choices you made, then you have to go through this whole shame process. I know better. Why did I do that? How many times am I gonna have to learn this lesson? How many times am I gonna have to talk about the same thing? What’s going on with me? Then you have to work through that too. So at a point when you start to really give the baton to your wife wise woman or your wise man, you start to realize, oh, I waste less energy processing, I make less mistakes. I kind of like that, actually, oh, that’s what’s helping that inner child and that inner adolescent actually grow up, because I’m giving them what they need. Because what they need are proper yeses and proper nose, proper encouragement and proper discouragement, sometimes, really. So I want to tap in somebody to parent me. And we all have that part. And I can prove that we all have that part. Because most people will admit to me if I said, Hey, would you say what you’re saying inside of your own head? To a five year old? Or an eight year old? No. Why? Well, because that would crush them. Then simply do not say anything to yourself, disallow yourself, tell yourself, no, tell yourself, I’m not going to listen to that. If you wouldn’t say it to a five or an eight year old, probably shouldn’t be saying it to yourself. Yep. So we are cultivating that wisdom and with more cultivation, and maybe more stillness to meditating on what was this part of me? Why did that wash over me when that person gave me that suggestion? Why did I want to give him the middle finger instead of gone? Thanks. I’ll consider that because I’m a grown up. I can take or toss out any advice? Why the resistance to hearing the advice and working through that inner adolescent resistance? I think it’s the missing piece for a lot of people,
Eric Zimmer 51:25
That missing piece being able to recognize which quote, unquote, part of us is at the hill.
Nikki Eisenhauer 51:30
Oh, yeah. Because I’m complex. And most of my highly sensitive people are, I’m super complex. I like almost everything. So asking me what I want to eat. Like, oh, my gosh, like everything, you know, like, I want to experience everything. So I have to have a part of me that is going to be at the helm. That can just say, You know what, just make a quick decision. That’s what will serve you right now. Yeah. And the more that you work with differentiating these parts, even if the even if you’re hearing me say that, and you’re like, Ah, I don’t know how to how to feel that out. That’s the very thing. Yeah, it’s like, how do you work up to big muscles at the gym, you don’t show up and lift the 100 pound weight, you might start with a three pound weight, you might even start with a one pound weight. And so emotionally, and in terms of getting to know yourself better, just start where you are, the more that you work with those parts, it’s like lifting heavier and heavier weight. And before you know it, you’re lifting heavier weight, and it feels really light, it feels really easy, because you’ve worked up to it. So just check in with yourself. And when I teach my boundaries course, every October, I lead with, hey, please don’t go to the most difficult person in your life, and try to set a boundary. And everybody laughs because that’s how almost everybody shows up to that. But they’re like, Yeah, give me the wisdom, Nicky, and then I’m gonna go tackle the tallest mountain. Yep. It’s like start small. Start small. Confront the barista who keeps getting your name wrong. No, like, like, let yourself grow into healthy confrontation with yourself and with other people. Let yourself grow into healthy yeses. And healthy knows healthiness is available. Even if you feel super lost, just start where you are, and cultivate that relationship with your wise man and your wise woman. Because you have an in there, that is definitely a part of you. And you’re either going to feed it or you’re going to feed the other parts, maybe the immature parts, maybe the dysfunctional parts, the rebellious parts, feed that wise part. Yep.
Eric Zimmer 53:26
That’s so funny. In the spiritual habits program, one of the principles is around allowing things to be the way they are right. It’s about acceptance, or it’s about not resisting. And inevitably, nearly everybody will be like, Well, how do I accept that children are being abused? And I’m like, Alright, let’s slow down. Like, I’m not asking you to accept that. But let’s not go to the very worst possible hardest things in the world. Like, can you just work on accepting that you need to go to work this morning? Like, can we start like with the little stuff? Can we stop resisting all the little parts of our day that we know we’re going to do anyway?
Nikki Eisenhauer 54:02
I think that’s a younger part. I think that’s a younger part that has misunderstood wisdom there. Because if I say it back to you like this, we can really kind of hear it. It’s like the little kid in US goes, boo. I don’t like that everybody’s gonna die. From worst case scenario. What about the worst case scenario? What about the worst thing ever? The worst thing I could think of? And so we need our wise part to come in in that moment and go, Oh, honey, you don’t have to take on the hardest thing. Yep. Right now, in this moment. That’s not going to help you talk about is that useful or not? Exactly. Yeah. As you marinate, because I think it’s more of a marinating. Than A headspace learning of the knowledge because I know this for sure. Okay. I’m on your show. I know for my show, I suspect for yours, too. There are gonna be so many people listening right now who are really frustrated with where they are. And I know part of the problem. Part of the problem is you’re just listening to podcasts. You’re just talking in therapy. You gotta let yourself actually do these things. Yes, even just sitting still, maybe your threshold is 20 seconds the first time you sit and get still. But you’ve got to encourage yourself to really do the things that will move you forward, and help yourself grow that wise woman and really do it. Give that baton to the wise woman or the wise man in you, and play around with it. Life is an experiment. And you have to sort of experiment with these things and marinate inside of them. And that’s how our change comes. It’s not because you took quick pill or you did one exercise or one course, yep, this stuff will come together, please don’t just listen to my podcast, or anybody’s like, please do the stuff. Or you’re gonna feel doubly frustrated. Because you think you’re doing the things when you’re really just thinking the things you’re gonna do the things to,
Eric Zimmer 55:57
Yep, let’s change directions a little bit here. We’re nearing the end of our time, but you’ve used the term multiple times highly sensitive, and it’s something you talk about a fair amount. So what does that mean? I have a sense in my mind of what I mean by it. But I’m curious how you’re using that term.
Nikki Eisenhauer 56:13
So there’s a lot of science behind high sensitivity. Dr. Elaine Aaron is the one that that first coined the term and she’s written the books and they’re, they’re pretty scientific, heavy books to get through. There’s a lot of science there, emotionally and functionally. We know that we have people who have different intelligences. We know we have people who have different abilities to see with their eyeballs to hear with their ears. People have different emotional intelligence to we also have different sensory systems. So there are some professionals who will make the argument that trauma is wholly responsible for creating high sensitivity. Others will say we’re born with it. I’m balanced between those two, no surprise, they’re hearing me talk about balance all show the balance there is strong for me. So I believe that I was born with a propensity a predisposition, to be more of an observer to be more feeling driven to sense my world through more of my being than my thought process. Just a difference. Just like I’m born with curly kind of wavy hair, and somebody else is born with straight hair. It’s just a difference we have, then trauma heightens our sensitivity. Because to survive, any kid growing up in a home, okay, is either trying to deny what’s going on and block it out or is observing everything and taking it in. We’re very spongy as highly sensitive people. So I say a lot I sponged up a lot in my childhood and healing has been ringing out that sponge, and being able to be more intentional with what I’m going to let that sponge soak up. Okay, highly sensitive people as a tribe. We tend to be highly conscientious, sometimes too much. So if we were conditioned to be a people pleaser, that’s a struggle. How do we please ourselves and other people enough to not be in the realm of over functioning for other people, just like overthinking versus just thinking, how do we function for ourselves and others without over functioning? Okay, we tend to be overly conscientious. We tend to be observers of others in energy and action, we tend to not too much psychic, some people might use that word I don’t. The gift of prophecy, it’s like we can sense things coming in because we can sense what’s coming, we tend to be highly attuned to preventing future struggle. So all of these little quirks that we have as highly sensitive people, take tools, take understanding, take awareness, so many people show up to me going Nikki, how do I dial down this high sensitivity, and I’m like, sorry to tell you you can, you can learn how to work with it and embrace it, and make it a tool and a gift. And sometimes it’s hard. Life is tough. It always has been for every species on the planet, you know, so this expectation of it’s just gonna be easy. At some point, no, life is gonna be a certain amount of struggle, but you get to have more ease. I think when you understand your makeup, who you are, as a highly sensitive person I heard all my life I’m too sensitive. So a lot of sensitive people, interestingly, and paradoxically, will tell me sometimes they think they’re too much and then other times they think they’re too little. So learning how to be the amount of who we are, and accept who we are. Learning how to advocate that. Yes, I’m an intense person. There’s nothing wrong with my emotionality. I’m intense. So if I’m in a coffee shop or grocery store, just randomly running errands, I can feel a wave wash over me if a baby smiles at me, I might get teary just from the beauty of this little being taken a moment to connect with me like his spirit to my spirit, and I might tear up 15 years ago, I would have been ashamed. Embarrassed, I would have held my head, I would have apologized if anybody noticed me crying today I have taught myself and grown into in that moment, keeping my head held up high. And when other people get weird, showing emotion in public, I look at them and I say, It’s okay. I’m tearful, and I’m strong. It’s all right. And watching their wheels turn on that, like, what is this crazy lady saying? And then watching them go? Yeah, okay. All right, maybe she can be strong and emotional at the same time, the more that I have worked on accepting who I am in the world, and not seeing myself as a problem, the more that I am in self respect and self regard of myself. And then I’m walking the world teaching people how to treat me and teaching them to have regard for my sensitivity to one of my things is that we are highly sensitive, we are not delicate. And I absolutely resist any teaching, any therapy, any coaching, anything that gives someone directly or indirectly the message that they are delicate, and they better tend to their delicacy. We are sensitive and we are strong, we are sensitive, and we are tough, we are not delicate. And going into delicacy is victim mode, and it will not serve you if becoming the victim actually helps you in any way I’d be all for it. It will thwart you, it will ruin a life it will ruin satisfaction, it will ruin purpose, and it will make your life small and good healthy people will not hang out with a constant victim. So this victim mentality that’s getting pushed I’m against it, particularly for highly sensitive people. You are strong and you are capable to surmount anything, even in the moments where you think you can’t. And when sensitive people step into their strength and their self acceptance. Oh, my God, are they or force?
Eric Zimmer 1:01:55
Well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up on that really strong message there of not being delicate, sensitive and strong.
Nikki Eisenhauer 1:02:05
Thank you sir. Thank you for having me and spending time with me.
Eric Zimmer 1:02:08
Thank you so much. I love talking with you and I will see you next time.
Nikki Eisenhauer 1:02:12
I appreciate it so much.
