How Reparenting Your Inner Child Can Heal Old Wounds and Transform Your Life with Dr. Nicole LePera

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Episode Transcript:

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:00:00  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 right needs to happen, and we benefit more greatly from not trying to change the most difficult habit to break to begin with.

Chris Forbes 00:00:35  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:19  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, Doctor Nikola Pera and I talk about what it actually means to parent yourself, the real process of understanding the patterns your nervous system picked up in childhood, and how often they’re 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. Hi, Nicole. Welcome back.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:02:07  Thank you for having me back. Honored to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:09  I don’t know how many times this is I think it’s it’s certainly the third, if not the fourth.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:15  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 Parenting 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 a 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 and 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:03:14  I think that power will 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, that 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 is our nervous system is try 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 and 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:21  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, and I started doing a 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, so talk to me about why that’s the phrase that you use.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:04:53  So I think you’re having a very common experience or reaction, I should say, to. 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 cringeworthy, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:05:30  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 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? We’re having huge reactions to maybe things that aren’t that big of a deal.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:06:35  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. Anytime a current moment resembles something from our past that we’ve experienced.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:58  Did you say implicit emotional memory?

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:07:01  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:19  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:40  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’ve 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:08:02  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 to me. And so the response to that is, of course, there’s usually a stress based or trauma based reason when life becomes overwhelming. I can even talk about the science of, you know, 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, right. If we don’t remember, we can still, right, begin exactly where we’re at.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:08:36  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, right. And understand more global patterns. So for instance right. If in childhood staying quiet right helped us to stay out of conflict. Right. Something as general, as consistent as that habit in childhood, often then right 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, right, of hypervigilance. So if in childhood life was unpredictable or chaotic, right? 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 to grip tightly to plans over prepare struggling to delegate.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:09:48  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? Right? 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, ground it in our bodies.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:28  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:56  My mom would tell me that both my brother and sister would tell me that his second wife would. Right. It was it was clear. And then I can see the ways in which I responded to that. And and I think sometimes the narrative is a little too tidy, like to say, like I get anxious because my dad was angry is a little like there’s 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. And 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. And we do know that children seem to be more imprinted. Than people my age are.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:11:46  And these moments of great adaptive learning are evolutionarily beneficial to us, right? And these moments of learning even predate us. What I mean when I say that is the learning that is now we understand epigenetics passed through generations, not necessarily changing our DNA, but changing how certain genes are expressed based on what earliest environments.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:12:12  So this learning. Right. If you just think about it from an adaptive standpoint makes sense, right. If you are assumedly 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. So chances were right your lineage was more or less growing up in those same environments. So when there was a food scarcity, as there’s a ton of nanoscience 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, quote unquote, make right and 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 kind of biologically likely to survive the next food shortage.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:13:16  Shortage. So 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. And again, because biologically, those changes made sense. Those adaptations were protective at one time in 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. And according to our biology, what worked isn’t what created a healthy, emotionally grounded, you know, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:14:26  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 right 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 to mind, but I relive it right 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 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 of 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:15:30  So again, even things that are societally celebrated often were 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:17  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?

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:16:44  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 always, you know, we might 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 anything.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:17:05  Probably. 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:17  So I mean, bad practice, right? You’re telling me don’t do it.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:17:21  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? Yeah. 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:18:03  That elicited the negative feedback, which is what my inner child wants to do, right? Run away and say, okay, well, 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 write a piece of work. That’s the way my solution is going to to avoid negative feedback. I won’t give you anything to give me feedback on. Right. So yeah, 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 write. Pause. Kind of. Maybe here 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:18:54  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. Right. One possible version of what comes next, which is I stop putting my work out there, right? Or I could pause. I could acknowledge the role that this protective voice is played, which is to keep me safe, right? I could remind myself of a couple of things. What my intention is, right? Why do I put up put out work? What is the bigger, you know, kind of value for me in doing this? For me, it’s very much a passion of purpose.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:19:49  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 or 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 resource, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:20:45  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 reorienting 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 were not resourced for. And then we feel even more shameful when I spiral down the pit of despair and decide I’m going to quit the job entirely, when really I should have maybe paused on asking for the feedback or not.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:21:43  Right? On a bad day, gone into a negative comment section and spent too much time there.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:49  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 or say like he 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:22:23  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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:22:58  So I dove right into a lot of them and continue to find that none of them seem 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 that relate and even biology and nervous system development, we understand that humans, while we are a being, right, a one entity, and you need an individual, so to speak. We need relationship. 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:24:01  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 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’m 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 parenting 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:25:08  That would be the most foundational first fear. Of course, it happens in infancy. Hopefully, if we have an attuned caregiver who shows up when we’re upset, distressed, 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 in a home base to return to, we can now explore boundaries, edges, discipline, right? 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, right? A person, a space where I can calm down, get support when I then need it right then following development along the lines once I’ve separated a bit with boundaries, with discipline.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:26:11  Right now, I’m starting to relate to other people, and now we can enter the world of very complicated emotions, right? 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 right 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, right, what I call authenticity, right? 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 up off to, because somewhere along our development, right, we’ve created habits that have kept us Disconnect it from those kind of foundational areas of development.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:24  So I’d like to move into some of this process of reprinting. 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:27:45  So from the bird’s eye perspective, what parenting is, is learning how to show up as a safe, nurturing, connected, compassionate caregiver. Right. It’s to show up for our own selves in certain ways, right. That will help us. So the most foundational practices of any parenting journey, right, are going back to that first sphere, 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 as 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 dissociate it are born out of the lack of safety and security in the body to begin with.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:28:41  So parenting looks like, again moments throughout the day where we’re just kind of tuning into assessing, right. Our the biggest, the three main areas that shift and change when our body is having either a stressful or an emotional reaction or 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 our selves, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:29:43  The 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. So that’s coping. We’ve all gotten very good at coping with our earliest circumstances in our continued distress, but 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:30:59  Doing what we always do in that moment and then feeling shameful after the fact, actually intentionally showing up. So 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, right. How we’re experiencing the current moment. So the next time, right, 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, you know, rethinking everything you said and convincing yourself that they’re upset with you and probably leaving you. Right. The difference that 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:32:02  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 right, which is pursued 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 you because I’ve left you already, right? So now we’re running away instead in the moment, right? Being with our self, all of our parts. The part that’s scared and convinced you’re being left right. Slowing our breath. Reminding ourselves that distance or silence right 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 and reconnection, they’re not mad, right? Something probably very logical has happened with why they have not responded to you in a timely manner.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:33:00  But if we would have spiraled right and not allowed ourselves 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.

Chris Forbes 00:33:28  Do.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:36  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 it’s going to 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, it’s a great idea.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:23  But she says, I do it and I’ll suddenly feel connected and grounded and I don’t feel connected and grounded.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:34:30  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 is 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 waive the mind while and 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 right, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:35:51  Change happens right 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 it is, 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, this happens. We know. And so that already cuts down on the uncertainty. So the courageous ness and bravery that it takes to make one new choice is quite literally challenging. What for many of us is already an overtaxed, overwhelmed nervous system that doesn’t actually know how to write 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 than to return to old habits.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:37:11  Which is why change right 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:38:18  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 in high expectation, then waiting to feel inspired or feel differently. And I share this often. If I wait it to be comfortable speaking publicly on these topics, there would be no books, there would be no holistic psychologist. 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:39:36  So being public and speaking right? If I wait it 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, like, we’re both joking about, I do spiral. I do know where to find all of the things that right kind of validate, not the way I want to be seen or how I who I believe myself to be. All of that exist, but I am right able to navigate it a bit differently. And when I’m falling back into old habits, which I still do right, I have an awareness that I can grab on to.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:40:36  I have a reminder of how much, maybe better, I feel with, say, like boundaries and distance and 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:49  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 pathologies using 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 are 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 to or to take a later example, you just mentioned showing yourself in public, putting it out there.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:43  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?

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:42:03  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 an 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 right? 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, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:42:53  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. I of 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 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:44:05  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 in 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, epigenetics by the environment. So I think it’s we’re both we’re a 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, right, 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:50  Right. I don’t think there’s any way to unwind it. I don’t think there’s any I mean, it’s 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:59  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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:45:41  That’s an interesting kind of lever. It’s kind of how I’m thinking, right? When is it that challenging and pushing our edge and growing into or seeing an opportunity is evolving or growing, versus when is it maybe pushing us into stress or miss misalignment? And I think that it’s kind of individual for for each of us, kind of determining how then am I experiencing the thing in which I’m doing what is driving it right? If it’s something that’s important, right? Like, so what’s driving, you know, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:46:27  Right. That’s not to say, though, and it’s not to say that I don’t do, which I do. I can try to right, manipulate and make an environment where I’m speaking publicly more comfortable. Right. So presentations with slides or conversations with another human versus keynote speaking. Right. Less less comfortable. So we can then curate our space. Not to say that there’s not some level of discomfort, but I can modify right what I’m doing individually, so I can do it in a way where the stress isn’t overwhelming or taking away, right or misaligned with 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 right. It was. It was me. It was my desires.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:47:24  Right? What’s important to me? The right. I wasn’t saying, oh, well, I’m doing this for someone else or for prestige or for, you know, a 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 ourselves, our values, our edges, resourcing ourselves 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 in my energy is going to be expressed in in conversation or in more teaching moments.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:48:19  So it’s interesting you bring 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. Love’s 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 and the slides. Are you talking? Different then. So funny I’m living into. I think this decision. I’m kind of talking my way through, I guess, how I’m making it. Because it might come right where it’s like. 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 right the edges that come along with this version of public life.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:14  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? 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:27  And then I’d love to talk specifically about a practice you have in the book about stopping this shame cycle.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:50:33  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, if, 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 baked.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:51:26  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 somatic 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:52:30  Right. Those moments are very valuable because they teach us right 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, I got so good at so quickly determining what granted me attention and validation from my parents and childhood, and I got very quickly clear on what did it 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 in human.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:53:34  But again, if in childhood any emotional displays or sadness were told not to be dramatic or anger is dangerous and, you know, 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 badly about something I’ve done. Shame gets attached to our identity. I feel badly 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:54:52  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 write. 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 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 our self. It’s quite literally an emotional, a nervous system driven state of shut down where we become less and less connected to our body, to ourselves, to the energy that allows us to express ourselves or defend ourselves 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:56:04  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:13  So how do we begin to unwind it?

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:56:17  So beginning right 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 ourselves. Right where we begin to speak to our self 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, I’m gonna be rejected or shamed if I, you know, share my feelings or share my real thought. And then pausing in action in those moments.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:57:10  Right. If our body is beginning to kind of spiral into shame as well, our heart is beginning to race, right? Maybe we’re 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, 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, was unworthy not to express for some of us, right. It’s all feeling, certain feelings, 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:58:07  Too stressed out, too overwhelmed, we’re going to rely back on those old shameful habits which end up only compounding then the shame we’re feeling.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:15  So how do we stop a shame cycle?

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:58:18  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 heart’s 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 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 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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 00:59:16  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 reengage movement so slowly, maybe doing some circles with our wrist 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 as we want to slow movement, slow energy, release tension.

Dr. Nicole LePera 01:00:22  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 our body to breathe. Right beginning 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 not shameful way.

Eric Zimmer 01:01:09  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.

Dr. Nicole LePera 01:01:30  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, 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 right 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 there. What gives us life there? 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 of 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 takes you to.

Dr. Nicole LePera 01:03:01  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. And again, if that is not 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 to discomfort because discomfort, the hormones, the energy, right.

Dr. Nicole LePera 01:04:11  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 Stabilize neurochemicals and hormones, right? A nervous system that’s activated once 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. Right. See what’s gotten in our way. What’s keeping us stuck, what’s keeping us not kind of completing our stress cycle 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 include it 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.

Eric Zimmer 01:05:14  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 and imaginative practice where of of connecting to the inner child.

Eric Zimmer 01:05:28  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 one you feed net. Nicole, thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure to have you on.

Dr. Nicole LePera 01:05:44  It’s always a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me back again, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 01:05:48  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. Share it 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.