Lewis Howes
The SECRETS To A Healthy RELATIONSHIP EXPLAINED | Dr. Nicole LePera & Lewis Howes
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Dr. Nicole LePera is a Holistic Psychologist who believes that mental wellness is for everyone. She evolved her more traditional training from Cornell University and The New School to one that acknowledges the connection between the mind and body. Dr. LePera founded the Mindful Healing Center in Center City Philadelphia where she works with individuals, couples, and families. She takes gut health, sleep, movement, cellular health, belief, and mindfulness into treatment.
Dr. LePera views mental and physical struggles from a whole-person perspective and works to identify the underlying physical and emotional causes of pain. She understands that balance is an integral part of wellness, and she empowers individuals to heal themselves, supporting them on their wellness journeys.
On May 1st, her new healing community SelfHealers Circle will launch and provide teaching, resources, and challenges to help people on their journey to healing. It will be a private community of self-healers (away from the public eye of Instagram) who are here to support and hold each other accountable for their journeys. In addition, Dr. LePera will give a monthly Q&A session, lead meditations, provide workshops, and host special guests.
Often times, creating boundaries is a central factor in maintaining balance within our lives. Having relationships is vital to mental and emotional health, but if we are constantly letting people control us, then the balance is impossible. In the worst cases, these types of relationships can cause some level of trauma which continues to affect a person throughout their life. Sometimes, in order to stay healthy, we have to say ânoâ to people without apologizing.
Are you struggling to create boundaries in your own relationships? Do you feel weighed down by trauma? Do you want to learn how to self-heal?
Join me on Episode 932 to learn how to set healthy boundaries in your relationships, how to find peace within yourself, and how to live a more balanced life with the Holistic Psychologist, Dr. Nicole LePera.
You can follow Dr. Nicole at:
Website: https://yourholisticpsychologist.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.holistic.psychologist/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtEWTaMjqOH8J1Gy06Ey0Yg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the.holistic.psychologist/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theholisticpsyc
You can follow Lewis at:
Website: http://lewishowes.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewishowes/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lewishowes/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisHowes
—–
Lewis Howes' New Book – The Mask of Masculinity
https://lewishowes.com/man
—–
Lewis Howes is NY Times Bestselling author, entrepreneur, and former professional Arena League football player. He hosts The School of Greatness, a talk show distributed as a podcast. Learn and hear the stories of various successful people around the world, become inspired, motivated and educated with the SCHOOL OF GREATNESS. lewishowes.com/book
You can follow me at:
Website: http://lewishowes.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lewishowes/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisHowes
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– And you said something beautiful, it's not necessarily a
fight we can shift from a need to be right or wrong,
it's an attempt to understand. (upbeat music) – Welcome back to School of
Greatness podcast, we've got the inspiring Dr. Nicole
Lepera in the house. Good to see you. – Good to see you.
– Super pumped about this, second time on, you were on six months ago and people just needed
the information so much they're eating it up. People are struggling in a
lot of areas of their life and you are helping them
in so many different ways. So we've got you back on and
I'm just pumped about this because you were just
saying this interview we did last time, so many people
resonated with it in a big way from the video the audio, a lot of people are messaging about it. And same for us. So I was like we gotta do more,
we should do like a series, we should do something
and you're back here. So I'm excited. And what's it been like
in the last year for you, because I think origin… What was it the beginning of
last year you had a very small following, not small but you
maybe had a 100,000 followers maybe, right, I don't know? Where were you at in January 2018? – January last year, probably around that. – 100,000, 200,00.
– It happened pretty quickly. I can't remember when I
hit the million, cause I'm now nearing two million, it's mind blowing to me.
– It's crazy. But here's the thing,
there's a lot of other people that are trying to do what
you're doing, but they're not growing as fast. Is there a reason for that do you think? Like there's a lot of other
therapists that are trying to copy your stuff or just
trying to like be inspired by it and do their own thing. But they're not really growing
the way that you're growing. Why is it what you're doing is taking off, whereas it's not for other
people in the same way? What do you think that is? – Well, without knowing kinda
what other people are doing or not doing, I think why I'm
taking off and have taken off quite quickly, I mean numbers
started grow fairly quickly surprisingly so upon my entry online. And the way I understand
it is just I think the universality of it. The fact that what I'm talking
about it so much resonating, whether or not I'm talking
about all of the areas in which I've been stuck,
whether I'm sharing my own background and conditioning
and experiences. Or whether I'm talking
about the process of healing and all that comes with that. I think in my whole story,
I guess I should say, there's just points that I think is so universally relatable. And when you can see
yourself and hear yourself, and feel yourself in another
human, you become attracted to wanting to hear more,
to feeling understood. And then when I shift and I
start to talk about the work and the healing I've done, I
mean I feel like that can be an empowering, so I
don't know kind of how, something about my topic
is very, it's global, it's a big topic. I think about that often. – Yeah, mental health,
self healing, trauma. – I'm not like super niched
down where I just talk about, you know maybe– – Relationships.
– Boundaries and that's it. So day and day I'm
talking about boundaries. I think that with my
scope you're gonna find like I was saying, the part
of my story or my journey that resonates and then
you're gonna become likely to connect. – And for those who don't know
the main parts of your story, what are the parts of your
story that really resonate with people you think? I want people to go listen
to last time where we talked more about it, but for a
recap what's the main parts of your story that you talk
about and you've had to heal that is a reflection
of what a lot of people are going through, what is that? – Well the first word that I
think most of us can relate to is the word stuck. Is being stuck in our lives,
watching yourself live patterns whether or not
they're in your daily behaviors or patterns in your thinking
mind, or just being stuck in certain specific feelings. Maybe a lot of us, and a
lot of us do logically, we're insightful, maybe
a lot of us have been in treatment and therapy. And we might know a way out
or think we know a way out, yet we still feel stuck. I felt that my whole life,
having clocked many hours in my individual work before
I shifted the way I practice, but with individual
patients, clients, same thing that word would come
up time and time again. – You felt stuck?
– I felt stuck. I feel stuck, I had maybe
thought I had the tools to change, thought I had
the insight to change, couldn't implement them. – And you're a therapist. – And I'm a therapist. Now fast forward I'm seeing
the same stories coming in week after week with my
clients, quite literally the same stories. Here's the issue I have
with my partner, okay, we'll explore it insightfully,
maybe we'll even come up with a game plan of how
to choose a new response in this future fight that
of course is gonna happen. Flash forward to that
next week, same fight. Groundhogs day, verbatim. – So you would give… Cause I hear this from
therapy a lot, it's like okay when there's a break down
or a fight, the therapist will give a tool to try
to diffuse the fight or to say, “Okay, let's take
10 seconds of a breathing together, let's step out of the room and then come back together.” – Timeout,
– We're calmer. – We love our timeouts.
– Whatever it is, right, there's like different tools
you can use in an argument or in a fight with a loved
one or a friend, or anything like that, but why don't they
seem to work most of the time? Why don't they work? – When we're having that
conversation about what to do next we're in a part of our brain
where consciousness lives. This is where we can be separate
from ourself, our thoughts our feelings, I do my little
like spotlight, where we're like this little observational
spotlight of ourself. We have access to logic,
to longterm planning, that's the part of our
brain that makes us human, this ability to be conscious,
to observe ourself, to think about thought. Beautiful, empowering gift that we have– – But we're not able to do that in a stressful moment?
– Yes, those are the moments that we're
having this conversation. So a lot of therapy sessions
take place very consciously. We're here–
– Calm. – Calm, right, yeah. The ambience of most therapy
rooms is very calming. – Incense.
– We're in that nice balanced place and so we get it, but you're right, when we get into the moments
where we need to use it we're now functioning from
a lower part of our brain called the subconscious,
which is part of our past. I talk a lot about the
subconscious as the means in which we literally
carry our past, where all of our wounds live. And what causes those emotional reactions. So even if I know what
I'm gonna do differently, hey you're my partner and we
love this idea of time out. So when things get escalated
we're gonna time out. Chances are when an emotion
is touched in one or both of us, we're shifting right
back down to that emotional lower side of our brain
and that's gonna dictate what we do. And we're probably gonna do
the same thing that we always do when we're upset. – React, scream, fight,
– Scream, yell, runaway, – Be disconnected.
– Tantrum, dissociate, I love that one myself. – So (laughs) is that what you do? – Oh I used to be the queen, I
used to call it my spaceship. I used to go away, and
I've gotten very good at not appearing away
so I can still continue, but emotionally I was so
disconnected from myself, the moment, my feelings. – So you would be there,
you'd be physically there but not emotionally or mentally,
– Not emotionally there. – You would just disconnect emotionally. – Disconnect, so I would
be very calm talking or in appearance because I was– – You're like, “I don't
care, I don't care.” – But down here there might
have been a whole multitude of feelings bubbling up. But that was too much, too overwhelming. – So what's the… Okay, so these tools can
only work to a certain point it seems like, based on your
experience of working with a lot of people one-on-one. Seeing them come back,
okay we tried time out, we tried this. So it seems like they only
work to a certain point of our ability to be conscious
of the moment, right? – Yes.
– Is it true or I'm just…?
– Yeah, consciousness is where we are granted choice,
otherwise that subconscious is gonna run the same patterns,
behavioral, emotional. – And it's almost like we have no choice. – [Nicole] You have no choice, we are, we're disempowered. You'll hear me often talk
about we become reactive to the environment, we
live a reactive life toward the environment as in
things happen in our world and I only react in the
same way, typically, and it makes us feel very
powerless, very victimized. We are victim of circumstance in that way. – So how do we change that? We power this feeling that. – We have to practice
consciousness, we really have to, I mean change begins when
you practice being conscious, practice showing up,
practice observing yourself, practice observing all of the patterns. – Not just when it's calm,
but when it's chaotic. – I actually don't suggest
you begin to practice when it's chaotic,
practice when it's calm. – Got you.
– So that you can practice when it's chaotic. – So give me an example,
like when it's calm how would you be responding
in a certain way of love or peace as opposed to hysteria? What would that be like? – I reframe that because I
think it's really important– – Because if you're not being triggered then how do you practice? – Exactly, and a lot of
us wait, because I only have an issue when I'm triggered. So I'm gonna wait to
use this new tool then. So we can't just wait til
then, because we're not going to use something new then,
we're going to do the thing that was familiar then.
– Right. – So I really am, I harbor
on the point of consistency and of just developing
a consistent practice, of what we're talking
about, of consciousness all of the time so that
when you really need to be observational of
yourself, to see why that dish that was left out was incensing. – That's what triggered you.
– And to create that space then so that
dish can still be there I still can feel incensed
by it, cause that doesn't go away right away. But I might not throw it
at my partner or knock it on the floor, I might
choose a different response. So it's really a gradual
evolution, but it starts by practicing consistently
all of the time, starting in small moments
of course, cause I'm the biggest believer in
too much change too quickly overwhelms the system. So you're not gonna, you're
intention isn't gonna be “Oh I'm completely unconscious
so now I'm just gonna start being completely conscious
starting tomorrow,” no. – No it's not gonna happen.
– You're gonna start to be conscious in one moment in your day for a good long string of days
and then maybe you're gonna try to do it for two moments
in your day and then three. – I tell you what, I mean my
girlfriend moved in a couple months ago and I'm so
used to a certain routine every single day of week
I like things, right. And so when she moved in
with our dog, it was like I had to learn so many new
ways of living in my space, in our space now. And I love to make the bed right
away, right after I get up. She gets up, I get up
early and I go to the gym, I like to make my bed right away. She likes to sleep in a
little longer and doesn't like to make the bed as quickly. And I had to learn, cause we
were making the bed quickly and then it's like not being made.
– You were making the bed over top of her
while she's sleeping. – I know, I want to be, I wanna be. But I had to like just learn
to accept certain changes without reacting and being like… Even though I'm used to a
certain way all the time, am I okay with not doing
this or it not being done the way I want it be now that
I'm in a new relationship? And I've been able to observe
and practice without getting upset or without getting
mad, being like, “Okay this is how it's gonna be
and if I want it to be done a certain way I can make a
request, I can wait til she wakes up and then I can do it myself.” You know, whatever it may be. We can create some new type
of relationship around it, but I need to be willing to
evolve and change as well where I'm not always gonna
get everything that I want all the time in an intimate relationship. Is that true? – Yeah, that's true. You also highlighted something very real, which is that it doesn't
mean that right away you're right on board. You know, right away you
might wish that she was up and your bed was made and that's okay. We shame ourself as humans
because if we have that old reaction or assign that
old meaning, immediately we become shameful. “Oh I shouldn't have
done that, I shouldn't..” it doesn't matter, we're
gonna have those thoughts, they're gonna stick around for awhile. We're gonna have those
feelings even, they're gonna stick around for awhile,
but we can start to create new choices and we don't have
to feel badly about desiring to live those old familiar
patterns, it's actually part of being human. – I have, I feel like I'm so
proud of myself the last few months, cause my girlfriend moved in and it was stressful, the
first couple months was… There was so many beautiful
days but then there was things that would trigger her
that then would trigger me. And causes hardness.
– Which is typically how it happens in a couple. – And she's a passionate
Latina and she likes things her way too. So I could of… I remember just thinking to myself like, “I could easily go back
into a pattern of trauma, resentment, feeling abused, not
feeling a sense of fairness, whatever my childhood traumas
were and there were a couple times where I did argue from
that place and I realized this is not gonna work,
if I come from this place this relationship will not thrive. And I'm not saying it's
okay for her to come from that place so we're
working on things together, but I just realized like, is
it better for me to be right and try to prove my point
and argue something, or is it better to just
listen, love, come from a place of peace in that
moment and then reflect and talk about it later. Like the next day. Even though I want answers now. – Of course we all do.
– I wanna resolve this right now. Here's why I'm right, I
wanna defend my point. But it's been a beautiful
shift in my partner since I've been doing that and just letting my ego go, of
like needing to be right or of a certain situation, it's amazing. I'm not saying it's easy,
but it's amazing the amount of love, I automatically
switch to appreciation right when there's a trigger
or something, I'm just like “I appreciate you so much,
you're right about that. I'm gonna work on this more.” Even if she's not 100%
right, I'm just like, “You're right about this and
I can empathize with this.” And it's been incredible,
it's so hard to do unless you practice. And so what I do every
morning is I just shower with appreciation, when it's calm. And I'm like already in that mode.
– That's really beautiful. – I just think that's a game changer and I'm not saying I
have it all figured out and I have this like perfect relationship, but I hear so many people in
relationships who struggle and I ask them, I was
like, “When's the last time you texted what you
appreciate about them?” Or when's the last time– – Instead of just a litany
of what isn't appreciated. – Exactly.
– Or what could be done differently. Well you said too really,
I think beautiful pieces in that, which is first and
foremost, I want to acknowledge you, Lewis, cause you changed. Right, you did not say
– It's not easy. – Partner change. You said, “I'm gonna experiment with – I'm going to.
– How I can have a new relationship with this experience so I can do differently.” And a lot of us, when there's
discomfort or conflict in a relationship we do very quickly– – Want the other person to change. – Cause this is back to
that reactive way of living, right, if the environment
is affecting me negatively, that we were describing
earlier, right, so if you were my partner and you are the
environment that's affecting me negatively, please change
so that I can now feel better. But change comes within. I mean, so that was very beautiful that you owned the responsibility. I think there's also
something to be said about this concept of right and wrong. I mean not to go all esoteric,
but we can make an argument for days about this concept of right, is there anything right? And you said something
beautiful, “It's not necessarily a fight, we can shift from
a need to be right or wrong to an attempt to understand.” – That's it, and empathize with where the person's coming from. – Yes, where they're coming from. – And why they're feeling this way. – And why they see that
perspective that they are, what about, and something
else I think that is beautiful is your realization that
somewhere wrapped up in here was that past that was
very painful for you, but very much alive in this moment. It doesn't mean that this
moment embodied the past in an objective way. It just means that it triggered that part of you
– It triggered something. – That remembers that past. – Right. – So very really bea– I mean I love that
illustration, cause I think that really touches on
the work that needs, or that we can do for ourself
– And I'm just practicing. – In our, that's practice. – Yeah, I'm just practicing like, I'm doing things I normally wouldn't do but also the things I normally wouldn't do have never fully worked
for me in a relationship. You know I just I'm always
used to doing things my way, because this is who I
am and don't change me, and don't try to–
– It's who I am. – Yeah, exactly right? And now I'm just like, okay
even though it may seem a little more time to do this
thing or a little more effort here or I have to sacrifice
something else in my life to cultivate this over here,
if that's what I'm calling a sacrifice, it's just by
doing and experimenting these things, even though I was
resistant to them in the first couple months, I'm like,
“Hmm, do I really need to go do this thing in my life
that I did all the time, that wasn't really adding
value or is spending that extra 10 minutes cultivating this
relationship more meaningful?” So just shifting the
awareness in my life about what I thought I wanted to
what's actually more valuable. So not to go off on this,
but I feel like what I wanted to talk about is people practicing when you're not in conflict. And the reason why tools don't
work is cause I don't think people are practicing enough
when there's not trauma or stressful moments. And is that… Is there anything else that
could, I guess make the tools work except for conscious practicing? I guess it's also healing
your traumas, but how do we start to heal those traumas? – Well that's a actually,
so the way I think about a healing journey, I kind of build it into a foundational pyramid. – Okay.
– With the bottom layer being our physiological body,
our nervous system included, because to speak to your point
that you're very beautifully eluding which is that we
do, we carry dysregulations, physiological imbalances,
nervous system dysregulation– – [Lewis] What's the book,
“The Body Keeps the Score”? – “The Body Keeps the Score”. – I've never read it
but I hear it's great. – Yeah, it's really,
anyone reading, it's dense scientifically, so I know it
can kinda dissuade people away from it, because he does… It's an incredibly pivotal impactful book and I definitely suggest
people give it a shot, but I know that it can be pretty dense. – But the overall premise of it is… – The overall premise is that
trauma is stored in the body. I'm a believer that most
of us have some degree of a traumatic experience in our past. I'm a big believer in expanding
the definition of trauma beyond the big T, the way
we typically think about it. – [Lewis] It doesn't need to
be a physical trauma, it can be emotional, psychological.
– Often time's it's emotional it's interpersonal, it's not
feeling seen, not feeling loved, not feeling accepted
as the authentic being that we are by typically
our earliest relationships, our caregivers, our schools
or things like that. – [Lewis] Our best
friends or whatever, yeah. – Yeah, so expanding trauma,
I mean I throw the net quite wide, like I really
have yet to meet people that don't tick some of the
boxes that are in my opinion traumatic experience.
– What's the greatest trauma most people face or feel right now? – I think not feeling
significant, not feeling authentic in themselves, which began
not feeling seen and authentic as a being, a separate being in their earliest relationships. I think we all carry a version of that. – Really?
– Cause it's incredibly difficult for a human to show up for another human, an
infant, their infant. So cause we're modeling
things directing, indirectly. So any conflicts, any
struggles, any imbalances, any conditioning's that's not
so positive that caregivers, a parent have struggled
with, probably is gonna be modeled in the exact same way. And this is where
intergenerational patterns happen. If you look back in your
families you'll see the same sort of patterns as you
start to become conscious and as you start observe these. – Your parents and their
parents did this to them, and their parents did this to them. – And if you really want to
go into the physiological layer that we're talking about
now, I mean you were grown, right, as a baby, as an embryo
in a body, so that humans body that's housing this
little developing fetus is in some version of physical
regulation or dysregulation. So at a, if you really want
to go back these imbalances are affecting you in
development, so then you come out and then all of your
body and how it functions is affected by the food you
eat, by the choices you make in terms of how much sleep
you get, how do you handle stress, essentially what you
do all day is gonna affect whether your body is regulated or not. – Who do you think is
more, I don't wanna compare traumatic experiences, but
who in your mind do you think would have a harder time,
the child who feels not seen or taken care of by the parent
or the parent who is giving their heart and life to
the child, but doesn't feel seen and acknowledged
for their caregiving? Cause I can only imagine– – Both, I can't–
– Parents like saying “I've given you my life,
I'm sacrificing my dreams.” or whatever the conversation
might be, to you and “You're ungrateful, you're not loving,
you're angry, you're…” What do you think is more
traumatic, the parent trauma or the child trauma? – I think very equally, equally traumatic. And I was actually talking
about this this morning with my partner, there's
an aspect of it that whatever the story is from
the child's side and from the parents side, that
is their truth, right? – Their experience.
– That's their experience so that's their truth,
emotionally that is their truth. Doesn't matter objectively
if an observer would say, “Oh no, I actually think you
did give enough to your kid, or actually you see him
being appreciate right there, doesn't matter because either
of those party's are living in their truth, which can
be equally, in my opinion, as traumatizing. And probably chances are that
parent, when they were a child right, probably had some
version of that experience similar or almost complete
opposition, sometimes we kinda go in a overcompensation attempt to that. So that my argument then
being, so now you here have a caregiver who probably is
carrying their own trauma from their caregivers and now
is carrying their own trauma from having a child, and then
this is where a really big snowball gets created. And I think back to why
now, why the popularity of the account, I think we're
finally at time in collective evolution where it's very
apparent that these old ways, these old conditioning
patterns aren't helpful, and now we're starting to
have the tools, the internet being one of them where all of
this information can come out and be out in the world. And now you see a collective
evolution happening. – Yes. I don't want to cut you off,
I apologize, but you said “The triangle of healing
journey,” is that the pyramid? The body's the bottom?
– So the body and the physiological
ways we are dysregulated are imbalanced and then
the nervous system, cause without that balance,
and this was my story for quite some time because
I lived my life in fight or flight– – All the time?
– My whole life and that sympathetic, in
a nervous system response, which means my nervous
system, which yours does and as yours, controls our whole body. So when you're in that, it's rea– we feel very emotionally
reactive, everything feels like we're waiting for that
straw, and next straw, and everything, I mean my
water being empty right now could be a straw. If I was like amped up
enough, living in that really prevented me, and this
is why I'm so passionate about holistic healing, one
of the definitions of holistic being of the body also of
a whole, you know my body I believe soul how all these
parts interact, we need to include the body cause
for my life having tools, being in therapy, being
on medication, my body was so dysregulated at the nervous
system level that it didn't matter if I very insightfully
knew that next time I need to call this time out with
you, Lewis, I wouldn't because my body was too dysregulated
to give me a chance. – Too messed up.
– That's why I put that at the bottom. – So you have to heal the body first, is that what I'm hearing? – Engage in a process
cause this is long term, and we don't make one
change again overnight and our body doesn't–
– It could take decades to fully…
– It could take a long time. I mean I've been on the
healing journey for sometime and I'm still releasing
areas of inflammation that I'm carrying in my body, my digestion is still working it's way out from a lifetime of digestive issues related to my imbal–
– Just tension and stress. – Yes, yeah, so and I'm years in. You know it got significantly
better along the way but start by healing the body
and definitely if you're out there and you're listening
and you have nervous system dysregulation, if you always
feel on edge and in that fight or flight, if you've heard
that you have adrenal fatigue now we have a medical
diagnosis for it, you need to be adding some version
of, whether it's breath work or some version of nervous
system regulation in, cause that's gonna give you
the balance or some foundation to then be able to dive in
and create deeper change. – Okay, so the bottom of
the pyramid is the body.. – The body, look at the
choices your making around your lifestyle, how you
care for your body, is there anythings that you can
add, change, decrease, and also look at your
nervous system and build… I do a daily practice of breath work still and I will always do it. – I just think it's a no brainer. I think there's so many apps and programs, and experts out there
teaching it because it works, it's helping, and it's
powerful, and people have been doing meditation and breath
work for thousands of years because it keeps them
grounded, centered, calm, and not in a stressful environment. I definitely recommend prioritizing it. So the body's first
then what's after that? – So moving up then to the mind. – The mind.
– And developing consciousness, creating
– Your thoughts. – For a lot of us it means
creating the distance from our thoughts, based
in the reality that none of us are our thoughts. We believe we are, we
believe we are our thoughts, we believe we're the story
that we've told ourselves about who we are. Right, when I went who are… Earlier when you we're talking, who we are, this is my narrative. That's all created, it's all created from our past conditioning. So even the who we think
we are is not the who that we are, those are patterns
of thinking in our head, those are stories that
our ego is telling us all day long about who are
compared to who other people are. Who we are is the awareness
that sits behind our thoughts. So this is what this kind of
tier of thinking mind work is to first create that separation. I suggest doing it in
a meditation practice. Our goal is to do it all day
long, but when we're sitting, when we're quiet, even if
we're meditating for one minute which is definitely the
amount of minutes I suggest a new meditator to meditate
for, because it's a long time, this is difficult for
some of us it's the first time we're tuning in to our
internal world, it's not always comfortable in there. A lot of us like to runaway
from it, a lot of spend a lot of our day running away from it. So once we learn how to
observe our thoughts, by closing our eyes, by
sitting in a quiet room thoughts are gonna come, that
gives you the first experience of being separate cause
who's watching them, you're who's watching them. The goal though is to
build a bridge and to do that all day long, but it
doesn't come overnight. Once we become an observer
of our thoughts throughout our day, then we get to do the
deeper work that I'm always talking about, of the
ego and the inner child, cause you're gonna start to see
the very repetitive patterns in your thinking that are
causing you to then have very repetitive consistent
feelings in your body, which are physiological,
that's why they're real too. When we're stuck in consistent
feelings it feels very invalidating to have people to say to you, “Well just stop feeling like that.” – Right. – I can't because– – I've been one to blame myself,
I was doing that to people in the past too. It's not, until you really
go through this process you can start to have
empathy and compassion for everyone's journey. – [Nicole] Yeah, quite literally. We get stuck in feelings,
feelings are physiological events in our body, they become familiar. So my story about me in fight or flight, my most frequently visited
emotion was stress, was chaos. – Everyday.
– It's all I knew. So as–
– Until how long, until how old? – Probably until I was in my early 30's,
– Two years ago. – You know what I mean? I'm 37 now, so not very
in the distant past, I just lived in chaos. If you would be talking
to me, Lewis, I would say “All I want in li– I'm a hippy at heart, I just
wanna throw peace signs, peace and freedom,
that's all I want, right. But the second I would find
myself, what could have been experienced as a moment
of peace or freedom, maybe I'm sitting quietly somewhere,
that was so uncomfortable. – Stressful for you. Really?
– It was uncomfortable my body registered it as
unfamiliar, you're not used to this, so then if no one
was around I would start to worry about the thing
yesterday that happened or maybe tomorrow, so now I'm
creating a change in my body. Cause the more I think a
stressful thought, the more I release stress hormones
and now I'm having, my body is back into that zone of
comfort, it loves being stressed it's what it knows. – Right, it's used to it.
– If a person was around me, this is
where it gets really fun and complicated bringing our
relationships into the picture, if a person was around me watch
out because before I knew it if I was in that unfamiliar peaceful space I might agitate the situation. Before you know it I might
be picking a bit of a fight with my partner or whoever's around me. – Why are you doing this, why did this happen, yeah.
– Increase the stress back to my zone of comfort,
that's how I'm used to feeling. So that's back to that
concept of stuck, we're stuck because we're subconsciously
stuck in our familiarized comfort zone, even though
that's not the place that's, or those aren't the behaviors,
those aren't the thoughts, those aren't the ways that
we're gonna feel to get us the life that we want but
that's what's familiar to us. So the more you practice
self observation the more you get to see yourself living,
also very uncomfortable, this is uncomfortable work. – And you get to reflect
and say, “okay, on a scale of one to 10 how traumatic
was I feeling all day or how stressed out was I?” “I was an eight all day.” Okay, why were an eight,
what's allowing you to stay at an eight.
– Why are you still an eight? – Why do you stay there, what's
the payoff, what's the price you're paying and what's
the payoff you're getting by being at that level? What would it take for
you to drop it two points, or whatever? This is how I think in points–
– What would happen if you dropped it. – What could you create in your life? – Yes, but also negative. – How would your relationship be– – Some of us get caught
in a negative feeling as counterintuitive as
this might sound, in fear of what life would be like
without the negative feeling. – Right, in fear of the
good things happening. – Yes, it's very complicated– – Why are so many people
afraid of more good things happening to them? Do they think they're not
worthy or deserving of it? – What did you ask me when
we first started, right? What is the trauma, the
most prolific trauma, not being seen, heard.
– Or feeling enough. – Feeling enough as a child. – Wow.
– So if we have a deep rooted feeling of
not enough or not worthy those are the two
frequent iterations here. – [Lewis] Why should
good things come to us? – Why should they come to us? And it doesn't matter if
logically you really want that good thing, if
subconsciously you're an unworthy human being, you're not gonna get it. – And that's why when people
get it they'll sabotage it and they'll lose it, right? – [Nicole] Yes. – So how do we come to
a place of worthiness, of truly feeling and knowing we are enough and we are deserving of
goodness in our life? How do we get to that place? – I usually do it in a two fold process, cause I think the first
layer of the process is observing all of the
times you're telling yourself you're not enough, all day. And stopping that shit. Meaning, you can't stop it,
I'm joking when I say that, cause you can't stop it–
– Observe it. – Observe it, you're
subconscious is gonna give you that language, whatever it is, we all have different languaging that we love to diminish ourself around. So whatever it is, the
thing that you're a loser, you're not worthy,
whatever your language is. – Replace it.
– You can't stop that from happening. – Replace it.
– But you can't stop that, so I wanna just acknowledge that, because this is another
– Observe it. – Moment where we can become
very shameful, frustrated, and tell us the works not working.
– Beat yourself up, yeah. – Why is this still here, I
know it's there, turn it off. Nope. So I observe it being there, but I don't– you said something important
earlier, I don't spend that much time in it. So what most of us do.
– A few moments move on.
– Subconsciously. This is why I'm gonna state a fact. Feelings have an end,
they come and they go. Depending on who you read,
how many seconds it is or minutes it is, they come and they go. We do not allow 'em to
go because I say we bring them up to our mental world and we do those gymnastics for it. So if you then repeat,
so if that thing happens in your environment and your
subconscious offers you that the reason that that thing
happened is cause you're a loser, which it probably still will
do, you can still show up consciously and say, “Oh,
thank you subconscious, thank you for reminding me
of that, but I'm not gonna, that's not how I am, that's not who I am.” So I can now remove my
attention, put it anywhere else, what am I doing? Maybe I put my attention
to my breath, just get out of that script, stop
repeating it to yourself to simplify it. Because that's the difference
– Change the script, yeah. – Between it going, so
using your language changing the script, or just
removing your attention from your thinking mind. Ground yourself in your body. – Breathe.
– Feel the room you're in, do those deep belly breaths,
go for a walk and pay attention to your legs walking, as
simple as that sounds. Get out of your mind. Because the more time you
spend repeating I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser,
now you are gonna carry that feeling home.
– You are that. – You might carry it in
the next week, some of us have lived in the past of feelings that originated decades ago. Cause we're repeating it, because we're telling us
that story and because then the more we do that the
more we scan our environment for more and more evidence. So if I, something loser
happened to me at lunch, I'm probably gonna find the
loser thing that happened to me at dinner, and right before bed. And again, I could really
start a snowball rolling down a mountain in not a helpful way. – So the first thing is observe it. – [Nicole] Observe it. – What's the next thing? – [Nicole] Remove the focus from it. – Remove focus. Okay. – Without judgment. Let me add that part in there. – That's great. – Cause this is where we
get really judgemental of ourself too.
– Of course and beat up. – Now we're a loser because
we had a loser thought. You know what I mean? – Okay, is there anything else? The two steps, or? – Two steps then remove
focus without judgment, and then this is where
affirmation work can happen. Right, if we wanna start, so the two layers I was talking about
– Replace with something positive or… – First we wanna diminish,
the increase, I mean decrease the amount of time and the
fall out of negative thinking that a lot of us have been
over practiced, and then we can become impactful if
you are someone who li… I mean affirmations what they
are simply a new thought. So then if you do start to
practice telling yourself that I am worthy, that might
have a, you might have a chance over time of actually believing that. And then you might have a
chance over time of actually seeing instances in your
environment of your worthiness. But that doesn't work and
this is why, in my opinion, affirmation work of itself
is kind of called woo-woo and a lot of people become
frustrated and it doesn't work. And it won't, because if you
do, maybe you have a morning routine where you tell yourself
some beautiful affirmations if for the rest of your
day, as a lot of us are, you're back in your subconscious
and you're not practicing consciousness, the rest of
the day your subconscious might be reminding you of
how not worthy you are. And that's why I don't think
affirmations are as successful as they can be. So until you start to remove
that focus all day long and just be consciously
present to what is happening without judgment, then you
can start to give yourself a chance at believing
over time that I am worthy or whatever it is that you
would prefer to believe of yourself.
– I love that. You had the body, the next step the mind, what's after the mind? – So once we understand,
so once you've done a significant amount of
time observing yourself, now you really can dive into the world. So like the deepest tip,
if you will, of the work is the whole world of the
inner child of the ego. Of the wounds that we're carrying with us that are coloring our
experiences in our environment. But you can't do that work,
as a lot of us wanna do, until you have these other tools in place. – Until you take care of your
physical needs, the body, until you help with breath
work, meditation, calming the body, relaxing the body. Then observing yourself,
your thoughts, why you're reactive, why things
are stressful for you. You can't heal the inner
child or the ego until you do those first two things. Why is that? – Well you won't, first
and foremost, you won't be able to see it happen. – You're too stressed you're too–
– Because you go I say you go unconscious. Back to our examples,
right, of our arguments, I'm unconsciously living
in my past in that moment. So you can't really see, to
be observational you need to be there in your cons– You can't see what's happening,
you only see the reality that you're telling, what you're feeling. You're just feeling in that moment. So I'm upset that you hurt
me, I'm upset that you… What have you me, you're
not actually observing what happened and what the
story you told yourself was about the dish, to go
back to that example, that led you to be incensed. The dish did nothing
in this example, right, the dish is just a dish on a table. But when you saw that dish you
said something to yourself, you rehearsed, you went
through some filter, that then colored how you're feeling and then what happened next. – They don't care about
me, they're abusing me, they're whatever. – And until you show up
consciously and practice seeing, observing that, you have no idea. You actually think that
dish was the problem, you're so stuck in it,
you're unconscious to it. So can't be done until you
start to develop that distance and that space that I'm talking about, because even when you're doing
ego work and the inner child work, those reactions are
still there alive for you. So if you don't have that
space you're gonna continue to choose those old reactions. So as you practice
consciousness that's what gives you that space. So they can be here and be
happening in your world, in your subconscious world,
and you can still be online and making the choices, not allowing them to make the choices. – This alone, this part of
this interview is just gonna transform so many peoples
lives, just by understanding the process, cause I think
a lot of us try to just do breath work and think
we're gonna get healed. Just think about our
ego and healing trauma, or the inner child work. – Can't do it peace meal.
– But you need to do, it's like the process is so much clearer. And I know you're gonna be
writing about this in your book, which I'm excited about,
but this process alone is gonna change a lot of
lives, so I'm very grateful we're going through this. Is there another step to
this pyramid of healing, or is the body, mind, then ego inner child?
– Well then I would ask you to draw a big
circle around it and say in repeat for life. (Lewis laughing) Never ends. – Just like circle
– I think that's the – It just keeps going. – That's the final piece. And I joke when I say that but I mean that
– It's true though. – Wholeheartedly, because
just as much as I don't know where to start, I wanna
just work on one thing, a lot of people, myself
included, wanna hear when the end happens. When we're just done.
– Never. It's never done. The healing journey is a life long journey until the day you die probably. – Yeah, and just as much,
if you do all the this work and you get to this great
place, if you stop making these choices, if you let
your body fall into disarray, you're right back into that dysregulated state
– You back into that – Before you know it, right? If you stop being conscious
before you know it you fall into some
– You're triggered. – Other like, maybe it's
different narratives or different habits
that you're now living, but you're still living
in an unconscious state. – What is the practice everyday then? Breath work slash meditation, prayer, and then what would the
practice be on observing self thoughts in the mind? Is it kind of just an all day practice? – Yeah, so what I do– – It's never stopping.
– So what I do is I show up and I do meditation everyday, just in a contained way
just to keep, I mean it's a mental exercise so that I
can carry that then practice throughout my day. So I don't, not everyone
has to have a structured meditation practice I
just think it's helpful, to have that consistency
– Start the day with calm. – Everyday, right, and
to remind myself, “Okay, this is what you're about,
Nicole, you're not those thoughts that are still…” Some days my brain is much
louder than other days all day long, depending
on what's happening. Sometimes I have resources to
make new choices, you know, that I wanna make and some days
I don't, I fall right back, if I'm tired, if I'm hormonal. Some days I still react in those old ways. So I keep a consistent daily
practice as that mental training is that I start my day in peace and then I practice all day long. I try to be as conscious as possible. I've now learned, remember
I am someone who I just said a couple minutes ago, I spent
my whole day dissociated, I was on my spaceship. So this took me a long time
to cultivate the ability to be present in my body
and in my moments throughout my day, so this did not come overnight. And so all day long then it
became a practice of I learned to distinguish between
when I'm not present, I learned how it feels in my
body or in my interactions. I can tell when I'm somewhere
else now, cause everything feels a little fuzzy, I
feel a little more distance, I maybe can't feel grounded
in my body, and I can tell when I'm here. Obviously then I try to make
the decision on more occasions to bring myself back into
that conscious state, back into that present. So then I do that all day and then as I'm journey
about my day I am gifted with teachers of
triggers, you know meaning I tell myself stories and
I can be observational then in those pivotal moments. Okay, why did this thing
that this random stranger said or did to me become so upsetting? And then I can start to
uncover, “Oh, this is my ego still telling me this story about myself,” or, “Oh this is my wounded
child who really just wants to be seen in this moment.” Right, so it's, then it
becomes a varied experience on the daily, but once
you're conscious then you can begin to navigate your
daily life in a new way. – What's your biggest trigger? – [Nicole] Not feeling considered by far.
– Considered? – [Nicole] Considered. That goes back to that
little child who didn't feel considered in the being that I was. I was rewarded historically
over the course of my life for my accomplishments, for
what I did not for who I was. So considered for some
reason that's the word that always–
– Considered for being. Just being. – Yeah, that's a word that
always for whatever reason got attached to that
feeling, that childhood wound that comes up now and that's
what I'll see myself saying, “Oh my partner didn't
consider me in doing this, oh this person didn't
consider me when this was.” – [Lewis] They weren't considerate when they were cutting me off in traffic. – Actually on my way here, I
should tell you this morning my partner tried to have a
conversation with me that I did not want to have
and my first thought was “She didn't consider what
my day looks like today.” Instead of you know, and that wasn't true, she absolutely knew what
my day was like today, she wanted to have a conversation
and I can be flexible, and I can just as much
say, “I would like to not have that conversation today
because of what my day looks.” But my first instinct it's still there. – Why is she going here? She knows how busy I am.
– She's not considerate was the first thing my
subconscious assigned to that. I've done a lot of work
on that now, so I now know that's not true, but I
share that as an example after having done a lot
of work it's still there. I didn't scream, I didn't
yell, I was able to, you know, inside I…
– Just got reactive– – Inside I was yeah Inside I was feeling the
screaming and yelling. – I'm going to The School
of Greatness, don't mess with my morning! – Yeah you know, then I
was able to remove myself and take a few breaths and
come back, and we were okay. But it's still there,
but that's my core one. That's one of my core ones that comes up and you'd be surprised or maybe not. I can make everything an example
of me not being considered. – Wow Lewis didn't have a
bigger glass for me here, or he didn't have tissues. – Does he not know who
I am or what you know? – Wow. Isn't it crazy the stories
we can tell ourselves of what we're not being
seen for or considered for, or enough for. – Yeah, well part of it too,
and this is where we can also become flexible in our
relationships is to keep going back to this. When I have such a, I've
obviously defined the ways in which I accept consideration,
which are probably gonna be different, this is
back to that love languages. I'm sure a lot of listeners
have now heard about love languages, right? So I've subconsciously
come up with the things that work for me to feel considered. That however might be
excluding a lot of the things that my partner does do
everyday that are considering of me.
– That are considerate but you don't see them or recognize– – It's not in my equation
of consideration, so that allows a level of flexibility too. If I can open up and
maybe explore other ways that she very much more
authentically to herself is able to consider me,
I can let that in now. So that's another version of
flexibility that can happen in a relationship, cause we
all lead in a lot of ways with subjectively what works
for us and then we assume the person to be able to
meet that need exactly the way it works for us
and that's not realistic and not always healthy,
cause now I'm asking you indirectly in some way or
implicitly to change who you are. – And it's not enough of
what you're doing for me. – Yeah, and it could be
leaving you feeling minimized and invalidated yourself
because you could think you're doing this and you likely
are but I'm not seeing it. – This is, I mean, this is
real life for so many people. I always had a Esther Perel on last week and we were talking about
the expectations we have for our partner, is to
be like all things to us at all times. And you know, romantic all
the time, sexual, considerate. You know, taking care of
all these different needs and responsibilities for what
we need, for what I want, for all these things. And she was saying like, we
have such high expectations that we're always gonna
be unhappy unless we start to change the expectation
and start to really adapt in the way you're talking about here. I think it's so important. – We have to think about where
it comes from developmentally a time or place where as
humans we actually did need someone to be everything for us. I mean when we're born
developmentally we are not able to care, we are
the one species that can not care for ourself. So that need at an infancy time
is real, you are completely dependent having all your
needs met on one or two, whomever, caregivers of any
sort whoever that might be. So developmentally though
we have to learn how to internalize that process
and meet our own needs and a lot of us just
don't cause we didn't have the models to teach us
how, because our parents weren't doing that either. – Yeah, I know. How do you forgive parents when, you publicly have talked
about, what's it called, creating boundaries? Is it boundaries or
what's the thing you say? – [Nicole] Boundaries, yeah. – Cause you've created the
boundary where you don't speak to your parents. – [Nicole] I have no contact now, no. – You have no contact
now, It's been I think a year or two years or something. – [Nicole] Mm-hmm, year and a half. – How do, as kids, how
do we forgive our parents even if what they did was
the best they could do or maybe they didn't do such
a good job, how do we forgive them either way? How do we learn to do that
process so that it doesn't keep hurting us? – I think forgiveness comes
when we're able to empathize or understand, sometimes
that does come, it can only come with distance. If we're living in the
situation it can be harder to create
– Forgive, yeah. – The distance to do this,
but a lot of times as we age, as we just develop physically
separate families, right, we can look back and as
we gain our own maturity and our own experience in
relationships that helps inform the ability to empathize,
which just means to understand from another perspective
why or what might have been influencing the choices or
reactions that you maybe experienced within the
relationship with them. So once we can understand I
think that allows a certain level of forgiveness. I think once we're also
able to, in the process of understanding, let me word it this way. Often what we find is it
that it was never really about us, us, us. Right, it was about their
own past, their own traumas, their own inabilities. Again, as a kid we're in
what is called egocentric mind, we develop brain
functioning this way, kind of it evolves over time. We don't just get all of the
abilities that we have now. – You're not just self aware
– Cognitively. – At five years old, yeah. – Yes, no not at all. And we go through a very
critical developmental age range where we can not
empathize, we can not see a perspective outside of our own. Everything is happening for
us, because of us, to us that is it. It's called egocentric.
– We're the center of the world. – We are quite literally,
and we cognitively can't see otherwise. So, that's really problematic,
because when a bad thing is inflicted upon us by
our caregivers we can not help but assume it's
cause we're not worthy, not good enough, what have you. We can not do differently,
but once we've developed the maturity and aged out of that and maybe we–
– See perspective. – We can see perspective and
now maybe we can depersonalize it, we can see that, okay even if it's egregious abuse.
– Hurtful, yeah. – Right, we might even
be able to trace back what had happened to that
caregiver that result, doesn't okay it. When I have these conversations
a lot the response I get around boundaries
too, is well you're okaying abuse, or you're okaying. No it's an and situation. I can empathize, I can
depersonalize, I can come to the understanding that
it's not me, and I still might choose to put a boundary
within this relationship. I still might choose to do
what ever I wanna choose to do. It becomes and, because I
can understand, this is where I used to struggle a lot, cause I have a crazy capacity to understand
people and to understand why people do what they do. To the extent that I would
invalidate my experience of them for so long and
then allow them to do what they wanna do around me
or to me my whole life. So not helpful. So I had to evolve into that and. I can understand.
– And I'm creating boundary. – And this doesn't work for me. – And I'm breaking up with you. – So my life is gonna now
be over here, you know, and. So I say that because
empathizing, understanding, depersonalizing still can allow you to create important boundaries. So even if you're able
to forgive your parents or whoever we're talking
about here, doesn't mean that you have to accept them
as an active relationship in your life. So I feel very forgiving
of my family, I've always understood why and how
these patterns have been put in place and translate it and
why I've had the experiences within that family structure that I have. I'm, if you will, forgiving of them. And I still
– And choosing not to– – Am choosing not to have a
relationship because for me for now and where they're
at with what my choice initially was to step away
from the relationship, it just isn't happening in this moment. I don't know what the future will be– – Is it because it's
too triggering for you when you're around them
or do you just don't feel like you're in a good space? – In terms of connecting with them again? – Yeah, if you wanted to
like hangout with them for the weekend, is it just
too triggering for you to feel– – So in the beginning it
was, the reason I went full no contact– – Because you tried to renegotiate– – A year and a half a go, yeah. Because of the family structure,
the lack of boundaries, tune into the last episode
I talk all about it. That being the case and
it being triggering, so for me to get that
stability in my healing I have tried to re-engage
contact with them now on one occasion, I
recently actually just sent them a letter to let them know that I'm living out here. And it has been met with,
oh I guess three occasions because I recently sent my
nephew a card that was also returned, so little
messages trickling my way that they're maybe not
interested right now in pursuing that open door. So it's not about necessarily,
I don't know how I would feel in front of them, that would
be interesting for me now if we were able to find a
way back to some sort of person-to-person
interaction with one or all of the family members. I would be really interested
– You should document that. – To see how–
– You should video tape that and see your reaction.
– Well I'll probably talking all about it if at some point – Wow that would be huge.
– There becomes a reconnection, but I have
tried and it just seems like the door is closed on their end. I'm sure they're angry. – Yeah, of course.
– I can even understand and forgive that. – Yeah of course. You know, cause I know that they don't–
– Our daughter doesn't respect us.
– They don't understand. – Yeah of course. – And I can't expect
them to understand, so. – Okay, there is, let's see if I… Is there any loose ends here? We've got the healing journey pyramid. Trauma stored in the body. That's some of the good stuff right now that I have, how to feel
enough, three step there that's great I think, cause
most people talk about affirmations but it's
not enough until you have the first two steps. Yes, I love this. There's three, I was doing
some research on your Instagram lately, and there's three
posts that essentially did three to four times
more engagement and comments and reactions, and all the other stuff. Um, and I wanted to kind of
dive into three of these things because I think it'd be
really powerful since people need this right now. One is how to say no without apologizing. I think as a people pleaser
myself from the past and still recovering people pleaser, it's been really hard
to learn how to say no over the last few years
but I'm getting better and better at it without
feeling like I'm letting someone down or someone's
gonna be upset with me. As a kid who never had friends growing up, it's always like, I don't
wanna ruffle the feathers of the friends that I had
and so I have to learn how to be like, if they're
upset and they don't understand there's nothing I can do
and I'm giving them my best. So how do we say no without apologizing? – Yeah, it's hard, this is
really ground it, Lewis, in a lot of us. I mean I totally resonate
with people pleasing. I've been calling it an
epidemic of co-dependency. Back to, right, this childhood
where if we're not enough what we do, we're very adaptive. So what most of us do is
similar to what you did with your friends, not
having much friends, you became so attune – I'll do whatever you want.
– To the friends that you have to keep
those relationships, right. We do that within our
caregiving units, our family structure, we find a way to
keep the things that we need which are connections with other humans. Love from another human. We are interpersonal species, that is it. We actually need to be bonded together. Like I said earlier, out
of developmental necessity and then just generally
in life, I mean think back to evolutionary days and tribes. And there's very real
research out there now that the stress goes down
when we are interconnected with other humans. Aside from division of labor,
oh you can help relieve the stress of my objective
life, just the emotions and we actually release
oxytocin when we're connected to another human, we need those hormones. So we need to be connected. So we get very adaptive and we find a way. So if we've developed in a
household where we're not seen as a separate entity and
able to develop connections and relationships with
other separate entities in our family, again I talk
a lot about an enmeshed co-dependent family in
our last talk, that's what I've come from, we get
very externally orientated is what I say. I start to become so attuned
to the outside world so that I can manage how I feel
by showing up to friendships or doing the thing, or
answering the phone call by not saying no. So once we come to that
realization and we want, and we understand the impact
that always being available has on ourselves and on our relationship. – It hurts us. – It hurts our relationship. – It does, it hurts the
relationship with ourself too. – Yes. And what happens though, is
sadly overtime if I always say yes to you and even if
I mean no, before I know it I don't like you, Lewis,
I'm not upset at me. – I'm like, “Why are you upset at me for you said yes to it.”
– I'm like not really liking you.
– Because you're resenting the fact that you said yes. – I'm mad at you, but I'm
really upset, if I really look down at it, it's I
needed to start saying no. How the hell would you know,
I mean we'd like to believe that other humans, especially
when they're our partners, are mind readers. We love this idea that people see the same reality
– Tell my girlfriend that. – As us.
– I'm not a mind reader. – Right, but what we're
talking about, you just don't you're never gonna have the
same reality as another person. So we like that idea so
we say the yes's and then we get upset at the person,
so it really is damaging of our relationships. And I know, I lived the
hard way, I had to learn how to say no. My go to was not necessarily
no with an apology, I liked apologies, I peppered
those in, my preference was no with the excuse with the why. – Here's why I can't do it. – I needed to validate the reason I was disappointing someone, with this belief that it
wasn't enough just to not to want to or to feel like
it or just to be somewhere else in any given moment. – So how do we say no without
an excuse or an apology then? – Practice, I mean it's hard,
it's very very difficult. First and foremost it's
accepting the reality that you're welcome to
say no, you're allowed to say no. And that saying no
doesn't diminish who are or the relationship,
again this is a deeper, this is an evolution of
work, we don't just turn off the belief that I have
to say no to maintain these friendships, we
don't just overnight come by a new belief. So we can practice and I
suggest practicing, I say like around the periphery, right. Start to say no, so what
this looked like for me, I started to put up
boundaries or to say my no's in my professional world
where it felt a little easier. So some request that would
come in and from people that I maybe didn't
really know, it would feel and it's virtual so I
can even send the email, throw my phone, which has happened before, and run away. And come back later to see what happened. – [Lewis] Hopefully they didn't react. – You know what I mean? So easier for me, so I practiced
there before I practiced maybe saying no with my
immediate family or my partner. There's gonna be some, there
might be some relationships that are… It might be even easier, maybe
you do have that one friend that is like casual about it. You're gonna find the moments to practice, but the theme for today,
you have to practice. Because it's gonna be really
hard when you're faced with that saying that no
and what's gonna happen is everything that happens
in your mind that prevented you from saying that no
for however many years you have not said that no,
it's gonna happen in your mind the second you, well first
of all before you say the no trying to convince you
out of saying the no. So before you know it
you're saying yes again. – I know.
– Right, this is where consciously you have to,
– Please yeah, yeah. – No you have to say
no, no, period, the end or no whatever you wanna
deliver the message being. And then on the backside
once it's delivered you're mind is gonna try to
convince you out of that no still, oh you're terrible, oh
this person is gonna hate you, oh it's been two hours,
did they respond, clearly this relationship is over. Right, now the work is still
on you, don't spend time in that thought, just like we
were talking about earlier. Get the hell out of there. But don't expect it not to be there. I call them the feel bads,
the feel bads have haunted me around every boundary I've
set for quite a long time before they diminish
and they still are there every now and again. I still find myself feeling
bad almost into saying yes, maybe I'm even feeling
bad once I've said the no. But I'm like carrying
that, but I get to choose, how long do I wanna live in this feel bad? – [Lewis] It's not good, yeah. – And a really cool thing
happens as you practice, you start to learn and
see, sometimes you do get that feared response, sometimes
exactly what you imagine would happen that's not
positive does, I go that a lot from my family. Not all the time. So if you focus on the
moments where the thing that you've feared most didn't
happen, that relationship didn't end, those
friends still were around and asked you to come to
the movies next weekend, that's what I urge you
to pay attention to. Cause that's gonna help
you keep saying the no's and helping you shift out of the pattern. – I think if, you know, it's
not the end of the world if someone reacts in a
negative way to your no, because if they get so
upset that you can't, unless it's like something so imp.. Like my wedding, or whatever,
and you've told them months in advance or
you've given them time, it all depends on the
situation, but if it's a friend who's just like gets
upset because you're busy one weekend for whatever reason, then is that a great relationship? – That's information too.
– Do you wanna spend more time with them. A couple of things that
you said on how to say no without apologizing you said
a couple responses would be, I won't be able to make and
I'm grateful you invited me. Not apologizing.
– Yeah, thank you for the invite and I can't come. – Thank I won't be able to make it, you don't have to give a reason why. You also said, it sounds
amazing it's just not something I can commit to right now. So simple solutions you
can use without having to say I'm sorry I'm not
gonna be able to make it, ah I wish I could, you
know, things like that. So I really like that, how
to say no without apologizing or explaining yourself. This is another one you
posted about relationships, but I think it's really powerful. Now I was in a long
distance in a relationship for a year and the relationship moved in, and things have become more,
let's say normalized, right. It wasn't every other weekend
where I'm going to visit or she's visiting and
this incredible experience every weekend. We still have amazing
experiences but we're around each other all the time. And you said, I think you
called it normal things in relationships. You said feeling bored
or unsettled. (chuckles) Being triggered consistently, mourning the loss of single life. I've felt that before. And needing alone time. Because I think when we
get in a relationship that's normal, you're
around each other a lot and you feel like you need space, right? Why is this such a powerful
post that you think that you shared? – I got so many messages
in response to that post of gratitude, of thank you
– It's okay to feel these things.
– I've gotten people, I've talked about this
with my partner, my husband and we're so grateful
you make us feel normal, we were really worried. – Not like our relationship is messed up. – Thank you, we're feeling
these things and we now know that it's okay to feel these things. Some of it I think, I mean first of all the conversation we're
having today mostly, right, most of it is around the
relationships that we were modeled and the relationship that
we're in at a young age. So that becomes our model for
what relationship should be. Not all times, of course,
are we given the healthiest models, the relationships
we're seeing happen and the relationships we're
experiencing with caregivers around us, the peers around
us, again they're based in conditioning for most
of us, inter generationally transmitted by caregivers
and people who are struggling in their own world with their own issues. So not always the healthiest. So I think that's a big
part of it, you know people just aren't modeled the
healthiest type of relationships. I think that's a big part
and there's also I think Disnification, I think I might
of just made that word up. – Not but it's like this Disneyland
– Of love. That's another level of messaging that we're getting.
– Have to be like that all the time. It's not that way. Also you get to create, intimacy, passion, love,
like you also, in my opinion, you shouldn't make it boring all the time, you get to bring the energy,
you get to bring the love, you get to be creative and care. And I think powerful
relationships are ones that have caring and creativity, I
think I heard Tony Robbins talk about that where it's like, if you just have a
little bit of creativity you can create that spark all the time. And if you just show you
care, it doesn't have to be this grand Disnification
gesture, but just creativity and caring
everyday will make someone feel seen, acknowledged,
appreciated, and enough. The thing that is our biggest
trauma for most of us, right?
– Absolutely. – So anyways I love that post. And the last post that I
saw that was for whatever reason went crazy. Is talking about childhood trauma and what childhood trauma
also is, which is not just physical or sexual abuse, but other types of childhood trauma. You said, a parent denying
your reality, which is I think a big trauma for people
that gets overlooked. A parent living vicariously
through their child, maybe the soccer mom or
dad that's always there at the events trying to hype them up cause they never got that experience. And just not being seen or heard. That is trauma for
children, childhood trauma. Is there anything else
you wanna add that or? – I mean that– – Why that's so big for people. – So much that could be
experienced as traumatizing in our earliest relationships. You picking up on the,
denial of reality one, again, have met a minimum
of people who haven't had that version of
experience because reality is subjective, so to have
a caregiver be able to step out of what their
perception of an event was to acknowledge, takes this
level of consciousness that we're talking about. And personally I know I was
not raised by two conscious humans, so they were not
able to gift me with that. – So how do you speak
to a child who's seven, who doesn't have the
perception yet, who doesn't have the ability to
see their own thoughts, and observe their own thoughts. When you saw an experience
happening you're like calm or relaxed and they're
going through stress and chaos, how do you
communicate to a child about their reality without
being like, “Just grow up you know, here's what happened
it's not that big a deal.” How do you actually speak
to someone in that situation who has a chaotic reality
or stressful reality? – Ask em, you can start with
as simple as asking them. Parents I think I lead
with telling their kid and they cut it off, or
they assume why they think their kid is reacting,
instead of saying, “Johnny, what is going on, you look
upset, what's happening for you right now?” You know, “What's going on
for you, what are you feeling in your body?” You know, “What are you
feeling like you wanna do now?” Just like asking, I mean I
think that's a really simplified answer, instead of just assuming and this happens too. I was sharing with my
partner the other day, one of the most impactful gifts
or lessons that I was taught by a supervisor, clinically very early on, was she pointed out to me that
the importance of inquiring especially around concepts
that are quite universal. So for example, I've known
anxiety, like I've been saying, my whole life, that's all I know. It just so happens that
a lot of people that come into my treatment room or
my old office have anxiety. “So, Lewis, what brings you in today?” “I'm anxious.” “Oh, okay.” and I could do one of two things. I could assume that when
I hear you say anxiety, what my brain is gonna do,
let me put it this way, is going to overlay my
anxiety, so I'm gonna assume that what you mean by
anxiety is exactly how I experienced it. I'm always on edge, I feel
irritable, sometimes I have panic I'm gonna make your
version of anxiety exactly what mine is. Or I could ask. So the supervisor really
empathized the value of not assuming you know,
even if it's something that you've lived, especially
when it's something that you lived, ask
what that person means. “Okay, Lewis, anxiety feels
different for everyone.” So Johnny, little kid
Johnny, right, Johnny's like, “I'm nervous.” “Okay, Johnny tell me
what nervous is for you, what's going on for you right now? What is making…” Even if you think you know
what made Johnny nervous, ask Johnny you might be
surprised that that's not what made Johnny nervous at all. He made up some other
story about what happened, that's what made him nervous. So asking is I think
the most, with children, with anyone really, the most pivotal thing that you could do. – Asking and listening with an open mind. – Asking and listening. And then containing, this is
where it gets really hard. – Not.. – How you feel about what you're hearing. (laughing) – Not trying to coach or teach. – Not trying to remove the
discomfort that you're feeling if Johnny does share
something with you that, I'm not a parent, I'm
not going to be a parent so I can not relate, I
can't empathize with how it must feel when a child that you've born is having–
– It's gotta feel helpless at times.
– I can't, so yeah that's gonna happen. On top of a million other feelings. And as a parent in that
moment, unfortunately, consciously, that's
all happening over here I need to learn how to
contain that so I can save the space to hear and help Johnny. Because what we do,
understandably, is I don't like how I feel so now I tell
Johnny, “That's not what it was, Johnny, stop it you're fine, we're fine.” Is what I'm saying.
– We're fine. – Moving on. And that's not helpful to Johnny, so it's–
– That was my childhood. My dad saying, “You're
fine” with everything. Even when it's like, “No, I'm in pain.” “No you're fine.” – Talk task, which like I was saying, we all are traumatized,
we're humans raising humans, I mean there's no way, we
don't have to be shameful, parents listening don't
have to feel shameful. I get a lot of parents
who want the guidebook now on how to not fuck up
their kids and I'm always the bearer of the bad news
that, you're going to. There's gonna be something
that's gonna happen in your… And that's okay. If you teach your child
resilience and how to process their own feelings. Yeah, they could actually
come out the other side a much more resilient human being. And things are gonna happen,
we're humans raising humans. That's why inter generationally
we're at that point in, like I said, the collective evolution that we all need to change. – Do you feel like we're
as humans, more messed up now than ever? I feel like word mental
health and the industry of self help and the industry
of therapy is just so much more talked about and bigger
now than it was before. Is it because we're more messed up now or is it because we've
always been messed up and now we're just finally using the tools or starting to learn about the tools? And talking about it more. – I think in some ways
lifestyle choices that are now being made quite
universally, are resulting in, back to our pyramid, physiological dysregulation that are causing symptoms. – Which choices are the– – I think our food
system, I think the amount that we're moving or not moving, the whole sedentary, city life. You know, we're in a very big
building sitting here filming this is not natural for us
humans, this is actually quite stressful, even
though I feel very calm, I'm sure we all feel
very calm in this room, this is actually quite
stressful for us humans. So even the movement
into cities is a stress we have to understand this. So there's a lot I do
believe that has shifted, just in terms of humanity
that is causing symptoms. – A lack of nature.
– Of being messed up. If you will, lack there. – Disconnection yeah. – I also think that we're
at a very beautiful time for humanity where we're
awakening and we're actually moving toward healing at such a fast rate, that I don't see it as we're
going to hell in a hand basket and things are just
becoming more fucked up or getting more messed up. I actually think we're on the
brink of incredible growth and incredible evolution as a species.
– Awareness and awakening – So I think it's that and again. But I do think that, yeah, just humanity there's a lot of just
environments that we're living in that are causing a lot
of stress on our systems. – What's the thing we need most, no matter where we're at in
our stage of healing journey? What do we need to think
about and remind ourselves the most every single day? – I think connecting to ourselves. Coming back, coming
back home, going inward. Reminding you that there
is a self behind it all that you might feel
very disconnected from, but that's worth getting to know. That makes all of this
work with it, right? – As a therapist doing this
work what's your biggest fear moving forward with
the amount of attention that you've gained in the
last year or two years, and the amount of attention
you're gonna continue to gain, do you have
any fears around that? Do you have any fears of like anything? Insecurities or who am I type of.. – Yeah so this beautifully
full circle, right, back to that little girl
who was never considered, who desperately wanted to
be seen and considered, it's one of the most
challenging things for me to do and show up for. – Really?
– So this has been the case before
growth, I mean this has been the case with 1,000 followers,
this has been the case the first time I got on
camera, this has been the case when I hit a million. So this will, I'm sure as
the numbers exponentially grow and as I start to
do maybe like speak, things where I can see now
the people more visually – 10,000 people here.
– The Internet's a great buffer, although
I have done the Googling of numbers to spook myself and be like, “Whoa, there's that many people
in my community right now.” I've stopped doing that now
cause it's gotten out of hand but, little buffer virtually. So I think as I put myself
more in front of the people and as I start to kind of
conquertise, that little girl wants to run for the hills. And she's still there, and she considers it.
– Isolate. – Yeah, I mean I'm often
joking that I'm getting on the next airplane out
of here and like Holistic psych out, I'm not. I'm not going anywhere, but
that's that little girl. I understand what that is
now, I don't have to take that to mean anything
other than that little girl is just so unfamiliar
being seen so vulnerably. Being impacting other people
because I'm being seen. So that's another reason
the impact, because I'm just being me and putting
authentic me out there and I'm being seen and
as much as I desperately want that, that's scary,
it's uncomfortable. So it's not a fear, it's
more just of a discomfort that is and has always been there. – When do you feel the most loved? – When I'm considered. – But when you're
considered the way you wanna be considered, right? – Yeah. – What makes you feel the most considered? – Uh when someone reflects
something that I think I can identify is uniquely
me or me back to me. Whether or not it's through
a gesture, whether or not it's cause they actually
heard what I said. I mean this sounds really
simplistic but listening in a reflective way, where
I'm like actually hearing what you're saying as opposed
to formulating my response or going on the journey
of what association my mind brought up when
you said the thing, that's a skill and that's hard. And we have to practice doing that. So when someone offers me
that, and when I feel like someone is truly present
as you even have been in this interview to me, you're hearing me and you're reflecting back
what you heard me say, that makes me feel considered. Because you heard me, something
that I said in that moment was uniquely mine, and you heard it. It could also be a
gesture, where someone like does something that is
helpful to me, it makes me feel seen and cared for, loved. For who I am. – I like that, okay so just
listening and reflecting back, is when you feel the most loved. – Yeah, when you're present and like you just heard me
and got me in that moment. It could just be micro
moment, but I was a human and you were a human and
we just had a connection. And that's what I didn't
really feel like I had growing up and that's
what makes me feel loved. – What about when your
partner, what's the thing that she does that makes
you feel most loved, besides that? – I think anytime she's
present to me, fully, I think presence is very loving. – Presence is the thing that is the– – Presence is loving.
– It's free and it's the best way to–
– And it's hard as hell. But it's …
– It's super hard. – So any moment where I
feel like she, and it could just be a moment, but
when I feel like she's, we both have a lot going
on, there's a lot of moments where we're not fully present, or me too, where she's talking
about something I'm like, “Oh, this other thing I
have to tell you about.” Just cause of business wise or whatever, there's just so many places
our attention can be. So sometimes it's micro
moments, sometimes it's time we consciously carve
out to be off our phone and just be us. But I think presence is
incredibly loving and it's not a gift that we give or it's
not the way we love a lot of people or a lot of
relationships, because we're not practicing ourselves. So before I can be present here with you, I had to learn how to be
present in my own body. Cause once I enter a room
now you're energy's here I could be responding
to, what you're saying I could be responding
to, what you're doing. So now I have to learn how
to maintain my presence with an external factor
that is another human. So if I didn't, back to this
conversation, if I didn't practice outside of here, the
second I come in to interact with someone else I could go back into that dissociated state. That lack of presence. So it's much harder, it's
much easier said than done, but if you can practice
presence I think you can give a true gift of love to
all of your relationships. – It's not easy but it's a simple concept. – Simple. – That's it. If you guys wanna hear
more go listen to our last interview we did together. You shared your three truths
there, your definition of greatness as well. So I won't ask you that again
here now, maybe next time I'll ask you and see if it's changed. – [Nicole] Maybe it will change. – How can we support you right now? You've got your Instagram,
you've got your membership, where can we go to find everything? – Yeah, everything is
The.holistic.psychologist that's the main hub, all things Instagram. Speaking of the membership,
April 1st you'll probably hear me talk about it
next week online I'm gonna open up a new launch
period for the virtual self healers circle. So we've already had the founding members, they're all nice and settled in. So we're gonna open up
another group for enrollment so I'm super excited. Anyone–
– And what do they get every month? – So every month what that looks like is, there's a different topic
of healing, so members who will join in April
will have access to all of the topics that the
founding member group has already worked through. Everything is packaged in a month module meaning we're gonna focus
on one area of healing and that month we're gonna
work toward that one area. So it can be very much a
design your own journey, self directed pace for
people, but every month as a full group we address
one topic of healing. You get worksheets, you get
PDF's, you get a virtual training, an hour with
myself or other experts that have very generously
gifted us with their time. You get a month, or an
hour Q and A live with me on that topic where I come on and I answer everyone's questions live
about how they're doing the work or what they could tweak. I put guided mediations in there, I have a playlist in there, a
book club, so it's really a contained healing experience
where we can capitalize on connecting with other people. So groups of us all around
the world at this point. So anyone is interested
check out my Instagram you'll definitely hear me
talking about it on there. There is a website up
where I have a wait list so everyone will get blasted
out the link on the 1st. So that's exciting cause
that's right around the corner and that's gonna allow
another whole group of people and healers in there to begin
to start doing the work. So I'm super excited.
– Amazing. Well you also have texting
platform where you text out updates. – Oh yeah the test app. – It's on your Instagram. – Yeah, everything,
the Instagram is a hub. There's a linktree there,
I have some free goodies that come out if you sign
up for my email list, future self journaling. So everything runs– – Do you have a journal,
you don't have a journal yet too? – Not yet, not yet. – That's what you need to have for sure. – I'm actually, it's funny you say that, I was in the process this
morning of doing some tweaks on the old journal prompts,
I think when I release a new edition and maybe it turns into a– – A book. A journal book, I like it. It's amazing. I'm gonna acknowledge
you again for being here, for showing up for teaching us so much. I think you're traumas and
learning and going through it, allows us to heal through our traumas by you sharing what you're
learning and practices. For me this is, this is a book. This interview was a book
in itself that we could print off and give to people. So I'm excited to dive into this more. And it's gonna help heal a
lot of people and I'm just really grateful for the work you do. – I appreciate you saying that. – Acknowledge your wisdom. Your ability to connect
to your inner child and really have a deeper
conversation and share with us how we can do that, I
think it's really powerful. So I appreciate you, I'm grateful for you. And you're also speaking
at Summit of Greatness. – I sure am.
– So September 10 or 12th you'll be speaking there. – You can come out and see my
little child shake on stage, no I'm just joking. I'll be great by then. – It's gonna be amazing,
yeah make sure you guys check it out if corona
hasn't taken over by then. Hopefully it's all settled
in the next two months. – It'll be all settled. – Summitofgreatness.com,
you can check that out. Yeah, thank you so much. – Thank you, Lewis, I mean
you've been an inspiration to me beyond just from
your personal journey to professional journey, so
I'm indebted with gratitude every time we have a conversation. – Of course, we'll do it again soon. – Of course, I love it, I'll be here. – Amazing.
– Thank you. – Amazing, this was great. Thank you so much for watching this video, and if you're looking for
more greatness in your life then check out this next video right here. – When I have to work until
eight o'clock at night because I have to be the
best person at my job, I'm really hearing the voice of my mother who said, “You're never
gonna amount to anything, you're just dirt.” You are carrying that around with you.
#SECRETS #Healthy #RELATIONSHIP #EXPLAINED #Nicole #LePera #Lewis #Howes
source
What's The #1 Thing You Pulled From The Interview?
Really amazing. Nicole condenses what I have learned from many teachers over the last 21 years into 1-hour 15 segmentâ€. As Lewis said at the end, the segment could be a book.I agree. Thank you
The audio is no longer working on this video
Thank you for explaining why I am the way at I am. Work in progress. I did pass this to my children sadly. Want to return to health for all of us!
Adults or parents do hurt yes but they are far more resilient then a child who is vulnerable than anyone I'm go by experience. Although I did find everything else
Great video, A month ago, my five-year relationship came to an end. I really can't stop thinking about the love of my life, who made the decision to leave me. I've done everything in my power to win him back, but it's all in vain, and I can't imagine my life with anyone else. I genuinely miss him and just can't stop thinking about him, even though I've tried my hardest to stop thinking about him. I'm not sure why I'm saying this here.
I can only speak for myself but how Dr Lepera represents and breaks down the info. She does an excellent job and pinpointing the underlying cause and how it develops/manifests throughout our lives. And how we can become aware, reverse and overcome. Scope is large so it covers various mental health and healing concerns. Even her tone of voice and how carries herself. I feel a sense of peace and trust. Not every therapist achieves all this. Sheâs definitely living her purpose. Canât wait to purchase her books.
I loved this â€â€â€
Ew… The umm-hmms she was doing while he was speaking… Then he started mirroring it…
Now that's all I'm hearing đ đ€Šđ»ââïž
Two of my favorite peeps!! â€
All I can do is cry. Cry listening and feeling the most heard and understood Iâve never felt before.
I'm blown away by this content. I recently read something similar, and it was absolutely captivating. "The Art of Meaningful Relationships in the 21st Century" by Leo Flint
I love these conversations, but Lewis, I think you give too many examples. Just cut it by 50% and I think the engagement would go up.
Thank you for hosting Dr Nicole. She has such a great message and her work so profound. Always love anything she has to share. So relatable. â€
Thank you so muchâ€
Dr. Nicole LePera you have a very profond sense of purpose for helping others.đź
†thank you both for being couragous enough to share your experiences to help others heal đ„° my whole world has changed this morning due to this space you have cultivated â„ïž
I claim a beautiful heart-centered healing for the friendship between myself and my best friend.
May all visible and invisible support surround us both in the healing power of love and truth.
It is possible, it is happening and it is divine. And so it is.
X I am having a really hard time finding a paper back copy of her newest book, âHow To Meet Yourselfâ. Please advise I donât want it on Audible.
Iâm on the waitlist!! Love your work and authenticity â€ïž
Sheâs amazing!! Goodness she gets me!! I do think sheâs describing a type 9 in the enneagram chart. Iâm type 9. I really think most of her audience may be a type 9 or have a partner thatâs a type 9. Type 9s need therapist like her â€
We forgive for ourselves 1st and foremost even if we don't get an apology which we never do with narcissist we have to know that karma is going to take its toll on those types of people and we have to remove ourselves from the toxic situations I want no contact 6 months ago and I have never felt better I literally had to block my mom and all of my siblings I only contact my dad and it's never felt so good it's heartbreaking because I'm all about family who you choose to involve in your life Blood and having the same last name doesn't mean your family!
My body loves being stressed, it's what it knows -> and if a person is around me, when I'm in that unfamiliar peaceful place, I might agitate the situation. Just to get back to the 'Comfort Zone". Bullseye!!! It makes sense and she offers ways to understand & change the patterns. Understanding what to expect is more than half the battle for me.
I love Nicole!
What about being in a relationship with someone who doesnât like to show affection with hugs and kisses? But the other persons love language is just thatđ€
super good
29:35 Wow so potent…I am 33 years old and had to learn, I have to love myself, learn self-love and compassion. Commit to it and follow through. Everything else will fall into place…easier said than done but yes, being present and making choices as best as I can and to slow down, Thank you so much.
It hurts extremely to say no so I said yes to someone in my family when she was struggling herself she needed me to help so she could go to work I felt I had to say yes.
I really wish you could be my therapist Dr Nicole