Your Therapy Masterclass! The Holistic Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera Shares Life-Changing Tips and Tools YOU Can Apply To Your Life Today!
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How do you know that you need therapy? Therapy, I think, can be incredibly beneficial. Again, I also know not all of us have access to it. And I know there are so many hours outside of that one hour that many of us get in a therapy room where these habits and patterns live and are coloring our lives. That is so clear. And I've never heard that before. How do you stop

spiral of negative thought. For someone who knows right now there's something off in their mental or emotional wellness, what exactly should they do right now? I think we won't ever feel whole, feel worthy, feel loved.

unless we are also. How do you know if your therapist is good? Our relationships can be our greatest teachers because we are blinded to ourselves in so many ways. We don't understand how powerful we are. Why do we stay in relationships with people that hurt us? You'll always hear me break down change, ending a relationship that hurts us down into two steps.

So what do you do if you're the loved one watching them?

continue to stay in a relationship that is either toxic or hurting them? What do you do? - Change happens when we first see what we're doing. And then when we give ourself the time and space without shame, without judgment, to get curious. - Are we wired to not be monogamous? You are in a throuple, right? So a couple is traditionally defined as two people

In a committed relationship, a thruple is three. There were people who did not accept it.

To begin to explore and for many of us, redevelop a relationship with ourselves. It is in our bones for so many of us to assign responsibility and blame to our partner, to whoever else, or how we feel. The way to live the most fulfilled, expressed life is by turning.

When you say that to somebody else, like, you made me feel a certain way, it's essentially saying you have the power to decide my feelings. And they actually don't. If we're aware of it and if we take it back, which I think is a big shift. I have these high explosive arguments, crazy feeling arguments, and then this passionate makeup sex afterward. I think secure grounded connection is secure calm.

It's grounded. And I think another thing indicator that often we see in relationships is if we self-sabotage them, if we push people away as I had done for many years when we really wanted them close. I have read that you can think yourself into a actual orgasm. Is this true, Dr. Nicola Pera?

Before we jump into this episode, I'd love to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews and one-on-one conversations with me and you to help you truly believe in yourself, trust yourself, and know you are enough so that you can become unstoppable in living your best life. I'll

All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see your comments and how many of you are sharing these episodes with everyone else. And I'm just so grateful to be here for you. And I'm so excited to go on this journey with you. So thank you for subscribing. It means so much to me.

Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief. And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox each and every Tuesday morning from me.

If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week, just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your one-on-one with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you.

If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love hitting your inbox, I'm your girl. Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes. Jamie Kern Lima is her name. Everybody needs Jamie Kern Lima in their life. Jamie Kern Lima. Jamie, you're so inspiring. Jamie Kern Lima.

You know her as the holistic psychologist. Dr. Nicola Pera is a number one New York Times bestselling author and more than 8 million people follow her online in a movement that she has literally created that's all about

self-healing. She's also a dear friend. I am so honored and so excited that she is on the show. Nicole, welcome to the Jamie Kern Lima Show. Jamie, thank you for having me. I've been waiting for this. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your beautiful show. I'm so grateful that you're here. And for so many people who maybe they're meeting you for the first time. I know in 2017, you were a practicing clinical psychologist and kind of fed up with traditional psychology. And

You started sort of doing the work of creating this whole new what's now a movement where you're combining traditional psychology and then mental and physical wellness with spirituality. So can you share, for those of us like learning about this for the first time, what is holistic psychology? What is the self-healers movement that is now millions and millions and millions of people strong?

I think as often is the case with a journey of transformation, I think for a lot of us it begins with a low place. And for me, it was feeling really disempowered, training very traditionally with this idea that the

the mind can create change. I had a very traditional practice doing a lot of talk therapy, seeing clients week after week, you know, diving into insight, understanding their problems. Though what I continued to hear session after session was a lot of frustration from the clients that I was working with and what I was feeling in my own life outside of the clinical room was a lot of disempowerment, a lot of frustration. And

trying to really understand for me, I'm a lifetime learner as my dad likes to joke with me. I was wondering like why is it that I'm not being as impactful as a therapist? Why is it that I'm struggling repeating my own patterns in my personal relationships and

When I went online and discovered a whole new world of science that was not offered to me in my training program, science that included the body, our nervous system, nutrition, and really how powerful, in particular, our subconscious mind is,

It opened so many doors for me and inspired me to then begin to not only think about myself holistically. Yes, I have a powerful mind, though I'm also, for me, living in a body that's carrying a lot of trauma, a lot of dysregulation from my earliest experiences. And I, like most of us, are running on that blind autopilot.

which allowed me to understand why the clients I was working with were struggling to, as I say, build that bridge from insight into action or to really make use of the conversations we were having and the tools that we were having. And having gone on my own individual journey of change, incredible change, transformation, it inspired me to then update my practice. So really simply holistic is honoring the powerful mind, the body that we're all living in, the physiological imbalances that are driving many of our repeated patterns.

I know you went to one of the top schools, more than one in the country. And here's what I want to ask you as you say this.

you know, for me, Nicole, when I was in my 30s and dreaming of changing the entire beauty industry, right? I had people tell me, you can't change the beauty industry. And I mean, I was walking into this industry of giants. And as you, you know, share this part of your story, I'm imagining you in 2017. How old were you then? In 2017, I was about 35. 35. So I want everyone listening to just

put yourself in the spot right now. So you're 35, you've had some of the best training in the world, right? And there's all of this history in this massive industry of what psychotherapy looks like, of what it means to be a clinical psychologist. And you're thinking, this isn't it. This isn't it. And having that moment, because a lot of times, I just want to speak to every, especially every woman listening to this right now, we have these ideas, right?

And we realize, wait, well, maybe I could do this better or different. Maybe I could help more people because I'm frustrated that it's not helping me enough or maybe it's not helping my patients enough. Was there a part of you that thought like, who am I to think I could change an entire industry? Because you probably didn't know then that fast forward to right now, you would have millions and millions of people all around the globe speaking

saying that what they were doing maybe wasn't working with their therapy or they're supplementing it now and kind of combining it with everything that you teach and you've really created this movement and shifted an entire industry. So I just want to just ask you about that moment because I think –

So many people have moments like this in their life where no matter what career they're in, no matter what creative field, where they think like, wait, if I, maybe I could do it better or different, but then they doubt themselves out of their own destiny. So when you take yourself to 2017 and you're having these big ideas, A, could you ever imagine that you'd be sitting here like right now talking about this global movement where

How did you believe you were worthy of doing this? How did you do it? How did you take that chance? And I just want kind of everyone out there to put themselves in your shoes as you share this because I think it's something that most of us maybe doubt ourselves out of taking chances like this that could literally help so many people and change the world.

Before I can even entertain a thought like, who am I to do this very great thing that I could even see as being possible? And I think, again, I'm speaking possibly to a lot of the women listening in particular. There was a very conditioned pleaser part of me, people pleaser, that doubted my own truth.

For so long, even outside of my professional world where, of course, I had to worry about or I worried about what my colleagues would think, what everyone that came through a similar program would think that now that I'm talking about all of these other things.

subjects in my personal life. I had spent decades, you know, three plus decades watering down my true perspectives on certain things, especially within my family. Being so disconnected from my emotions or if I was aware of what I was feeling in any given moment, I would suppress it, usually in concern of or if I had an idea of what I needed in any given moment, I would play some tape forward in my head

And then worry about how the person on the receiving end would experience me. Would I disappoint them? Would I upset them? So as I was coming to these new truths that I was living in action and creating incredible transformation in my life, particularly around my experience of anxiety, which

By that point, I thought, hmm, this would just be something I always experienced. And being able to change and knowing in that kind of guttural soul place, wow, Nicole, this is really helping you, that conditioning was so strong. I played that tape forward. So you were practicing and running your practice traditionally with patients, and you started applying holistic psychology to yourself and seeing transformation in your own life first. Yes.

And then were you walking into your office doing traditional talk therapy? So I was walking into my office doing traditional talk therapy. And at the same time, I was beginning to explore conceptually how I might teach these concepts to others to be able to ultimately use with my clients. And because it was starting to feel really inauthentic.

that I wasn't sharing. Once I had started to make the progress I was making, I started to feel like, oh, I need to have these conversations, especially with some particular clients that I knew would be open to it. So I was very honest.

As I started at the same time seeing my online platform develop, the community develop, seeing and hearing the need for these holistic kind of models and desire to work with me one-on-one, I started to open up some sessions. So I was doing holistic work at the same time. And then because I didn't feel in alignment, I spoke directly to the clients that I was seeing traditionally and let them know what I was doing, imagining that some might

happen upon my account and be like, oh, what is this? What is she talking about here? And knowing it could be a value, though ultimately I let the client determine whether or not it was something they were comfortable in continuing to hear about, whether they wanted to talk a little more practically about applying some of the tools, and some did, and

And some very much were more interested in just having that space to be supportive, to get the traditional talk therapy. So I honored those arrangements until I got to the point of really wanting to transition over really fully and completely to doing the holistic work. Do you, you know, just one thing I'd love to do is just kind of,

give this space for you to share a few things. So I always feel like I have the listener's heart in my hands, right? And there's so many questions. I actually opened it up to my community to ask, what would you ask? Nicole, if you could ask anything. And I even asked, if you could ask a clinical psychologist anything,

anything, what would you ask? If you could ask a holistic psychologist anything, even anonymously, what would you ask? And it was fascinating to see the answers and the questions that came in. And so I'm going to dive into a few of those because I think that there are so many people out there that have a lot of questions. They're unsure, you know,

if how they feel is okay, if how they feel is normal. So I want to dive into a few of those. And before I do, though, can you just kind of big picture for people that have been maybe in traditional therapy for a long time? Because I know

in any industry or as things evolve and as things change, it's not always met with open arms. And I just remember personally even inside the beauty industry growing, trying to do a company differently and try to, for us we were trying to be inclusive of real people and all the things we were trying to do different, it was met with so much opposition.

for a while until it wasn't, until it wasn't. And then eventually so many of the people said it would never work or all those kind of things, then they're doing it themselves and it's just this evolution and you can see it across different industries. And so when it comes to, you know, you entering this, creating this whole new space, this whole new offering in a very

traditional industry, what can you just share with people just big picture if they are in therapy right now and maybe it's traditional talk therapy, you know, what would you say is the difference between that and what you do and what is the difference between that and the self-healing movement? And without throwing too many questions out at once, just can you combine the two and be successful?

So traditional talk therapy, and again, I do believe most of us need that safe space to talk about whatever happened, whatever is happening, whatever we wish to happen in the future.

Holistic again includes the body and I think another component of holistic work for me includes the very simple reality that to create change because so much of us is wired into this autopilot that we're repeating day in and day out, so many of our habits that is. To create change we really do have to empower ourselves

to make new choices each and every day. So the way I think of holistic is understanding that the reason why we struggle to change, even though we have an incredible capacity to create change at any point of our life, and I do want listeners to hear that. Mm-hmm.

Because it saddens me when I hear people, especially older, in years who are like, oh, I can't change. It's impossible for me. And that's just simply not physiologically true. We can change at any time. Most of us, though, are stuck because we are repeating patterns that at one point were protective.

And so the concern and what I would see play out is when we were continuing just to talk about problems or not apply those action steps or not equipped ourselves to understand that change, even if it is in a positive direction, will create resistance. It will create discomfort. While we can change, our body feels protected in our old habits, even those that don't serve us.

So it's applying these new small choices that we can make day in and day out, which in my opinion need to include our body, need to for many of us include expanding our body's ability to tolerate from the natural stress of change,

to for many of us shedding identities, becoming a new person, all of the fears and concerns that come along with dynamically then changing in these embedded relational networks that so many of us have found ourselves operating in for so long. So that is, I think, the biggest shift between traditional and holistic work. Self-healing, in my opinion, is really just empowering the self, the individual, as the main active participant.

So even for those of us who have access to these helpful clinicians or therapists or supportive coaches, it is us each and every day that's waking up, that's either dropping back and blindly going on our autopilot throughout the day or remaining committed to creating new choices in our mind and in our body. And it also, I think, applies to the many of us who have been made to doubt

our own intuition, our own instincts. I think for me, like a lot, we go into a supportive place and we almost squash our own knowing, right? We assume that someone, because they have letters after their name, and this applies outside of even the traditional psychology field. I, I've seen it in the medical field. I seen it in my own family, you know, seeking medical treatment, this idea that someone else knows better than what I know to

to be true. So self-healing, I think, I hope to be a movement of empowerment where we can learn how to be the active participant that we need to be to create incredible change and incredible transformation in our life. And absolutely, a lot of people in my community membership

Self Healers Circle have access to the support of professionals, are in therapy themselves, and are also engaging in community-based healing, which became such a priority for me as I was creating the platform on Instagram and seeing how global the community was, how many people were living the same struggles and empowering themselves to change in the same ways.

I became acutely aware of the lack of accessibility, especially outside of the states, the United States here. So for me, knowing that not everyone will have access to the helping professionals or to the financial resources to be able to utilize those services, community-based healing is number one, a priority in addition to free and accessible content on my social media pages.

After reading so many, so many stories out there, so many testimonials out there, there are so many people saying that they have shaved years off of their healing journey by doing this.

by combining their self-healing with the access that they have to traditional therapy. And so just to kind of clarify this as well, because I think with anything new, with anything that's shifting things forward, there's always confusion out there. And so when it comes to the self healers movement, you're not saying stop your traditional therapy, stop your, you're saying, uh,

that whether it's in addition to or if it's what you have access to, here's how to take power into your own hands. 100%. I appreciate, Jamie, you bringing that up because I do see misinterpretations actually to the extent where people have believed me to be cited saying, don't go to therapy. And that's never a statement that would come out of my mouth. I truly believe we all need a safe, secure relationship

somewhere. Though again, not all of us have access to it. And actually when I began my healing journey and discovered all the ways I was suppressing my wants and needs like I was describing earlier and needing to create space and I made the very difficult choice to separate, to take some time away from my family of origin, it ended up being about a year and a half for me to just begin to rediscover who I was outside of those very enmeshed codependent relationships where I didn't know who I was outside of

the function I played in my family, which was a lot of reliance my family had had on me for a very long time. And after that period of separation, we reunited in a family therapist office. That's where my family very gratefully took my exit.

to be an inspiration for them to do some of their own self-reflection, some of their own beautiful work in healing and creating changes in their own individual relationships, in their own dynamics as a family. And then we all made the shared decision to reintegrate and to explore new dynamics, new boundaries moving forward that would better work for all of us, allow us all to be in a deeper, more authentic relationship. And we did so in a therapist office. So

therapy, I think, can be incredibly beneficial. Again, I also know not all of us have access to it. And I know there are so many hours outside of that one hour that many of us get in a therapy room where these habits and patterns live and are coloring our lives. So it's like the power combo. Yes. I think so. Whatever you have access to plus this, which has become so accessible thanks to all the stuff that you're doing online, which is really...

a beautiful use of technology, you know, there's a lot of, um, yeah. So, okay. So shifting gears for a second, uh, you say, you know, being, um, you say being loved for who you truly are is a fundamental human need, right?

Yet so many of us are so scared to show up in this world as who we truly are for fear we won't be loved if we do. Like it's a real thing. And just seeing a pattern of you being willing to show up as who you truly are and what you truly feel in your profession, seeing a pattern of you now sharing how you've done that in your family, um,

You recently shared something that, you know, you have millions of people who look up to you globally. And you recently shared a part of who you truly are that could potentially put some of that at risk. I think a lot of people are going to learn a brand new word today. You are in a thruple.

So a couple is traditionally defined as two people in a committed relationship. A thruple is three. Three. So can you share with me your journey of this being a part of your life? And also, the part I also really want to know about is that decision of this is who I am.

And I'm going to share it. And why? Because so many of us fear if we just, we think if people only knew, if people knew my past, if people knew my mistakes, if they knew how out there my thoughts were, I would not be loved for who I am. It is such a fear that keeps us hiding. So can you share about that?

You're in a threeple. That fear, I just want to speak to that really quickly, that comes from a real place. For many of us, a lived experience in our earliest relationships when we were dependent on some version of care being given to us to keep us physiologically alive. And when we didn't have a safe, secure, emotionally attuned caregiver, curious about ourselves as a different individual and creating the space for us to express whatever that meant for us,

When many more of us have been told directly or indirectly the things that we need to shift or change about ourselves, the things we need to do or stop doing to maintain those connections because we need it, those connections, we will develop, as your beautiful new book kind of states, this idea that we're not worthy. We're actually quite unworthy unless we keep

hiding and suppressing. And as I call it in the book, playing these conditioned selves or these versions of ourself. So I want to honor how very real and ingrained these patterns are, why we can't just say, oh, and here maybe you and I say on this beautiful conversation, oh, it's safe to be who we are. Wired into our mind and body at one time, it was not safe. Our connections were at risk. So one of the major

things I saw myself doing, which is why I was so concerned about expressing myself authentically, what all my colleagues think. Expressing myself personally, telling others what I wanted or needed in relationships was

was in fear of those relationships ending people not liking me me disappointing people as i worked through that because it does feel it's not just again something we can affirm away putting ourself out there is vulnerable tolerating the fear and sometimes the reaction that we fear we will get when we get that continuing to live in alignment i had done that

Social media was a really great practice for me and it's quite honestly one of the reasons I created the account was to practice authentically sharing my truth. And I'd done that for long enough and felt the difference in my body of how it feels not to have that sensor in my mind, not to always be worrying about what people think and just being able to be myself as I am. I knew what that translated to. I felt in greater flow. My relationships became deeper and more authentic.

So as I was continuing on in my personal journey with my partner Lolly, who I have now been together with for 10 years, we connected with Jenna, who became a part of the business, to be quite honest, when we opened up the membership. She was a community member who I would get

get familiar with people's handles very early on in the journey because they would always be commenting and this was someone I knew that I was very aligned with. So she was part of your self-healers community. She was part of the self-healer community on the Instagram account. Still a lot of members of the community from the early days I still know by handle. I love the opportunity when I get to meet them in person and she was one of those. I saw what she was sharing under my post on her own page. I sensed alignment.

When the circle opened up, we desperately needed support. Lolly and I, we needed someone else to help us practically run the business. She swooped in with a DM near immediately when we had put up a story telling how much we needed support in a given moment and she became part of the business. And we all ended up living in the...

LA area and spent some now in-person time together. And as the relationship continued, it became clear to the three of us that there was deeper feelings happening. It's funny when I hear you say throupled too, this was not a word that I had ever heard

heard about in a million years. I never thought about a polyamorous or an open relationship. I never thought about a relationship outside of the relationship that I was in with Lolly, though each of us personally committed to being who we are and to speaking what was on our heart as we became aware that what was on our heart was interest in seeing what was possible in terms of a professional relationship.

evolving the relationship of course spending several months now in what I call an expanded relationship all googling oh can you do this what is this turns out it's called a thruple and

at the time we were recording podcasts together, Jen and I, so we're still working together, sharing much of our individual journeys. We're running the circle together where we, you know, present things quite often sharing our journeys. And here was another moment where it started to feel misaligned where like when I was in that treatment room, Oh, I have all of this holistic information and I'm not sharing it. This doesn't feel good. I don't feel like I'm in my flow. I was starting to feel that way. Um,

professionally. Oh, I'm leaving out or I'm modifying parts of my conversation because I'm not yet out in this way. And to speak to your point, worrying, what would people think knowing it's not a traditional relationship, knowing that some people would reject it and see me in the work differently.

What was more important for me at that time was continuing to live authentically. So making the decision to come out, if you will, a second time now on Instagram and let the community know so that I could speak more freely so that as people were starting to see me publicly and come up and say hi, I didn't have to worry about how I was presenting myself. And of course, there were people who did not.

accept it in some ways. And there were so many more who accepted it with open arms, who acknowledged and appreciated my ability to speak my truth. And I think this applies even outside of our truths in our relationships. Not everyone is going to go on a journey of opening their relationship, though. The beautiful point you made earlier, so many of us know what's on our heart.

And we don't make the choice to speak it or we don't make the choice to be ourself in any given context. And my hope for sharing this part of my more intimate journey is giving us all the permission to listen to what's on our heart. It's a very powerful part of our individual experience and giving each of us the courage to learn how to live in that authentic self-expression.

I know in your new book, which we'll talk a lot about, How to Be the Love You Seek, you share that Jenna came to you and Lolly and kind of sat with you each separately one-on-one and shared how she was feeling. So here's someone working for you, working for you guys. And then she shares. And then you guys kind of

took some time to see how you felt did you before that already have those thoughts like did you already have those feelings that like you that were stronger than just a professional relationship or a friendship yes though I would not have allowed them to be in my conscious mind before I even entertained oh what's happening here right that censoring part of me would have said oh well

This can't happen here for business reasons because we are shared in vision and in purpose, the three of us, in terms of service to the community and all of the opportunities that the way that we're able to serve on such a grand scale. So the business part of me would be like, oh, I don't want to mess up that relationship. The professional part of me very much coming through a conditioned system, myself operating in relationships where I wouldn't even entertain anyone.

attraction somewhere else. Because for forever, I took that to mean, oh, this must mean that this isn't the perfect, the right partner for you. If you're looking over here, or if you're, you know, able to have emotional needs met outside of your relationship,

then this must mean something about your relationship. And so for me, really, and one of my hopes of this work is if you do have that conditioning, all of you listening, I don't think, I think attraction is a normal thing, whether or not you act on it is another choice entirely. I think that we're driven to existing community in groups. This is one of the reasons why the circle now exists, meaning it is a,

very large and unrealistic expectation that some of us put on one person to meet all of our physical and emotional needs. And I think the more we can expand outward and develop friendships with shared interests, develop other people that we can go to when we need support,

I think that that can only expand our ability to feel supported and to be connected in our community. There's so much more coming up in this episode. You are not going to want to miss it. But first, I wanted to share this with you. In life, you don't soar to the level of your hopes and dreams. You stay stuck at the level of your self-worth.

When you build your self-worth, you change your entire life. And that's exactly why I wrote my new book, Worthy, how to believe you are enough and transform your life for you. If you have some self-doubt to destroy and a destiny to fulfill, Worthy is for you.

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Overcome limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome. Achieve your hopes and dreams by believing you are worthy of them and so much more. Are you ready to unleash your greatness and step into the person you were born to be? Imagine a life with zero self-doubt and unshakable self-worth.

Get your copy of Worthy, plus some amazing thank you bonus gifts for you at worthybook.com or the link in the show notes below. Imagine what you'd do if you fully believed in you. It's time to find out with Worthy. Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief.

And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox each and every Tuesday morning from me.

If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week, just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your one-on-one with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you.

If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love hitting your inbox, I'm your girl. Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes. And now more of this incredible conversation together. I would have maybe had aversion. I mean, there was attraction there, of course.

Though I wouldn't have allowed myself to engage with it because I would immediately have worried what that meant about my relationship with Lolly. So I'm indebted to Jenna. She's always been someone. We come from very different backgrounds and very different paths that led us to working together and now being in a personal relationship. Though

her path has always been heart-led, heart-driven. She was always very clear. So her courageous moment of coming to both of us and acknowledging without any expectation of what the two of us would think or do with the information was so relieving because it did give language to

to something that was beneath the surface for all of us. And it also opened then the possibility in a way that I don't know if I would have entertained it myself. So you're saying for people right now listening who might be in a relationship, maybe a marriage for decades or maybe a newer relationship, if they have these sort of thoughts or these attractions outside of their relationship, that it's not necessarily an indication that

that they're in the wrong relationship. In my opinion, no. I think that human beings, you know, are and can be attracted naturally, even to different aspects of personality, of a relationship beyond just physical features. Mm-hmm.

And I also know, like I said, that we're wired to exist in groups. I think a lot of the ways we're living now is quite unnatural. In separate homes, some of us even completely in distance from our families or our supportive communities being made to move for work.

or for whatever reason. And I think we need more than one person at any given time. Because I think, again, not only do we put an unrealistic expectation on one partner to be available to us at any given moment,

I think that some of us look and feel like if we need support, this person needs to be there, especially if they're our primary person. And they're failing us if they're not getting everything we need. And the reality of it is, and I've come to embody this reality because I am like that too. If I need you, I want you to and expect you to not only read my mind that I need you, but to be able to have the energetic and emotional resources to give me support.

in any given moment. And that's, I think, kind of removing the reality of all of the other factors that are impacting someone else's life, even if it's our person. They might have something going on outside of our relationship with their family, with their work. They might have something going on personally on a deeper level, even within our relationship. And they might not be able to give the support that we need in any given moment.

So now we're creating such a conflict because it's not to say that our need isn't real. We do need support. And if the person that we're depending on isn't able to give us the support and we either are demanding it or indirectly trying to force it to be the case,

Now neither person feels good because one person feels abandoned when they need support and the other person feels like they're letting the person that they love down. That's so powerful. So many people live in resentment because they feel like their partner is not meeting their needs. I know a lot of people get those needs met through their faith, through their relationship with God or through friendships, etc. Do you think as humans...

Are we wired to not be monogamous, but is it socially conditioned belief systems or perhaps faith belief systems that have us in this expectation that we should be? That's a really interesting question to consider. I do think we all need support outside of one individual, whether or not that means we enter into...

a kind of physical, committed, the type of relationship I think that we're defining as monogamous. I don't think that that is on everyone's journey. Though what I believe needs to be are other people around to help relieve, whether it's just the general labor that goes into running a family, especially when children are evolved, the emotional needs of support that we have in any given moment. And I'm hopeful because I'm seeing...

we're not going in any new direction. We're almost going back to the way our ancestors had lived and had survived and thrived.

and allowed us to thrive as a species. And I'm seeing a lot of movement in terms of schooling options where families or parents get together and homeschool children in a more community-based setting. I'm seeing more community-based living environments popping up. And I think that will allow us to be supportive of more people and get the support that we need when one person is unable to show up in any given moment.

Do you think it's possible, and I know that this is happening through the self-healers movement, um,

But do you think through technology, right? Because a lot of us feel... Like I love that you're talking about how you use social media to like literally stretch yourself more and more to show up authentically, to see how it feels. And I always feel like it can be scary because we're scared that if we're us, we won't be loved. But then when you actually do it and someone sees you for who you truly are, I feel like it tastes like freedom, right? It tastes like

freedom and like you're alive. And I think it's this journey. And so hearing how you've done it in different areas of your life, I think is really powerful. A lot of people are so scared to do it. A lot of people feel technology has put a barrier of disconnection in their relationships or they can't tell if someone's filtered or unfiltered. Do they really look like that?

their picture on the dating app? Like, is that even who they say they are? Yet through everything you're doing in your community, I mean, over 20,000 people coming together, which is a sold out Madison Square Garden, by the way, they're coming together in this community to heal together. Do you think it's that need for connection and community support that you're talking about that people are starting to realize, okay, maybe...

I can't just put everything I need on my partner." Or you know what a lot of us do? We put everything we need on ourselves and then we just internalize it. We sometimes don't even share with our partner or with... As adults, it becomes for some people harder to make friends. So a lot of people feel more lonely than ever.

But also when they go online, they see, you know, comparison everywhere on Instagram or people are posting their highlight reel. They see all of these things. And so how do people, you know, utilize technology in this new world we're in to

to try and not be more disconnected, but try and form connections or even in their real lives outside of technology. How do people curate their circles to bring more support into their lives? Because it is one of the biggest questions that I get asked is just like, I feel lonely.

How do you not feel lonely in 2024? And I very much relate to that feeling of loneliness, even though I was always in bed. I lived in New York City. I had a very active social life. I was always in a relationship, relationship after relationship. Yet I felt so deeply lonely. And to speak to your beautiful point, Jamie, one of the reasons why I felt so deeply lonely is because I didn't share anything.

what I really needed emotionally because I was right back to that child whose mother of no fault of her own based on her own past, her conditioning, her own trauma, wasn't able to be emotionally attuned to me.

She was able to connect with me when I was doing something, when I was achieving something, which is why I then entered into this habitual pattern of trying to be very successful in all of the ways externally and in trying to be or limit the amount that I felt to be a burden to others emotionally.

And what that then looked like was pushing myself past my physical limits, not even being connected, as I shared earlier, to what my emotions were. If I had an instinct of what I needed emotionally, feeling way too vulnerable and almost anticipating that my person that I would go to in that moment would show up just like my mom once did, which was be unavailable.

So I kind of played this subconscious tape forward, convincing myself out of even being open for the support that I needed. So loneliness was such a theme. I carried it through my life. I viscerally can feel, for me, it feels like a pressure on my chest, like a hole. And I remember being a child and having that feeling, being in relationship and feeling alone in a crowded room. And

Again, that commitment to being myself was really a commitment and desire to find authentic connections with other people. And seeing social media technology as it was evolving and seeing it as being a possibility for not only me to create space for authentic self-expression, but I still remember the days of AOL chat rooms when my mind was blown open that, oh, I could talk to people on the internet. One of my desires was to find

authentic relationships. Though technology, in my opinion, like all things, can be used in so many different ways. There are people that use technology to present different non-authentic aspects of themselves and their lives. Technology can be a distraction where we're just scrolling and not actually

present to ourselves or to our relationships. We're using it as a protection from being present to whatever might be there that might be overwhelming us or that might be uncomfortable for us. So technology in general, I think, is not the issue per se, though learning how to be a conscious participant in technology, determining if you are using it for endless comparisons to feel bad about yourself.

to validate that deep feeling of unworthiness. If that's the reason you're using it or using it to distract yourself from deeper things that are happening, then we don't have to shame the fact that that's what's happening right now. Oftentimes that's a learned habit. A lot of times it's aimed at protection. We could begin to be a more conscious consumer, putting boundaries up for ourself,

determining how we're maybe using technology and presenting ourself. Because when I hear loneliness, what I kind of translate that to is we desire authentic relationships. And to get an authentic relationship, there has to be authenticity that we're giving out to attract the type of relationship that we want, not the mask that we think is keeping us protected. I want everyone to take note of this right now who feels lonely in your life.

Something you said is so powerful because a lot of times we think, oh, I just need to make more friends, new friends, or I need to find a partner, or I'm going to go put myself out there in social activities. And maybe those things are important, but what you're saying is you were doing all those things most of your life and felt completely lonely. You felt lonely in crowded rooms. You felt lonely around people. You felt lonely in relationships.

And it was through learning who you truly are, showing up authentically that you're able to actually have connection. So I think this is powerful because a lot of people out there are thinking, I'm going to solve my loneliness problems once I make friends or once I get in a relationship or once I start going to social activities. But you can do all those things

and feel so lonely if you're not actually showing up as who you truly are. And so on that question, 'cause I know we talked about this a little bit about how there's just such a fear

of if I am me, I will not be loved. Like I wrote a whole chapter on it in my book, Worthy. If I am me, I will not be loved, which is a lie we tell ourselves. What are some steps people can do right now who maybe have these thoughts? I have had these thoughts my whole life. Oh, I'm too different or odd or, you know, people used to always call me crazy. All of these things just because I had different ideas or thought differently about things. And I think

So many of us think that there's something wrong with us. And if we fully show everything, we won't be loved. And so for everyone listening right now, what are some steps they can take right now to start stepping in to showing up as who they truly are?

saying what they truly mean, actually tuning into how do you even truly feel? A lot of us have worn a mask for so long, we don't even know. So like, how do we do that? I think it's really important to normalize not knowing.

because again, I think this is another area as we get older in years, we criticize and shame ourselves for questioning who it is that we could be, for coming to the awareness that we don't know what we think, what we want, what we need. And I think that that's another area. And even going back to what you were saying, I'm really happy you clarified. If we're not being who we are in all of these different circumstances, unconsciously what we're doing is continuing to validate that belief that we can't.

be who we are, right? We gather friends, we put ourselves out there in all these situations. And if we're still not feeling that connection that we're desiring, the only way that our subconscious mind is going to make sense of it is, oh, because this is continued confirmation that I'm not worthy. Okay.

So the practical is to become aware, not first of what we want or what we need or even being able to make choices in that direction, is to becoming aware of what are our habits? How are we showing up? How do we think we have to show up for other people? What is the role that we're playing in our relationships? Because until we see in action what it is that we're doing, all of the moments where we're instinctually saying yes when we mean no,

We're not even pausing to check in, just showing up as many of us do as the caretaker, always in service of someone else, maybe even thinking that that's what selflessness or love is. We have to see in action the habits that are creating the dynamics that we're playing in our relationships or that are keeping our focus away from the most foundational relationship, which is with ourselves.

And then in those moments where we see ourself instinctually going to play that role, hitting pause, delaying the conversation or the response and giving ourself time and space. When I was sharing that one of the most difficult decisions, if not the most difficult decision I made was

was to take space from my family. And that was because of no fault of what they were doing or not doing. That was because I was so instinctually programmed to just show up in service of whatever they needed in any given moment that I didn't have that space to pause. And as I made that choice to take the time away, to give myself that pause, regardless of

how they were feeling in reaction to it, in fear of how they were feeling, in concern about would they even want to reconnect with me, though very affirmed that I needed that because I couldn't separate myself otherwise.

And then I got curious. And then I spent time not even shaming myself in terms of what entertaining, asking ourself the question. So practically, again, breaking the habit. A lot of times that means hitting the pause in those moments where we're instinctually compelled to act or play the role. And then not judging ourself for needing time and space to turn inward, to begin to explore, ask ourself.

What does my body need in this moment physically, emotionally? What's coming up for me? What sensations am I feeling in my body? What am I feeling that I might want to do with these sensations to help myself support myself through them? So of course, these aren't, I think, steps that happen overnight, though change happens when we first see what we're doing. And then when we give ourself the time and space without shame, without judgment to get curious, right?

to begin to explore and for many of us redevelop a relationship with ourselves one where yes, the world could still be requesting things of us. We still might want to show up in service of others as I very much do, though we have a space within those relationships and within that, that service that we're giving to tend to our needs, our wants, which are changing in any given moment. So take, so take,

First of all, space for awareness, just starting to be aware of, am I showing up authentically? And then like, how does this feel in my body? Right. Whenever I've heard it said this way, that when something is a lie, we can, we, or, or not right for us, we feel our body tense. Right. And when it's, when it's aligned or congruent, right.

or authentic, we can kind of feel our body relax a little bit and you start to just notice that, right? Notice what comes up for you. And I think also like one little step is what you mentioned is just, you know, when you

not saying yes when you really mean no. Like try it once today, right? Like when someone asks you to do something, take that one little step and actually try saying what you really mean. And it's kind of like one step at a time, but it's scary for a lot of people. But I think that, you know, you mentioned about you also just taking a pause, right? There are so many people that

believe they need a pause from someone in their family or their entire family or perhaps a friendship, another kind of codependent relationship in their life, whatever it might be. But they're scared to set a boundary. They don't know how to set boundaries. They think, am I going to hurt that other person if I set a boundary? And can you talk about like what are boundaries that

Why do we need them? How do we make sure boundaries don't make us feel even more disconnected? Boundaries really simply are limits or space of separation that we can create between us as an individual and all of our relationships. And to relate and to be of service and in true connection and in true self-expression, which allows us to be in an interdependent relationship where I'm me, you're

You're you and together we can join together in harmony. We can negotiate to make sure that both of our wants and needs are in consideration for whatever choices that we're making forward. We have to have that space of separation where I don't blend into you. I don't feel responsible for taking care of your needs. I don't feel responsible for your emotions and that's,

that description is really what I learned in my childhood, that there wasn't separation, that I was defined by my achievements, by how my mom was present to me in those moments.

felt very responsible because of lack of emotional boundaries, would hear moments or be disconnected from my mom in moments where I upset her or disappoint her in my actions or my expression. She would often give me the silent treatment. So a lot of us develop this lack of boundary, though boundaries are important because not only do they allow us to meet our own needs, which allows us to then give. It's the, you know, the...

uh air that when the when we're on an airplane right and they get in the mask falls down oxygen that's like that analogy i mean it took me until recently to really understand as simple as that is the message behind that if we're not physically

surviving or thriving, it's very hard to care for another individual. So for many of us who have learned codependent or lacked boundaries or who have even taken this selfless act of service to be this idealized good person conditioning, I think that a lot of us have, boundaries are necessary. Having time and space for our needs allows us to give and support and be of service to other people.

So learning where our boundaries exist in terms of do I have space in my relationships to tend to my physical needs? Or am I always caring for someone else's physical needs? Do I have space to attune to my emotional needs?

Can I give support and receive support in the moments where I need either? Do I have that point of separation? And when we either explore and see that we don't, then we have to stay committed. As easy as I think as it is for many of us to look outside and to wish someone would just act differently so that then we could feel or do differently in our relationships, the more empowered space really to be is what can I do? Can I set a boundary or a limit?

Can I show up a little less frequently when someone needs me if I don't energetically have the resources to be available? Can I acknowledge the moments where I don't have anything to give emotionally because I'm in a state of emotional need? And can I create that space and allow myself off the hook to not feel like I have to show up in service of someone else? And I think the important part of this is not just becoming aware of where my boundaries are and creating new ones.

It's back to that step that I was talking about very early of making the new choices, right? Imagining and navigating all of the fear and concern of what will this person do? Navigating and receiving the reaction, right?

Because at bare minimum, what we will do, especially if we've had a relationship for a long period of time, we're going to violate people's expectations. Yeah. They're used to us saying yes. Yes. They're used to us showing up. They might be used to us caring for them in a certain way. And now they're hearing that you need some time or space away or you have emotions too and you need consideration and support. This is going to be surprising to them at minimum. Mm-hmm.

And especially if we're taking space away from a particular relationship, it could activate that person's abandonment wound. So now they have a very big reaction to what it is that we need that might not be anything connected to us at all from their own past experience. So we might get the reaction that we fear.

Though on the other side of it, just bringing back to my own relationship with my family, they didn't receive it well when I first made the request or told them essentially that I was taking time away. I know that there was a lot of shock. I know that there was a lot of pain, a lot of hurt, a lot of abandonment. I know we all share emotional abandonment wounds connected again to our relationship with my mom. What I know on the other side of it

is how much stronger and authentic our relationships have become now that I walked through that discomfort and they very much were open to reconnecting with me as a lot of our relationships will be. I think that's so powerful because people fear if I set that boundary, I might lose that person. I might lose that friend. I might lose that job. I might lose, you know,

my family. I might lose their approval. And would you say that if you know you need to set a boundary and you don't because you think you're doing it for the other person, you're actually always betraying yourself,

But also, you know, I think it's powerful just like in, you know, in a goal or a dream or a business to have that why beneath the why for why you're really doing what you're doing. I think with boundaries, it's important to know, you know, to kind of set that why I need to do this so that you can lean on that because it's probably going to be met, like you said, with resistance, right?

And kind of knowing, okay, if I really want the depth of connection with my family or with my partner or with my friend, if I really want to last in this job a long time and find fulfillment, having that big vision in why I'm doing this boundary, like I've got to set this boundary. If I really want to be filled up myself so I can love and give more to that other person.

I need to set this boundary. Like having that why there, because it's going to, it's tough. People don't get it. They don't like change. They think you're changing. They think that, you know, you don't appreciate them anymore. You take them for granted. All those things that come when you, when you set a boundary. But I love hearing your, you know, your journey of how you set a boundary with your family took what you said a year and a half away from them after being in a relationship where they depended on you so much.

but you needed to find who you were, how you really felt. And now, and now you guys have that much more can like authentically connected relationship. And I think even beyond the self betrayal that you were referencing that happens and we don't honor or set our own boundaries and honor them is the resentment. Like we were talking about earlier, it then becomes so natural for us to get upset and

directly or indirectly with the other person, holding them responsible for our lack of boundaries on some at least subconscious level. And then over time, that resentment can quite quickly turn into contempt, which has been studied in relational literature, relational research that can be one of the number one killers

points on which factors that contribute to the end of the relationship. So I can make a case not only will allow us to be in alignment with ourselves individually so that we can be of service to others, it will decrease the natural resentment that happens as a byproduct of us not having our needs met.

It's so powerful. I want to recap this. I know there's a study, I believe it's by the Gottmans, that show the one predictor. If they watch couples, and I think they've watched tens of thousands of married couples, the one predictor that a marriage is going to fail is if they observe contempt in that marriage. And what you just said is so powerful. It's like,

You yourself, if you're not setting a boundary, can easily start to resent the other person. That can easily form contempt. So you think you're going to not set the boundary because you want the marriage to last or you want whatever, but actually if you're starting to build resentment or build contentment internally, it can literally be the end of it.

That's really powerful. Another powerful reason to just be aware of them. Because I think that so many of us are raised to be people pleasers and we think a boundary is not going to please a person. So then we like, you know what I mean? And so this is...

So good. It's almost like whether you're doing this for yourself or you want to please that other person so much that you want their needs to be met. Well, the way to do that is to set your own boundaries, fill your own tank, make sure you're full so you can love more true, more connected, and more. So however you slice and dice it,

Setting boundaries is important. But it's hard for a lot of people. And this all goes back to, I think, the underlying kind of conversation we're having around belief in the self and the worthiness that we have to set the boundary, to show up as who we are, to be supported and connected in our authentic self-expression. The more we, in action, live those choices every day, even when they're hard, the

the more this is how, in my opinion, beliefs truly change. Affirmations are an incredibly important tool to affirm a new way of thinking, though that has to go hand in hand with these daily choices. And when we're acting in self-betrayal, when we're neglecting ourself so we think in service of someone else,

the belief that we're strengthening, like I was sharing earlier, is one of unworthiness. So when we shift that and make the small choices by setting boundaries, by allowing ourself the space to meet our needs, to individually be in our own authentic self-expression, the more now we're living the experience of worthiness. Yeah.

Sarah on my team and I have talked about this example of like how we're kind of trained to show up and wake up in the morning and put on like our fill in the blank, our name uniform and show up as who the world wants us to show up as. So, but what I want to ask you about that is you were talking about this, the power of actually like showing up as who you truly are. And how do you do that also in this new world of cancel culture? Yeah.

of vitriol, of people attacking you if you hang out with people who think different or vote different or love different or whatever it might be.

We live in this moment in time where people also are scared that if they are who they truly are, they might lose their job. If they're who they truly are, they might be excommunicated from their friend group. Like it is, I mean, cancel, I say this a lot that I feel, I feel like the greatest form of cancel culture, the one no one's talking about is us actually canceling ourselves before we're even willing to try. Right.

But a big reason for that is people are facing a lot of opposition when they are who they truly are. So how do you navigate that when you're a professor or even at this day and age an elementary school teacher who doesn't want to lose their job but wants to actually be who they are?

say how they feel, but I feel like people are walking around in fear right now that they can't even do that amongst their colleagues without facing that. So how do you navigate that in 2024? Because it's a thing.

That's so wise. I'm kind of repeating this idea of we are kind of self-canceling and how damaging that can be in those moments of self-censorship. So many of us have that voice of concern and very much could map onto the very real objective reality that many of us have witnessed or even experienced. And something I've learned after having very many misinterpretations of myself, my own work,

out there at quite scale is I've learned the limits of control that I have around how other people perceive the world around them, myself included.

We're all viewing each other and experiences through our own filters. And what I mean when I say that is there is no quote unquote as uncomfortable as I think this is for many of us objective reality where everyone even in this room that we're in right now can have one experience happen and us each describe it or experience it in the exact same way. Yeah.

because out of our conscious awareness we're each filtering we're seeing certain aspects of it we're making meaning of certain aspects of it or interpreting it in certain ways that are then going to impact how we feel about the experience and that's going to further color the experience that we continue to have so grounded in that reality that no matter how much as the person as i shared earlier i wanted to be liked by everyone not upsetting anyone

After having moments where it doesn't matter how we say things sometimes, people will see and will filter and will interpret our saying, our actions, our self-expression in a way that's more connected to them than to it is at us at all.

So living in authenticity means, as I've discovered, which is quite difficult even for me to this day, learning how to be misinterpreted, learning how to disappoint others or to be someone that they think we are when in reality I know in my heart –

who I am. And this doesn't mean, of course, two things. It doesn't mean that we take in all of the feedback, especially when we are deciding to live more publicly or to present ourself more publicly where groups of people are seeing our ideas or hearing our ideas and seeing our self-expression. It on the one hand doesn't mean that we take all of the feedback in as truth.

Because they're interpreting it. So it's more subjective than objective. So if I were to take everything everyone said of me as the reality of me and the experience of me, then I'm really going to limit myself in terms of disconnection from myself, in terms of taking on interpretations that aren't accurate.

If on the other hand, I don't ever allow, especially those that are closest to me, that I have trust and a safe, secure relationship. This is why relationships can be our greatest teachers.

because we are blinded to ourselves in so many ways. So the loved ones that we trust and relationships that we are secure within, I've heard many difficult truths that I did not imagine to be true about myself many times over the years, that it didn't mean I, again, just took it on as the truth of me, but what I was able to do was

Try it on for size, as I like to say. Oh, interesting. On multiple occasions, right, I've heard this interpretation of me or my behavior. Let me see for myself if I could see where this perspective is coming from.

So then I continue to be empowered as, as I was saying, this kind of self-healer mentality is the expert on me, right? I don't have to give away my power because someone else said it, though I might be able to learn a new perspective of me. This is big because right now, whether you are, you know, 12 years old and getting bullied online-

Whether you are, you know, 55 and you're on Facebook and that person you went to high school with is mean. Whether you are, I mean, this comes in so many forms. Or you put yourself out there and you're, you know, with somebody that's, you know,

like I shared earlier, votes different, loves different, believes different, whatever. And then you just start getting attacked in your Facebook group from people you thought you were your friend. Like this is, this cancel culture is coming out in all of these different forms right now.

And I feel like it's silencing a lot of people. Like they're shrinking who they are. They're dimming their light. They're hiding in plain sight because they don't want to deal with it, but not realizing the cost of that, of not showing up authentically. And I love what you just shared, Nicole, because I think that that is such a powerful way

And I want everyone to hear this right now because a lot of people do not know how to handle cancel culture. And I think what you said is so poignant in that people out there, whatever they're saying to you, people don't see things as they are. They see things as they are, right? Which is what you just shared. They're seeing whatever you do through the lens of who they are.

Not as a perfect reflection and accuracy of what you're saying or doing. It almost in some ways has nothing to do with you. In a way, the way people are seeing what you do or criticizing what you do or interpreting what you do or what you put on social or how you teach or how you are out there in the world, it's really just a reflection of who they are.

And you literally can't please everyone. So in this modern day cancel culture where everyone has no barriers to entry to be a critic online, it's almost like, oh, if you actually say or do anything, get ready because you're

everyone's going to face a form of cancel culture as part of this new reality of what we're living in. And I think what you just shared is so powerful because I think, number one, to kind of have this conversation, we know, oh, okay, it's not just me. It's actually everybody and they're actually just seeing things as they are. And as we know, hurt people hurt people. So if someone's hurt, okay, it's not a surprise that they're throwing hurt my way for something that I did. And you're saying, okay,

A way to still bravely show up as who you authentically are amidst this cancel culture is to be aware that all these people out there that maybe don't really truly know you are going to see whatever you're doing through the own lens of who they are. And that has nothing to do with you. And then when you actually want an accurate affliction, that's when you consider the

the close people around you, their feedback and how that feels. And that's kind of your benchmark of, you know, I think that's beautiful because

People are so scared right now. It is unnatural and it's unfamiliar for a lot of people because most people are not in the public eye. They're now in a Facebook group and they're now uncomfortably showing up on Zooms when they don't really want to at work. And they're feeling very much more public and then things are, you know, in chat rooms and social media threads and different sort of like apps at work and Facebook and Instagram and

all of it and they're feeling for the first time ever like they're at risk of being canceled in big ways and in small and so then they're hiding and they're not showing up as who they are

And they're living in that disconnected, lonelier than ever state. I just think what you shared is so powerful. It's like, okay, once you realize that no matter what you do, what you say, it's going to be seen externally through the lens of people who don't know you as really just a reflection of who they are. And it really has nothing to do with you. So, I mean, it's going to happen to everyone and just kind of brace it. And it's not worth the price, right?

of living your life inauthentically because that comes at the price of everything else, which is huge. I want to share a bit of compassion because I want to go back to this idea of hurt people hurt people. Yeah. I think what has caused this level of fear in the collective to such the extent that we're afraid to share our thoughts within our family sometimes, within our Facebook groups, our friends or whatever, is the trauma. Yeah.

intergenerational trauma that so many of us are carrying. When we have that wounding from some of us from generations before us, when we're in what I call and write about in the new book as survival brain, we are focused on our survival, on our identity as we know it, and we struggle to tolerate difference in opinion.

We literally feel attacked in those moments. And so I think why it is at scale canceling and all of these fear-based behaviors, that's what I view them as being, is because we have a very wounded collective, wounded from our ancestors, wounded from certain, you know, sociopolitical structures that still exist to this day. And we are walking around in threat or feeling threatened, right?

by all of the shared humanity around us. There's so much more coming up in this episode. You are not going to want to miss it. But first, I wanted to share this with you. I have a question for you. Do you ever find yourself trapped in the people-pleasing cycle, struggling to set boundaries while still caring about what others think?

For years, I felt the exact same way until I learned the simple proven process for setting boundaries, even if you struggled in the past. And I want to share it with you for free. I put together a guide called How to Create Boundaries and Stop People Pleasing in 7 Simple Steps.

And for a limited time, I wanted to share it with you 100% for free. So if you're looking for proven ways to stop people pleasing and learn to set boundaries, even if you've tried and failed in the past, grab your free guide at jamiekernlima.com slash resources or click the link in the show notes below.

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And now more of this incredible conversation together. And so I would say that it's kind of the hurt that's coming out in all of these now public arenas that's coming from a very real, insecure, emotionally threatened place where the individual who's doing the canceling or the threatening is reacting in the only way that they know how to gain some sense of security, of safety, of control.

And what I hope to be a contributor to is the global shift that I'm seeing happening at the same time of so many of us breaking cycles, beginning to heal,

creating nervous system regulation as opposed to dysregulation, shifting out of that survival brain where we can only focus on difference and react as threatened by difference and being able to go back to the collaborative, compassionate creatures that I truly believe is in the hearts and wiring of each and every one of us. So I'm, as being on the receiving end of quite difficult public experiences myself, I'm

as destabilizing as that was for me emotionally because I want to acknowledge anyone who's put a post up and gotten that severe type of reaction or has lost jobs and income and relationships is traumatizing. It put me in a state of, for several months, of nervous system dysregulation because we need to belong.

And when we are losing financial resources, when we are losing relationships and community, as some of us are completely ostracized,

it is traumatizing. It's going to activate our nervous system in the deepest way. So I want to be really sensitive to both participants, the ones canceling and the ones on the receiving end, because I see it as just wounded individuals trying to seek some semblance of safety and identity the only way that they know how. And again, at the same time, I see so much hope for the future.

For so many of us that are learning how to rewire our nervous systems, create regulation, actually able to tolerate differences, even if we may never agree on a particular topic, we don't have to tear people down and we can negotiate for the greater good of everyone. For anyone who is on that receiving end, I have been on it, you have been on it, of people

just getting backlash or opposition or being socially ostracized or being canceled. And, you know, for someone who is in grade school right now and it happened from three people in that school, it feels like, like Robin Roberts says, you can't compare despair.

It can feel that level of trauma being canceled in the third grade by three other people can feel as traumatic as someone on a huge public stage facing massive backlash. But for anyone who's gone through it in whatever way they have in the workplace and their peer group, what would you advise them to do?

Yeah. And I want to talk just quickly about the science of being ostracized and not belonging, whether it's in the third grade or us as adults. It all activates the same physical pain center in our brain.

When I say we are wired to connect, we need community. I mean, it goes down to we physically hurt when we don't feel belonged or when we are objectively cast out or ostracized. So in a lot of ways, it is a shared experience of the pain that comes along with those moments of exclusion. Yeah.

So sensitive and acknowledging that, I think self-compassion is one of the biggest important things to do. When we're being made to feel that something is unworthy or wrong or damaged about us that we can't belong because of others' actions or inactions, in that moment never is it so important to extend our self-compassion, not to just believe what is happening for all of the reasons we just talked about.

And to gain and find, if we don't yet have it, support. Who are the people that we can go to and talk about this? Because a lot of our, we judge our pain. We shame our pain. We may even try to convince ourself out of or hear from very well-meaning loved ones. We hide our pain. Don't worry about what they're, they don't mean it. Or, you know, you'll have friends later in life. I know a lot of children hear this when they're ostracized or bullied at school. Like, don't take it, you know, don't take it personally. Right.

And then we hide it. All of these things that we do to diminish or to suppress or to shame away those very real physiological feelings of pain, emotional feelings of pain. So being compassionate and present to how it feels and at the same time opening up the possibility, as we've been sharing, that it's not necessarily about us and finding the people or creating the relationships where we can feel included or belonged.

Getting that feeling of belonging strong when you're feeling the pain of not having it. Okay. I have some rapid questions. Let's do it. But they are, I think, really simple but really powerful questions that so many people want to know about.

but might even be embarrassed to ask. I know for me growing up, you know, I was adopted. I have five families through divorce and all kinds of stuff being raised around. And to my knowledge, unless someone's hiding it, which is highly possible, was the first person in any of my five families to ever go to therapy. And that wasn't even until my 20s. And so...

I've shared with you that I feel like every listener, every person watching us right now, I feel like their heart is in our hands. And I want to ask, I think, questions that I know they care about so much. And so one of those is this. How do you know that you need therapy?

Very good question. I think therapy for each of us and the need for it is an individual journey. You know, I think a lot of us will instinctively, that question will be easy to answer. A lot of it, like you're sharing, is colored by what we were taught about therapy, what we expect from

therapy to offer us. I think any time we feel or consider that we could be of benefit for either the safe, supportive space that the relationship offers, an alternate perspective, you know, if we don't feel comfortable sharing in our friend groups or in our families or with our loved ones, what's really going on. Mm-hmm.

having that space is so incredibly important. So that might be an indicator that therapy could be of really great benefit. And maybe you know the people you're sharing stuff with in your inner circle maybe don't even know how to hear it or what to say. Kind of like what you're sharing. Sometimes they'll just kind of give you a, oh, they didn't really mean it or they'll dismiss it or all the things, right? And you're kind of feeling like, oh,

oh, this isn't helping me and I kind of need help. You kind of feel that need as an indication. Yes. I think another common thing people love to do well intentionally is immediately offer advice, how they would solve very practically the problem. And having been on the receiving end of it, as I imagine many listeners have also, that can be very frustrating. And one of the greatest benefits of therapy is having space to be heard.

to gather our thoughts even, to explore even as we were talking about earlier, to get curious about who we are, what we want, what we think, how we feel. Therapy can be a very beautiful space to engage that curiosity with a listener who can listen, who isn't going to swoop in and give you their opinion immediately and giving you then the opportunity to have that self-reflection, which I think is incredibly, it's the first step of change.

Okay. I actually asked my community this. What is the one question that they would love to know? And overwhelmingly, this was it. How do I know if I messed up?

In fact, a lot of them used, how do I know if I'm effed up? That was the number one question. So Dr. Nicola Pera, how do we know if we are messed up? I'm going to answer this in a little bit of a cheeky way first, and then I'll give some a little bit practical things. I have yet to meet...

an adult who isn't in some way carrying some of the wounding of generations that came before us. I've yet to meet for many different reasons. Very few of us have had that safe, secure, connected, curious, attuned,

a soothing relationship from a grounded, safe, secure, connected, soothing, or a person who is able to self-regulate in their early childhood. So I think the large majority of us are carrying, and I wouldn't, you know, messed up, effed up, whatever you want to call it. Human is, I think, a better way to think about it. We're carrying the remnants of

of all of those who came before us wired into our mind and body. I think in terms of relationship, if we want to apply this because we are relational creatures, a lot of our messed upness can be seen in our relationships.

I think if we, you notice yourself feeling numb, feeling disconnected, or maybe on the other side of that saying and doing hurtful things that you don't mean. I think those are indicators. I think another indicator, finding yourself chasing unavailable people in friendships, in romantic partnerships, or on the other side of it, bouncing from relationship to relationship yourself. Mm-hmm.

If you notice yourself regularly shutting down or withdrawing in relationship or when you're around other people or on the other side of that, repeating cycles of chaotic or intense behaviors or experiences. I think a common one that we think is passion. I have these high explosive arguments, crazy feeling arguments, and then this passionate makeup sex afterward.

I think secure, grounded connection is secure, calm. It's grounded. And I think another thing, indicator that often we see in relationships is if we self-sabotage them. If we push people away as I had done for many years when we really wanted them close. Or on the other side of that, if we struggle with any distance relationships.

or space in relationships and feel responsible for someone else's needs like the caretaker I was describing earlier or responsible for someone else's emotions as I played many, many occasions in my past relationships. So I think relationships is a great place to realize

what our dysfunctional patterns are. I wouldn't say that that's an indicator that we're messed up in any way. I think that's just an indicator of what we learned in our earliest relationships. And then we can create change in all of those respects. You know, what I love about what you just shared, one of my great intentions for this show is for people to feel less alone and more enough

And I think a lot of people feel like they're alone when they're, I mean, the overwhelming number of people that literally their question is, how do I know if I'm messed up? How do I know if I'm effed up? And I think that the answer is every single one of us is, but we're not actually that. We're actually just human. So if you're feeling all of these different things and in the explanation you just gave, I don't know anyone that wouldn't fit in one of those examples of

I almost feel like there's comfort in this and knowing like, okay, you're human. You're human. And we all have our different journeys of that. So, okay, this is a good one. Okay, this is a good one. How do you know if your therapist is good?

So I think therapy and therapy has been studied to the extent that researchers are very interested in what are the factors to determine good therapy or successful therapy. And research, I believe, has landed on the most number one predictor of whether therapy is good or will be impactful for you is the relationship, how safe and secure and connected you feel in relationship to that person.

So then that I think allows a much more kind of individualized answer to this question, which can really be simplified by, do you feel like that person that you're going into week after week is a safe, secure, curious space where you can begin to explore

And for a lot of people, I don't think that happens immediately on the first session. I think a lot of us have wounding from early relationships where maybe we did share things and it was used against us. So allowing that possibility that it might take some time for us to feel comfortable being vulnerable and opening up. Yeah. Though is that person present with us in the room? Are they a secure or consistent, I should say, connective space where they're curious? Yeah.

allowing us to then work through that discomfort. But yeah, research shows it's going to be very individualized. So I could go to a therapist and be like, oh, this person is so great. And this is why I'm hesitant always to give recommendations or referrals, though I get asked quite frequently because it is so much about the individual and what they need in that room.

to feel that safety and that security. - So is feeling safe and secure with your therapist, is that more important than they've gotta be really smart and know what they're talking about? Is it like when you look at what the studies show to know, is this working or is my therapist good? And is that because you need that safety in part just to be able?

Which is part of the whole process of having that space to kind of share it all. I think all relationships, as I write about in How to Be the Love You See, come back to safety and security. Whether it's your romantic partner, your family, your friend, or your therapist. That is the foundation of connection and ultimately of attunement.

And I do think a lot of us look for the degrees or the training or the letters after people's name. And it's interesting even to watch the field itself expand. When I was deciding my training program to be a licensed clinician, essentially to have a practice, you had to get either the PhD, the clinical PhD that I received, or a degree called the PsyD. It was kind of the psychological version of PsyD.

clinical practice, if you will. As time continued and now to this day, there's other helping professionals, other degrees, other coaches that can create that safety and that security for individuals. So that I think is the foundation aside from degrees or letters or training programs that people came through. How able are they to be

present and attuned and give you the opportunity to let down that guard however long it takes. I feel like that is so clear and I've never heard that before. I think, you know, for me instinctively, I think, oh, I want to make sure that they really,

really know what they're doing, that they're next level, that they're a top performer. And I think that this is kind of a big breakthrough because a lot of people don't know, you know, how long should it take before I start seeing results in my therapy? I feel like I'm going to it over and over and over and I'm just talking, but is anything happening? And how do I know if my therapist is good? And I think that this is, uh,

a big kind of clear data point to say, do you feel safe in that room to be who you are, to say all the things you feel and to use that as a top thing

of is this the right fit versus just am I going to the person who has the most impressive resume online or whatever it might be. And would you say, Nicole, that the way to do that is just like to tune into your body and be like how do I feel when I'm in this session? Do I feel like I'm just completely...

Who I am? How would you say you can judge? I want to acknowledge that therapists are human too. Yes. So they will be human in the room and some very much, very well intentioned with all the education could be having a reaction that is, you register. Yeah.

They could say something directly in response to something that it is that you say. They might give you the feeling that they're not fully comfortable with something. And I would see this a lot with my colleagues who I was trained, I did a lot of training in substance use. So a lot of my clients would use substances at any point or like kind of across their recovery.

process and would have pretty severe diagnoses. So I was really comfortable with seeing whoever really it is that walked into the room, though. I would hear very directly in supervision circles from some colleagues who wouldn't want to see a type of person because it would make them feel insecure, ill-equipped, and probably refer them out for their own best interest. So just imagining the feeling in the room

So back to your then question, Jamie, which is our bodies are sensors. We will, if we're connected to ourself, even like you were describing earlier, those moments of misalignment when I feel tension, when my muscles begin to clench, when my heart rate begins to race, when my breath maybe becomes really quick and shallow or I'm holding my breath when I say something because I don't know how the person is going to react.

If I don't feel at ease in my body, if my muscles don't feel at ease, if I can't get a deep breath in from my belly, if my heart rate is not in that normal range throughout, of course, when we're sharing something new and vulnerable, we might feel that spike initially, especially if we're not used to. But over the large majority of our sessions or time together, are we able to, and I do think a lot of people gain that from the clinical experience. They come into the room and it's almost as if their body just feels like

at ease. They kind of melt into the chair and they just feel more open to the conversation. Though our body will always tell us when something is aligned, when something is threatening. And giving, again, the therapist the compassionate gift of humanity. Like I was saying, not every therapist might be aligned for you and for the type of work that you want to do with them, though it doesn't mean that there's anything in

inherently unworthy about you. They're a human too. They might be carrying their own past experience that is impacting their ability to receive yours. You know, for someone who, for someone who knows right now there's something off in their mental or emotional wellness, what exactly should they do right now? What is the recipe that you would give them to do right now?

The first thing I would offer is a suggestion to celebrate that awareness. So we walk through life so blinded, blinded.

when we become aware that something is off, whether it's in our own relationship with ourself and our mental or emotional wellness or in our relationship with others, that's so important to acknowledge and celebrate before we shame whatever it is that we're coming to the awareness is off because that's a huge step in the direction of creating change, of finding balance again. Of course, if there's helpful relationships that you can seek out for support,

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is sharing that awareness with a trusted loved one, right? Telling someone of this instinct that you're having, you know, that there is something going on on a deeper level that you might want to

and welcome support around. Going back even to this idea of offering help or suggestions, it might be helpful in that moment if you want a suggestion to let the person know, hey, I want to share something with you right now. I'd love to hear your feedback or your advice. Or if you don't, hey, I'd love to share something with you right now and I would love for you just

to listen. Because when we're being vulnerable by telling someone that we're entertaining the possibility that we're in need of help or support or that something is off in whatever way, some of us might want that objective feedback and hear what someone else might do or what they can offer us. And a large majority of us might not. We might just want to have that space to feel accepted, to have someone just listen and tell us that they love and support us regardless of whatever it is that we're coming to the awareness of.

And so having that awareness is huge. Huge. Maybe sharing it with someone and then what do we do?

And then of course if we can gain support in whatever way is accessible to us, I mean depending on what it is that we're coming to the awareness of, finding the professional, finding the community, finding the tools and resources. Again, I think a lot of information is present in books these days and in the kind of world wide web of information that we have access to. If there's something objective that we're needing help around and we know where to find it, of course pursuing those action points.

And if we're unclear, finding our way to someone, you know, that can offer us that direction. So many people have this fear. How do I not mess up my kids? What would you say to that?

I want to, again, acknowledge the enormity of the task that is being a parent. Yeah. How foundational that early relationship is. So when I hear questions like this, I'm so very compassionate to the desires that so many, hopeful desires that so many of us have, especially those of us that look back and affirm we're not going to repeat that which happened to us. Mm-hmm.

again, going back to the cheeky joke earlier of we're all carrying the habits and patterns that served or allowed those of us before us to adapt. And this is, I think, that area of building that bridge from insight and awareness into action. Because we could read...

the greatest parenting book of all time. We could have the script, right, for the thing to say, to break the habit, to stop doing the thing that happened to us so that our children could be not as impacted or not messed up.

if in our, this goes back to even that idea that we're talking about in therapeutic relationships, if we don't feel safe and secure, like that home base, that curious home base that our child needs to explore and discover who they are, then those scripts and that parenting book is only going to go so far. So it really is parenting. Anytime we want to shift the dynamic in a relationship, um,

It really begins again with that foundational relationship with ourselves, all of you as the parent. Really becoming aware of the habits and patterns that you've adapted into that have served you at one time. Not just affirming that you want to change it or reading the book on how to change it. Embodying the work because children are so much more impacted not by what we say but by what they see us doing and more so by how they experience us.

And on to saying that to also say children appreciate that.

Transparency, vulnerability, humanity, having moments where we acknowledge. I think this is another area where parents, for very well-intentioned reasons, think that they have to hide their struggles behind the door or not let their children see them cry or have an upsetting emotion or coming back to their children saying, "Hey, I want to acknowledge that I screamed and yelled or I closed myself off from you emotionally. How healing that would have been if I heard that from my mom."

Hey, little Nicole, I know I didn't, I gave you the silent treatment, though it was nothing about you. I was overwhelmed by how I was feeling, how healing those moments can be. Is it true we teach our kids to not be able to trust themselves? Yes.

When we hide things, they come to us and they say, are you okay? And you're like, absolutely. Everything's fine. When you just had a full blowout fight and you teach them slowly but surely their instincts are wrong. Children are humans and humans are attuned creatures. They're sensing. I remember so many moments in childhood where I just knew something was up.

up in the family and nothing was ever spoken about. I don't even know if it was spoken about behind closed doors to each other. I think it was just this individual experience of worry, of concern that was so palpable. And over time, if we don't align the reality or speak the reality to our children, what they will do is begin to distrust their instincts or even disconnect from them in

entirely because if they're feeling one way and being told it's another way, they will believe the parent on whom they're dependent and they will disbelieve themselves. So it's such a big call out because so many people, especially women are like, I don't even know how to hear my own intuition.

How do I hear my gut feeling, my knowing? How do I trust myself? And you look at all these examples of whether it's little girls learning to kind of make decisions based on consensus versus how they really feel or all these moments where maybe even well-intentioned parents were trying to protect us saying everything's okay when we knew it wasn't or oh, no, no, no. And they're trying to protect us, but it's like one chip away at a time of us learning

that how we really feel might be wrong or it might be off or maybe we can't trust it. It's a big thing for parents to be aware of because, you know, I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old and I want to, you know, protect them as long as I can. And, you know, I remember one time Paula and I were having a fight and, you know,

I was very conscious of, okay, do I need to have the responsibility of actually listening to him when I really don't want to? Because am I setting an example that I want my kids to feel worthy of being listened to? Like I'm trying to think of it from that perspective, knowing that they're sponges. And I also want them though to, you know, it's a tough conflict as a parent because you want to say, oh no, no, everything's great because you think you're sparing them. But then they're learning to not trust their knowing, right?

Interesting. I think another version of this is the very well-intentioned helicopter parent who tries to mitigate or minimize or remove any possible suffering entirely.

from their child, right? Trying to buffer essentially them. And the byproduct of that is not only is that an unrealistic expectation that that child might develop then, that life isn't hard, that there aren't challenges, that there isn't natural stressful experiences or upsetting experiences that we go through, their bodies, back to this holistic model, won't have the ability to tolerate discomfort, stress, anxiety,

And again, I think a lot of this comes from pain that parents experience themselves not wanting to pass that pain on or their child to have any version of that experience. And then they build this buffer or try to, they exhaust themselves in doing it.

And then the byproduct is as a child who's not emotionally resilient, can't deal, we want our children to be able to have difficult experiences, to have us as a safe home base to return to, and over time to develop their own ability to either self-regulate through difficulty or their ability to know when they need the support and then to rely on others to help them co-regulate. You mentioned your mom giving you the silent treatment.

A lot of us grew up learning that as a tool or an appropriate response when you're unhappy with something. A lot of us then see it manifest in our friendships or our relationships or we're really mad at our partner so we just absolutely won't speak to them, give them the silent treatment. Is the silent treatment a form of abuse?

It was very difficult for me to, in any aspect of my childhood experience, put that label on things. Though I've come to realize that it is a form of emotional abuse, removing, especially in childhood, those emotional connections on which our nervous system is reliant to regulate ourself. And then leaving us with the overwhelming pain, right? Our brain is lighting up from this disconnected moment.

possibly leaving us with ever the upset is that caused the silent treatment or the disconnection from someone else. Now we're completely, that's what trauma is, right? It's the overwhelm that exists in our bodies when we don't have the support to deal with the emotions that we're experiencing. So allowing, and I will be the first to admit, as painful as it was to having been on the receiving end of that experience,

I have the habit at times instinctually to want to give my loved ones a silent treatment, to want to remove myself, be cold emotionally, if not go silent entirely, to disappear for the day and not respond to their text of interest, of worry, of anything. And so I will be the first to admit that we might carry very painful, shameful habits of

that we were on the receiving end of. And this goes back to my inability to be with my emotional upset, my inability to acknowledge my upset to someone on whose relationship I'm in desire of having, my inability to have those moments of repair or reconnection after there's natural conflict or upset in a relationship. So I literally become just as overwhelmed as my mom once was. And then I end up doing the same thing.

So silent treatment, because I think it's easy for us to think like, oh, it's an appropriate response where it just doesn't hurt anyone else. But I want them to know I'm mad, whatever it might be, right? But silent treatment is really a reflection of our own inability to express our emotions in a healthy way. And then it can actually create trauma to the person we're giving the silent treatment to, even as an adult, right? To our partner, to our kids. How would you say, Nicole, that, you know,

people ghosting each other now or unfollowing their friend on social. Is that a similar response as getting the silent treatment? I think it's similar to the extent that upset happened and the individual who's ghosting. I mean, if it's just as simple as I'm not interested in you and I can't, whether or not there was conflict or upset that happened, you know, a lot of times we'll date someone for a couple of times and then we'll

ghost them because I don't have the ability to directly acknowledge to you that I don't want to pursue a relationship with you. I think anytime we disconnect to that extent that we're ghosting or removing ourself from a relationship is born out of a discomfort that that person is feeling. And now I think, yes, we have block features. We have all of these ways that we can

to instantly ghost someone. And not have to express our emotions in a healthy way. Exactly. Not have to acknowledge it to ourselves sometimes, to that other person, not to have that difficult. And again, I'll be the first to admit, I've ghosted people in my past, unable, nothing even dramatic having happened.

beginning to develop a relationship with someone, determining that it isn't a relationship I want to pursue, not having the ability or the emotional bandwidth to just acknowledge that directly and respect the person enough to say that. And instead just to vanish from their life and then run away. And then the byproduct of that, not only are we hurtful,

to the person? Are we not giving them our actual reason so their mind is going to interpret our absence? A lot of times we're left now looking over our shoulder and worry that we don't want to now see the person that we've ghosted and we're carrying shame

to have another experience or run in. So it's not helpful for anyone. For anyone. Though again, I think it really comes down to we're not equipped, many of us as adults even, to have difficult conversations. Yes. I think this is going to be a big aha for a lot of people because I can say in my five families, just the five I was raised around, this is happening right now.

I'll hear stories of someone just completely gave someone a silent treatment or literally hung up on them. This type of behavior, right? And I think that a lot of people don't realize, A, it's a reflection of your own inability to express your emotions in a healthy way or even maybe identify what they are, but then the impact that it can have. I think this is a big – and even for the people –

listening or watching us right now that are doing this in their life? Because let's be real, when your partner does whatever for the 10 million time, you're like, you don't even, I don't even want to give you the energy of explaining how mad I am. And you just default to silent treatment. But it's interesting to know the implicate, like what happens as the damage that can be caused as a result of that. I think it just seems like

great coping tool for a lot of people not realizing what it really is and it is and I think just to kind of while the reality for a lot of listeners will be Those habits still remain. Yeah, we still find ourselves mid silent treatment Maybe you're listening this and you're you're giving someone a silent treatment right now What could be the greatest gift is intentionally taking the moment to reconnect to say and acknowledge that

What was going on for you? Hey, I was really overwhelmed by what happened. I was really upset or dysregulated by the experience. And I did remove myself from our interaction or our relationship.

though it had everything to do with how I was feeling. And I think that can be the most healing, especially if it's our children that we're giving the silent treatment to. Or on the other end of that, saying the things that we don't mean, the hurtful things or doing the hurtful things, just as equally having the moment on the other side to acknowledge where it came from and relieving that person the responsibility of them being the cause or their worthiness being the cause.

We're in a whole new day and age of awareness because I am just imagining right now the number of people driving their car listening to us right now, realizing they just gave their child a silent treatment that morning because that's what they learned how to do. And we're just in this beautiful, I don't know, I'm just having a moment kind of live with you where I'm just thinking about just what a gift.

and blessing this kind of awareness is because for so many of us, we just didn't know and our parents didn't know. And then we wonder why we're in these situations, you know, where we feel disconnected or disassociated from life and, or maybe we're in, you know, relationships where we're disconnected from. And I wanted to ask you this because this is such a thing that is unfortunately so prevalent even right now, despite our access to information, despite everything that's

Why do we stay in relationships with people that hurt us? So going back and celebrating awareness, you'll always hear me break down change, ending a relationship that hurts us down into two steps. Becoming aware of the habit that's not serving us, the relationship that's hurting us. Step one. Step two.

making the new choices, which often as we began the conversation or include foundationally our body and all of those deep rooted beliefs that live in our body, all of the reasons why not to leave, all of that fear as if it's happening in real time right now and upset and rejection and abandonment and whatever it is in shame that we felt in childhood.

that created the habit of staying with people who hurt us. All of that is wired into us. And this was the biggest transformation in the practice as I began, which was realizing that all of the insight in the world, we could be like, oh, I'm aware that people hurt us or that this person is hurting me. We could have the very well-meaning support system that are shouting the red flags from the rafters and saying, hey, girl.

You got to get out of this. Yeah. This is hurting you. I can't, I can't, I'm hurting watching you hurt. Yes.

And until we understand that that won't build that bridge, that we have to make new choices that are very difficult, that are living in acknowledgement of the hurt, that include new boundaries, that include walking in then to the unknown of how will this person react if I do create a boundary, if I do remove myself from the relationship depending on the nature of the hurt. Mm-hmm. What will that mean about me? Mm-hmm.

What will that mean about my future in relationships? And entertaining the reality of all of the feelings that we learned it meant. So what do you do if you're the loved one watching your friend or your daughter or your sister or your mother or whoever it might be? You're the one watching them.

continue to stay in a relationship that is either toxic or hurting them, what can you do? Because you don't want to meddle, but then you also just like don't want to do nothing. Like what do you do? I explain the physiology and the reasoning behind these difficulties to hopefully allow the person who's perhaps watching their loved one be hurt or pained by a relationship or even violated and outright abused, whatever it is.

to allow them to shift from whatever they are, the way they are handling it or navigating it, to being a much more compassionate one. Because I think loved ones can turn up the volume, can get frustrated, especially if it's someone that they continue to witness struggling to remove themselves from something that to them is objectively, overtly problematic in whatever way. Mm-hmm.

So being in a more compassionate place, not just saying that you understand, giving the feeling of safety and understanding can be a dramatic shift for the person who's already struggling. A lot of us, I think, can feel judged by even very well-meaning loved ones who are trying to offer support because they don't know what to do. Because the next reality, it's very difficult to tolerate for those of us who are watching our loved ones be violated or hurt in any way.

is that they actually can't make them change. They can't zoom into their bodies and show up in a different way that might be even easier for them to show up or put a boundary to put in place. That it really is up to that individual themselves to create that shift or that change in a dynamic. So there's nothing you can do really to create change for them. And you're saying provide a safe, compassionate space for them.

Does that feel like or get confused with compliance? What you can do, I think, in action is to ask the individual who's in that relationship how it is that they...

might be best supported. So I think that shift, you're not just watching on the sidelines. I mean, shifting into a much more compassionate, safe, secure space for them to share with you is in my opinion, not compliance. It's everything we've been talking about. It's what we're looking for and need in relationships. And I say this because if there is judgment that the person is feeling over time, this is where secrets start to happen.

they'll be less and less likely to tell you what's really happening. Right. Because they want to now manage the perception, not hear from you something that they already intuitively know is problematic. They don't want you to affirm it in judgment. So they'll just tell you less of it. It's even back to parenting. I think a lot of parents very much want their child to turn to them in support, but they have an immediate reaction to,

to something upsetting that their child might share with them, making it maybe a little less likely that the child shares something upsetting with them again. And then directly asking. I think sometimes we minimize how helpful that can be because we might think we know what's helpful. I'm going to pluck the person from the relationship. I'm going to tell them to physically leave or come move in with me. That might feel like the most unhelpful

in that moment. So directly asking the loved one who's in a difficult situation, what do they need to feel supported? What's one small thing we can do for them to help them in that moment? This is so...

great because so many people feel like they're doing something wrong because the person is still in the situation and like they're at fault or they're not a great enough parent or they're not a great enough friend and they feel like they're failing because this person is still in that situation. And you're saying you cannot make another person change because everything in their body is

that they feel, the fear, the history, their patterns, their trauma that they're holding on to and why they're staying in that relationship. That there's really nothing you could do and that the best thing you could do is create space so that they don't disconnect or hide things from you more. I think this comes up a lot too, Jamie, in addiction. Yes. We feel like

especially if it's our loved one, our partner, our child. If you loved me and valued our relationship enough, you would just stop whatever addictive behavior that it is. And I think that there are addictive behaviors outside of even using substances. We assign this personal meaning that we're not enough for them to want to stop. And I think this is another one of those areas that, in my opinion, at least addictive behaviors of all kind are a coping mechanism

and are or need to become the responsibility or the daily choice that that person makes, of course, with the support of safe, connected others to help them. Though until they are showing up in service of making new choices, unfortunately, and developing new ways to cope with whatever the underlying dysregulation is, those addictive behaviors might need to continue. I was not even going to go here, but I think this is for somebody listening right now because when your partner...

or someone you care deeply about is having addictive behaviors, whether it is substance abuse, gambling, pornography addiction,

It is so easy to think there's something wrong with you or you're inadequate or not meeting their needs or whatever it might be. And you're saying that they are doing that behavior as a coping mechanism. Does that behavior have anything to do with who their partner is? I believe that those coping mechanisms develop in childhood.

usually around deep rooted beliefs of not enough, not worthy. Yes. Inabilities to deal with very difficult and upsetting emotions, learning, right? These addictive habits or what begin as behaviors that then turn into relied upon addictive habits to help them navigate these deep feelings and

And the emotions that come along with them, the shame, I think shame is at the foundation of a lot of these addictive behaviors. And then by focusing time, attention, getting the physiological components of these behaviors, many of them, the byproducts, is the distance that they need. And oftentimes it's because they don't feel that safety and the security in the earliest relationships to be who they are, to turn to others for the support that they need.

And then they continue to rely on it. And this is why, again, I believe all healing, including of addictive behaviors, needs to be holistic. There needs to be other ways that these individuals learn, relational ways,

to cope and to gain the support that they need. It's not enough just to avoid the people, places, and things as I think I worked in a lot of people who were in and I think a lot of people gain benefit of those AA model types of recovery. I'm not trying to minimize the benefit, but I think it needs to be much more of an embodied approach for the many that continues to relapse because until new coping tools and new relationships are built,

It's only a matter of time before that emotional upset will come to the point of that returned reliance on the addictive way of coping. Sometimes it pops up out of the blue. I have a friend who is 20 years into her marriage and her husband is newly addicted to internet porn.

And it has turned into such a thing in her life. And her first default is there's something wrong with me. Is he not attracted to me? And I think what you shared is,

is so powerful because people are going through this in all different forms. And it's so easy to think that you can solve it or there's something wrong with you. And to hear what you're saying, that it actually has nothing to do with you at all. And then it can come from their own sources of shame and unworthiness or coping mechanisms from when they're a child and it's coming out in these different ways. I think that that is really powerful. And I think freeing.

I think to hear that, because people can hear this from their friends or family, but to hear it from the most famous holistic psychologist in the world is so powerful and so freeing. And I'm just having a moment thinking of the number of people listening right now that are having sort of an aha moment in their own life.

It doesn't mean it's not going to keep being hard. It doesn't mean they don't have hard decisions to make on if they're going to stay with that person or not. It doesn't mean that that person even may want to change their behaviors, right? But just hearing that it's actually literally not about you because we can take those things and have them take root in our identity. They can stir up things.

of our own unworthiness and our own issues when we think, you know, oh, I'm now not enough for my partner or whatever. So I think that hearing you say that, which I wasn't even planning on talking about, but I feel like that's such a big deal to talk about. So, you know, I want to ask you about one thing that you talk about a lot, and I think this is, again, I always imagine the emoji with the head exploding. Yeah.

This is going to be one of those moments for a lot of people, the emoji with the head exploding. Because it is in our vernacular. It is in our bodies to say to someone else, you are, you're making me feel this way. You're making me feel bad. You did this and now I'm da-da-da-da-da.

It is in our bones for so many of us to assign responsibility and blame to our partner, to whoever else, for how we feel. Is it possible for another person, I want everyone to listen closely to this, is it possible for another person to be responsible for how you feel?

That vernacular is so common. And I think probably people are shaking their heads like, yes, that is true. This person does make me feel comes from an early learned experience where there did lack those emotional boundaries, where we weren't modeled by emotionally mature adults, which really simply means ability to own emotions and

to regulate emotions and to take responsibility for the reactions that come from emotions. For me as a psychologist, there was in the field an evolving view of what emotions are. And I think a lot of even clinicians have this idea that emotions come somehow from our mind, from our thoughts. I think CBT, the gold standard of treatment here, this idea of change the way you think, change the way you feel, change what you do.

And learning for me that emotions, another model of what emotions are as originating in the body, of course being colored by our mental narratives or interpretations, though emotions, especially the core emotions, sadness, surprise, joy, anger, fear, they're physiological shifts and changes that register in our body first.

And then this goes back to even those subjective interpretations that we offer. We, our body registers outside of our awareness, our nervous systems, always scanning our environment, trying to determine if it's safe, trying to determine what we need to do next to continue to ensure my safety. So physiological changes are happening in my body that we could call emotions. And at the same time, those messages are being sent to our mind

Now we're applying those unique subjective interpretations of what's happening, which is why like that example I used earlier, all of us having an experience, same one objectively, we might all feel differently about it. Another really common example, if you maybe in childhood had a parent that barged into your room or there was a lot of slamming of doors and loud noises. If you and I were sitting here, Jamie, and you had that parent and a door slammed, you might

feel fear, right? Your heart rate might race. You might become tense. You might start to sweat because you are going to apply that same interpretation. Loud noises mean something threatening is going to happen next. I'm going to be, my space is going to be violated. Maybe if you're on the, you know, in witness to explosive arguments, I'm going to feel unsafe. If I, on the other hand, I'm having that same experience right alongside of you and I didn't have

that experience of loud noises in childhood or of having my room barged in on I might simply just turn around to see what happened without being scared or fearful and then habitually reacting in the same way so I'd like to give the underlying explanation physiological so to simply answer the question our emotions and what we call feelings are our individual interpretations

What's happening around us the shifts in physiology when that thing happens or doesn't happen the person does or doesn't do says or doesn't say The meaning that our mind assigned that it probably has been assigning to similar circumstances across our lifetime And then the result is this very understandable perception that you in action or inaction caused me to feel

this way. Go back to those two stages. If we become aware of the shifts that are happening in my body as life's happening around me, of the very repeated narratives or interpretations or meanings my mind is assigning, and then of habitually what I do, sometimes shamefully, on the heels of that reactive moment,

now within that awareness, I have choice to say, you know what, this happened and I do feel this way, though it is not of no cause or fault of your own. And now I could take responsibility for learning new ways to soothe or to tend to my emotions. It is so common in partnerships, like you, especially with people you care about,

And then they do something totally rude or that you consider rude or that they know might annoy you or whatever. And then the instant response is, you know, I'm upset because of you or what you did. And what you're saying is that we can take our power back from that because it actually isn't because of them. It's in the meaning we're assigning to what they did based on our past and that we can kind of take back that responsibility back.

and take action to kind of choose or repair or become more aware of how we feel, why we feel the way we feel. It's very interesting because a lot of people are stuck in relationships. They feel stuck in relationships, I should say, where they feel like their partner constantly does stuff to annoy them or

or push their buttons or trigger them or any of those things. And it's, I think, going to be a very different perspective that people can consider, oh, wait a minute, I'm actually in control. I can be in control of how I feel and maybe can do some work on the tools of how do I want my feelings or emotions to be expressed.

versus giving that power to someone else that they kind of can control. Because when you say that to somebody else, like, you made me feel a certain way, it's essentially saying you have the power to decide my feelings. And they actually don't if we're aware of it and if we take it back, which I think is a big shift. Because a lot of us were raised around people saying, you know, you've made your mom so mad right now.

You know, you've, you've, you know, all those kind of things. Or don't do that. You will make. Yeah. Don't do that or you're going to make me angry. You'll make me so mad. Yeah. That's so true. And I think another hand in hand with this is we personalize. We assume that people are doing or not doing things on purpose to annoy us, especially in those long-term relationships.

You didn't do the dishes specifically to upset me today when the reason the dishes weren't done might have had nothing to do or we might not even have been on our partner's radar in that moment that we might have liked to be, but it might not have been as an intentional of an act or inaction. I think that's another thing we commonly do. We assume a very directed intentional meaning for others' behaviors that has something to do with us when we're

The partner might have been running out of the house quickly or not had the emotional bandwidth to tend to something in the physical world in that moment and had nothing to do with us at all. So we project our own issues onto their intentions and then also tell them they are responsible for how we feel. It's a great combo. Okay, when it comes to entering a self-healing journey or even perhaps...

When it comes to making the decision of do I want to go there and even become aware of the impact of my childhood trauma, there is a famous saying, what we focus on magnifies or gets bigger. And

There's a whole school of thought of, you know what, I'm just going to, I'm going to reframe my past. I'm going to say, you know, what happened to me just made me stronger. It made me the person I am. It built resilience. Everything that happened in my past, maybe I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I wouldn't want to go through it, but you know what? It gave me the tools of resiliency. I can now help other people make it through. I'm not going to focus on it at all.

Because what I focus on magnifies and gets bigger. So two big questions when it comes to therapy, to entering this journey of healing, of self-healing, of community healing, of awareness. If you focus on all of your trauma, is it possible you now are going to have a worse life? Or is...

ignoring it, reframing it as, okay, this helped me be stronger and all the things all happened for me. Is that like pressing the easy button? Is it like a band-aid? And will your pain still be stuck in your body and still transmit in other ways?

Because a lot of people are scared of therapy because they're like, you know what? I don't want to focus on that because I don't want to make my life worse right now. And we don't want to go back and feel that pain again. It's very understandable, this idea that that's back there. It's not here now. What's important, I think, is to understand the distinction between the word I keep using, becoming conscious or aware of something that I like to describe like overhead lights on in a room.

We're able to note the presence of the thoughts, the repetitive thoughts quite often, the sensations or emotions in the body, the then behaviors oftentimes driven by habitual autopilot that we're enacting in any given moment. That is different than a hyper-focused thinking or a kind of thinking about that like a spotlight.

And a lot of us, and this would come up too in traditional therapy, when we continue to ruminate, whether in our own minds about what happened, whether in, you know, relational or therapeutic experience where we're hyper-focusing, talking about what happened, even some of us misconstrue what self-awareness is and we think we're self-analyzing by always thinking about what happened or its impact in the current moment. Anytime we're in that zoomed-in

kind of thinking activity not just illumination lights are on i can note it i can easily just as equally easily choose to put my attention somewhere else then i think the byproduct of that can be that idea right where my attention goes my energy flows it's becoming bigger i'm becoming consumed by what happened only focused on what happened or keeping myself

impossible of thinking about anything else sometimes because I think I'm self-analyzing or self-discovering. So becoming conscious is the most empowering step of change as I've been sharing throughout. Becoming aware because even if we do think the past is decades in our rear view mirror, chances are there are some habits that

that have become ingrained from the way we think or what we believe about ourselves that was greatly impacted by what we were made to think or believe about ourselves in childhood to the way that we, our relationship with our emotions, how we express them, how we navigate them, how we soothe them, how we turn to others for support or we don't was greatly impacted by that level of emotional attunement or the consistency upon which our early caregivers were able to soothe us, teaching us how to then soothe ourselves.

and the way we connect to others is greatly impacted by what we had to do or stop doing in those early relationships to maintain connection. So until we become conscious of what we might be carrying from our past, then even those of us that are trying to close the lid on it and keep it in that rearview mirror are unfortunately probably enacting it

in some way, are probably continuing to have unmet needs or react from wounded places or not be in authentic self-expression or authentic relationships because that's what they once learned. I think that's really powerful. So you're saying basically, or is it safe to say, is it safe to say that

If you want to live the highest, truest expression of who you are with the most depth of connection with other people, you cannot personal develop or positive think your way out of the need for awareness.

Of the things that you've gone through and how they've shaped the person you become and the way that you handle situations and people around you. The way to live the most fulfilled, expressed life is by turning those overhead lights of consciousness. Yeah. Is by giving ourself in each and every moment the opportunity to make choices tailored to

to that moment because we like to assign this unrealistic expectation of future telling, of being able to know exactly what it is we have to do

into future moments and the reality of being a evolving organism and our energetic level, all of us humans, our energy, our shifting process, we don't actually know how to care for our physical body in the next five to 10 years because we haven't been in that body yet. To be able to attune to our ever-changing emotions based on our changing circumstances is

You talk so much and we've talked today a lot about being in your body and feeling your body. This is going to be brand new for a lot of people. This is going to be brand new for a lot of people, but you do this so well. Can you just take a second and teach us like how do we physically feel?

get present in our own body. Like for everyone listening and watching right now, I would love for you guys to do this with us. Can you teach us how, Dr. Nicola Pera? So I'm going to teach you something how to do now. And my hope is that you kind of create or recreate this practice throughout your day because the more we expand these moments...

In Self Healer Circle, one of the primary course that everyone is directed to upon enrollment is called A Week in Consciousness. And I talk about in the book too a conscious check-in, which gives us the opportunity to engage this practice throughout our day. Maybe setting alarm on your phone, putting a post-it note up, joining up with an accountability buddy and having them text you at a certain time of the day or building around the thing you do every day, brushing your teeth, drinking coffee.

So in this moment, I can invite everyone, if it's safe to do so, of course, to just first notice where your attention is. Are you paying attention to the external environment? Are you distracted by what's going on around you? Are you maybe consumed or thinking about your thoughts, distracted by something in your internal world? Some of you might choose this as the safety part to close your eyes if you're not driving your car.

help you gain a little bit more awareness of where is your attention. And without judging, wherever it is, I want you to make the most empowering choice that you can make, which is to unhook your attention from those external distractions or your internal distractions of your thinking mind and refocus it on your body. And a couple hooks that you can use, some of you might even choose to put a hand on your chest or on your belly,

and begin to just notice your normal rhythm of breath. Our breath is always available as a beautiful embodiment practice, shifting focus away from everything else and just beginning to pay attention for the next minute or two to your breath. Others, you can choose and maybe practice all of them and determine which one you resonate with most.

Feel yourself grounded. This is a grounding practice. What that means is if you're standing somewhere, maybe feel the weight of the heels upon the earth beneath you. If you're sitting or laying, maybe turn your attention to all of the different contact points, your thighs, your lower back. If you're laying, your entire body supported by the furniture of the earth beneath you. Just spend a moment noticing that.

your body in contact and supported by the earth beneath you. Another final hook or check-in that you can do to embody in this moment is by taking a quick second and going through your senses, noticing what you can smell. Are there aromas? Do you smell the coffee that you're maybe drinking? Are there sounds in the environment around you? Is there any texture?

Is your shirt textured if you are having your hands upon it or maybe the chair that you're sitting in? Are you noticing a texture or the blanket that's over top of you? Is there any taste in your mouth? And of course, if your eyes are closed, you might gently want to open them and do a quick sight check-in. What do you see? Are there any vibrant colors? Anything that you didn't notice in your environment that you are noticing now? Again, all of those areas, your breath,

The fact that it's ever-present, you're always breathing, can be a beautiful place to shift your focus of attention. The support, we're always being supported by something beneath us, and we always have access to our senses. And making that empowering choice in many moments throughout the day, of course I just took you through the exercise right now, but setting that alarm, practicing one time and then maybe two times will give you that space of overhead illumination that I keep talking about.

And doing that practice, is it helping you just start to be aware of how you feel? That is the first step. Then we can choose to notice those repetitive narratives that I've been talking about throughout. What are those meanings that we're assigning? What about those sensory signals that my body is sending?

Maybe adding to that check-in, we already did the breath one, how we're breathing. If it's quick, if you're holding it, your body might be stressed. Maybe expanding that focus to your muscles. Is there tension that you're carrying? Noticing in those moments that the messages that your mind is receiving or your brain is that your body is stressed, making it even more likely for those reactive cycles to continue. Mm-hmm.

so many people and I hear from so many especially women, they don't even know how they feel, what they're thinking, their intuition, let alone what they're feeling in their body.

And that awareness, like your body kind of tells you everything, right? Like you walk into a certain friend circle and if you feel tense or you feel like something's off, just paying attention to that, right? Starting to feel red flags in relationships, starting to all of those things. Or similarly, if you just all of a sudden just feel at ease, it's probably your knowing that

telling you you're safe and just starting to pay attention to that is huge. But so many people don't know how to do that. So starting this practice, how long should you do this for? And how many times a day would you say when you start? I think just something I want to add there too, not hyper-focusing on giving language to what you're feeling. I think so quickly we shift focus in a way from the sensory experience of what we're feeling because then our mind is trying to find the emotion that we can label it.

Am I sad? Am I angry? So instead, if we notice that tendency just to practice focusing on the sensations, is there a tightness? Is there a heat? Is there a chill?

And not having to know what that means yet. Because you know us achievers, we want to know, oh, okay, good, that was progressive. That's why I'm offering that. I'm playing the tape for her because for me too, I noticed even as a clinical psychologist who's supposed to know and help people with emotions, I really struggle to give language and to know exactly what those sensations were telling me.

And so that's another mental activity where we try to figure over, you know, decide or determine and then judge ourselves and worry about if we're wrong and what if it's not the feeling I thought it was. And just to say with the sensory experience of being in the body and the more practice we can have, as I mentioned earlier, our bodies don't want to change. If what's in your body is a lot of stress, a lot of tension, a lot of upsetting emotions, a lot of dysregulating emotions, then

staying committed to just one check-in throughout your day and staying consistent with that habit. And then over time, building in two, in three, the ultimate goal is to be able to notice throughout your day when you're consciously present and when you're not.

And of course, not judging the moments when you're not. I still notice many moments. I'm distracted with something outside of me. I'm numbing myself, scrolling on my phone or I'm just somewhere else entirely. I can't tell where my attention is.

those are invitations to then refocus and become more present. So the more when we're aware of when we're not present, then we have the opportunity to just like we did together with those check-in points to become present in those moments. I love that you shared that

Because I think there's a lot of people that have tried meditation. Like, I just can't do it. Like, all the things, right? And I think giving yourself permission or really even just expectation that just pay attention to how you feel, the sensations. What does the room smell like? Or what are you feeling? But without judgment or even without needing an answer, right? Kind of like just starting that process of just...

being aware and not feeling like you need some kind of a result when you're doing it. I think this is huge because most people, I mean, I'm telling you, generations in my family don't know how to hear their own intuition or even how they're feeling. And we live life so disconnected, like disassociated from everything, right? So this is a way to kind of like tune back in and start that process.

Which I think for a lot of people, this will be the first time they've ever even thought about doing that. Yeah.

you know, or understood why they should. I think a lot of people to misinterpret what exactly meditation is and then feel intimidated if stillness or silence feels uncomfortable. If they are overwhelmed by the sensations in their body or the racing thoughts in their mind and so they give the practice up and think that they can't do it. In my opinion, any moment can be made into a meditative moment because the way I define meditation is presence. You

you can just as equally be on a walk. For me, music is such an incredibly important continued part of my journey.

So I would walk to work and put music, my headphones on when I was living in Philadelphia in the city. So it was a lot of noise around me, which is why I had the headphones on. And I would just stay present to listening to the sound, to feeling my muscles as I walked quite literally to my office day in and day out. So I'm really happy you brought that up because I think a lot of us can be like, oh, meditation isn't for me because for decades, stillness, if our body is stressed, it's

The physiological signals that our mind is being sent is that stillness isn't safe. Why the heck are you staying still when there's something threatening happening in your environment? And then the racing thoughts are reflection of the body's stress. So for a lot of us, I think we don't feel like we can meditate or it's not helpful to us because stopping stillness, silence, our body doesn't feel safe yet doing it.

So again, any moment can be made into a conscious moment, no matter what we're doing, even if it's washing dishes and doing something we do not like doing, we can just be present to how it feels to be in our body, smelling the aroma of the soap, right? Feeling the warm water or the suds on my hands, not in my head, distracted, arguing with why I'm even doing this, just being present to the action that I'm taking can be a meditative moment.

This is powerful because a lot of people think I need to sit cross-legged with my palms up, eyes closed, 20 minutes, right? And you're saying, I love what you just said, these words, meditation is presence. Because how many of us...

We're not even present at any moment in the entire day. We're rehearsing the future. We're stuck in the past. We're all the different things. We're going through our to-do list mentally. We're actually never present. And you're saying meditation is presence. Kind of like that exercise we just did then would be meditation. Just saying, how do I feel? Or just paying attention. Like me just looking at you right now. Presence.

Well, the beautiful point is that's how we are present in our relationships and truly attuned, not thinking about what we want to say in response to someone else, right? Not overwhelmed with what's happening in our body, able to be grounded in my body, to be hearing what you're saying.

Of course, to be feeling the, you know, generative energy of us being present, maybe even feeling in response to what I'm hearing you say, but I'm not consumed by my side of the conversation, whether it's in thought or in emotional reaction. And that goes back to that childhood need of emotional attunement.

And the need that very few of us have had met because we didn't have that grounded caregiver able to be truly present and curious about us. So when we develop this ability, our relationships greatly shift. We feel more attuned, in sync, emotionally connected. The thing I've been searching for my entire life, we feel that when we're in this grounded state of awareness or consciousness with someone else. No, this is so good. Like I, I, um, this is going to help so many people today.

So many people. So I just, I want to ask this because this is such a thing. Our thoughts are so powerful. And for so many of us, we feel like our negative thoughts spiral. Like how do you stop the spiral of negative thoughts? Two part. We'll work on both layers, if you will, mind and body.

When we notice, back to that first step to create change, when you notice the thought spiral, the negative, the critical, the shaming, whatever your version of that spiral is, becoming present, right? Oh, what's going on in my mind? Oh my gosh, I'm down the rabbit hole of criticism, of shame, of negativity. Whatever it's about, without judgment, that step of awareness is going to allow you now to unhook your attention from it.

Just knowing that you do that isn't going to stop that neural habit. We've practiced those thought spirals by simply repeating them, by allowing ourself to go down that spiral, some of us for the entirety of our lives.

So this is another area, I think, where we shame ourselves. Like, oh, I have negative thought spirals, so now they should stop. I've become aware of them, so now they should go away. And that's not possible. Like the rehearsal of repeating it, we have all of these neuron pathways that will create that spiral again and again and again and again.

The empowerment of removing the focus of attention is where we regain control. Okay, that started. I'm down the rabbit hole of whatever it is. Now I can unhook my attention and put it in all of those other beautiful places that we just talked about. Because those thoughts spiral, especially negative ones, especially stressful ones, especially shameful ones, obsessive ones, they often originate with the stress we're holding in our body. So that bottom layer is

noticing if the place you're dropping your attention to and hooking it from your thoughts, notice how your muscles feel. Notice how your breathing is or your heart rate. Chances are you will notice the elevation and stress, the tension, the quickened breath, the quickened heart rate. And then you could begin to make intentional choices in that moment to slow and deepen your breath, to release the tension that you're feeling in your muscles.

so that then you could work on both layers. We can't remove the thoughts, so we can choose where we put our attention. And then over time, if we downgrade or downshift the stress in our body, we will limit the presence of those cycles. You look at some of the studies that show that our thoughts can be so powerful to the point where if we are focused on them, if we're focused intently on our thoughts,

that sometimes our body doesn't know the difference between a real actual experience and the experience we're thinking about. And I want to know if this is true because I've read this because this could work in your favor too. I have read that you can think yourself into a actual orgasm. Is this true, Dr. Nicola Pera? Thoughts can create reality.

physiological reality if you shift your physiology, if you believe your thoughts to be true. So I could imagine, yes, a scenario where you could shift your physiology in terms of the sexual pleasure of an orgasm, though the belief portion where you're able to generate whatever it is that you're thinking that might generate a sexually pleasurable experience, not just...

kind of from a distance thinking it, embodying how it would feel to be in that pleasurable experience. And then you are impacting. And this is, again, I think why sometimes manifestation and the power of thoughts doesn't get as much credit and doesn't work for a lot of people. Because just mentally rehearsing something that you want for your future, but deeply not believing

or making the choices to embody that future and what you imagine you would feel like in that future, who you would have to be to obtain that reality or to be living that experience.

then it will just remain thoughts that you practice in your mind. If you though envision a future that you want as if it's happening around you right now where you'd open your eyes, including how you would feel in the experience of that reality, then we can change our physiological experience and in my opinion, the external world around us. I think it's so powerful because if you can imagine and embody the feelings to the point where you physically have an orgasm just from your thoughts,

I think it speaks to the power of how for so many of us we sit around thinking so many negative thoughts about ourselves, about our self-doubt, about our incompetencies and then how is that manifesting into our whole lives when it's completely imagined or made up or just like what we're focusing on and embodying. And I think that for a lot of people they think because they don't say things out loud

but they just think them about themselves, that maybe it's not – they don't realize how it could be impacting their own body, believing they're having shameful experiences or experiences of failure or rejection that have never even actually happened. They're just rehearsing them and embodying them in that sort of like negative self-talk environment.

What's coming to mind here, you say that Jamie is all of us had envisioned the worst case scenario as if it happened. Sometimes we think we're doing it in preparation for when it were to happen. And then we end up calling ourselves right unlucky or nothing ever good happens or all only bad things happen. And for me, the mantra that my family would repeat in childhood directly through through lived experience was it's always something.

So my mind would always anticipate into the unknown future that we all have in front of us something being something stressful. And so because I had the stress in my body mapped onto then this perception, I would see the stressful something in every scenario that I would walk into, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of, you know what, it is always something.

Because it was. So we are not understanding. And this is why consciousness becomes so powerful. We don't understand how powerful we are. And we are a powerful creator creating our reality in every moment. Though for most of us, it's just that habitual practice reality, conditioned reality that

that was created at a time when many things, if not everything, was outside of our control. Now, and this is what my hope is always for my work of empowerment, is to learn how to be a powerful creator in our now. That's so good. There are so many people that grew up and now repeat that, yep, that's just my luck. Right. Or waiting for the other shoe to drop or any of those things. And we're literally embodying them and like you said, fulfilling that prophecy. Okay.

I want to ask you about how to be the love you seek, which we have been talking about pieces of through this whole conversation. You know, I've been part of interviews for my books where I leave and I'm like, oh, I didn't even actually get to share exactly what it was and who it's for. And I want to ask you, number one New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Nicola Perra,

What, who is this book for? What will it do for us? I can answer this, but I'm going to let you answer this because you wrote it. Who is this book for and how is how to be the love you seek going to impact everyone who reads it? I think personally that this book is for each and every one of us.

It begins foundationally with repairing the relationship that many of us need repair and reconnection around, which is the relationship with ourselves. I do, anyone who is out there thinking that this is solely a relationship book only for you, if you are in active relationship, again, that those primary relationships formed how we relate to ourselves and then ultimately how we relate to other people. So in my opinion, there's benefit there.

for all of us to read this book. And for many of us, my hope is a bit of unlearning in terms of becoming aware of all of the different definitions that we've even given to what we think a relationship is based on how we've experienced them, including all of the identities and conditioned ways that we've learned to show up

our relationships and to learn what I believe to be the true definition of an authentic loving relationship which is that safe in this that secure space that we keep kind of revisiting the ability to be a grounded curious presence in someone else's life whoever it is I truly believe that we are wired to not only connect socially though to want to be of service and

It's why we feel compassion, which is the ability to see ourselves and understand the suffering in another's. And I think we do take that ability a step further. And we do want to help others.

others in the world around us. I do think we all instinctually, this is why we joined together, to be able to see us as a group of individuals all worthy of the same outcome, which is survival, right? At some time in some space, I believe we all inherently have that as part of our human experience. So my hope is that we learn a new version of relating and

That includes one of the themes to this entire conversation and you beautifully talk about in your work, Jamie, is that authenticity, the ability to be worthy enough to be who we are. Because in my opinion, the world needs it. Our relationships need it. Our relationship with ourself needs it. We talked about all the ways and things that happen when you're out of alignment, including physical health issues, emotional health issues. Mm-hmm.

reaction and conflict in communities and within relationships when we're not able to be who we are, to express who we are, and to honor the differences in other people. So my global, very lofty takeaway hope is not only empowerment as all of my work, I hope to be for everyone, helping us reconnect with, rediscover for many of us who we are so that when we are relating to others,

We're able to be ourselves. My goal-based, and I talk a lot about the science, I'm a scientist at heart, I love science, is the byproduct of that alignment and the ability to be in harmony or heart coherence, as I talk about in the book, in alignment between what my heart says, what I'm doing in the world around me, is quite literally going to change the world. It's going to shift the signals, as we were talking about in terms of cancel culture and conflict and being at odds and threatened,

the more grounded and safe and secure we are as individuals, the more we're going to send out signals of safety and the security that others need to be able to be themselves. So that as humanity, I do believe as a global species, we can learn how to rebuild relationships and communities that need the rebuilding that they do need and come together in harmony and in connection.

I think so many people just think they need to learn how to love others more, but they don't think, oh, wait, I need to also learn how to be the love that I seek, right? I know, I think 40 years ago, Louise Hay...

had said, you know, if you, you know, want to attract a certain partner, write out all the lists of things you want in that person and then actually become that person yourself. And I think we are still in this moment in time where after decades of people pleasing and learn conditioning belief systems that people, especially a lot of women still think the idea of even self-love, self-awareness or self-love is selfish. Yeah.

When really the amount you're able, the depth of connection and love you can have with another person really can't be deeper than the depth of love and connection you have with yourself. For the person out there looking for more love and more fulfillment in their life and maybe they keep looking externally and they keep swiping on the dating app or they keep trying so hard in their marriage or all the things.

Can you just share once more, because I really want people to grasp this idea that when you become the love you seek is how you get the love you seek. It's really that attraction point. When we are putting out those signals of authenticity, whether it's in the matters that we're struggling with, sharing our actual perspective, our actual wants, our needs, our emotions,

or whether we're looking for new authentic relationships. It's not necessarily where we're looking or who we're looking at or how many people we're looking at. I know that we live in an age where we could be on a dating app swiping all day long with all of these endless options.

It's more about how am I being when I'm in interaction with other people. When I'm in anything from the grocery store with strangers, am I being myself? To when I'm dating or developing new relationships or even interacting in old relationships.

which for a lot of us means unlearning, shifting dynamics, violating expectations, right? Courageously embodying a new authentic self. And when we are that, we are going to be sending out energetic signals, whoever it is that we're interacting with.

to attract relationships that can be deeper, that can be more authentic, and that ultimately can be more fulfilling. And it doesn't have to be a numbers game. It doesn't have to be, well, I have to get in front of this many people to find the one, as so many of us think. That's huge to know. It's I have to be me regardless of how many people I'm around. And the people that aren't meant for me will kind of fall away. And the people that are will come my way. And to attract the kind of love I want, it's going to reflect the amount of love I have for myself. Yeah.

which I think is like a big, a big thing for a lot of people to really grasp. Can you, can you love, can you be really good at pleasing everyone else, giving to everyone else, all of that, but if you never learn to love yourself, will you always feel like something's missing?

And like we always, if you're really good at showing up, at making everyone else happy, at giving of all the things, of trying to meet everyone else's needs, but you never learn to love yourself deep down inside.

Will you always feel like something's missing and never quite feel that sense of fulfillment and wholeness in life? Well, something is missing if you are not part of any equation. Yeah. And this is one of those moments where subconsciously your actions, which you think are selfless or giving or caring...

are sending you, an internal being inside of you, a message that you're not as worthy as them of your time, attention, presence, tending, care, love. So this is, again, one of those moments where it really is embracing the embodiment or the holistic practice. And those are the people, the givers, the carers, the people that are focused on being selfless, tending to the world around us.

that are going to have the most difficult time creating that space because at a time and a place they had to play that role there was safety in securing their connections through playing that role. Though it is only in the embodiment of making those difficult brave choices to shift the nature of those signals from "I am worthy" every time now I show up in action of embodying the space in my relationships even when it's scary and doesn't immediately feel good

that internal being inside of me is kind of getting a nod that those instinctual wants, desires, or needs, whatever it is in any moment, are valid. They needed that space. And I am now finally showing up in service of it. So I think we won't ever feel whole,

feel worthy, feel loved, unless we are also participating and showing ourself that we are whole, worthy, and loved. You are worthy of being the love...

You seek Dr. Nicole LaPera. Where can everyone find you? At this point, I'm pretty much across all of the social media platforms, as I said in the beginning. Accessibility of these conversations is so important. Of course, it all began on the Instagram account, the.holistic.psychologist, though now there is a YouTube, a TikTok, a Twitter or X space.

for me, threads even. So Googling or searching, I should say, the handle of The Holistic Psychologist on any of those social media platforms is a great way to follow along with this content. I have a website, theholisticpsychologist.com, where you can get more information on Self Healer Circle, my global membership, and a website for the new book, howtobetheloveyouseek.com, where you can get information on some book retailers, though at this point I'm hoping that many of the major book

retailers or local stores that you like to support. We'll have a couple copies on file. Thank you. Of course. Thank you, Jamie, for having me and for the light you put out in this world, truly. Thank you so much for joining me today. And before you go, I want to share some words with you that couldn't be more true. You, right now, exactly as you are, are enough and fully worthy.

You're worthy of your greatest hopes, your wildest dreams, and all the unconditional love in the world. And it's an honor to welcome you each episode to the Jamie Kern Lima Show. Here, I hope you'll come as you are, heal where you need, blossom what you choose, journey toward your calling, and stay as long as you'd like because you belong here.

You are worthy, you are loved, you are love, and I love you. And I cannot wait to join you on the next episode. This is The Jamie Kern Lima Show. Make sure you subscribe to my channel and follow me at Jamie Kern Lima for more episodes like this.

In life, you don't soar to the level of your hopes and dreams. You stay stuck at the level of your self-worth. When you build your self-worth, you change your entire life. And that's exactly why I wrote my new book, Worthy, How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life Forever.

for you. This show is presented solely for entertainment purposes only. It's not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, professional coach, or other qualified professional.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and conversation together, and I am so grateful to be on this journey with you. And did you know for every episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show, there are a set of special prompt questions just for you to help you on your journey of aha moments and revelations in your own life from each episode.

Make sure you join my free email newsletter at jamiekernlima.com to get them sent to you each week. And each episode is meant to be evergreen and packed with timeless life lessons. So you can go back and listen to past episodes you perhaps haven't heard yet as we are going on this incredible journey of building self-worth and living our best lives together.