“Your Trauma Is Ruining Your Relationship,” How To Be The Love You Seek, Healing Childhood Trauma, Setting Boundaries w/ The Holistic Psychologist
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Mari has grown her two fitness and nutrition brands. Co-founder of Bloom Nutrition. Forbes 30 under 30 list. A successful entrepreneur. Someone who has lost 90 pounds. Today's guest is Mari Llewellyn. Mari Llewellyn. My friend Mari. Welcome to the pursuit of wellness.

Hi guys, welcome back to the show. Today, I got to sit down with Dr. Nicole Lepera, also known as the Holistic Psychologist. I was completely fangirling. I've been following her for such a long time. You may follow her on Instagram. She has 7.5 million followers.

She posts quotes and skits about family trauma, relationships, and tips for healing. She just released her new book, How to Be the Love You Seek, which is all about relationships, which I feel like that's such a big topic when it comes to trauma. A lot of us carry our family trauma into our romantic relationships.

She shares her personal journey into psychology and how healing from her own trauma led to her developing powerful tools that have transformed countless lives. Dr. Nicole's dedication to healing and her journey to self-awareness is inspiring and provides insightful guidance for anyone on a path to inner growth and healing. In today's episode, we talk about narcissistic parents...

healing childhood trauma, recognizing unhealthy patterns and reconnecting with our bodies, setting boundaries, attachment styles, CPTSD, exploring our inner child and reclaiming identity, and defining wellness. This was such a helpful episode for me. I left feeling like I had even more tools in my toolbox when it comes to family trauma and healing. And I feel like especially around the holidays, this is all really helpful information.

Before we hop into the episode, I also want to add, guys, Bloom has a new product, high-energy stick packs. You guys are obsessed with a high-energy pre-workout. It's so yummy and the perfect motivational tool for the gym. It really, like, gets you going. And now we have it available in travel stick packs. You can throw it in your gym bag, throw it in your travel bag, whatever it may be. That is now live, so go check it out. Without further ado, let's hop into the episode.

Guys, today on the show, we have a highly requested guest, Dr. Nicole Lepera, also known as the holistic psychologist. I am so ready for this conversation. Nicole, you are the internet's favorite therapist, and I think it's because so many of us

don't quite know how to articulate our childhood trauma and our struggles. And you do it in a way that's digestible, easy to understand, and also easy to share with others and help explain maybe what we're experiencing. I know I've personally seen posts on your page where I just feel so seen and understood. And I think you genuinely provide tools that help us all heal. So I want to thank you for dedicating your career to helping all of us heal firstly. Secondly,

Secondly, I'd love to hear how you personally became interested in psychology and inner healing. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Mari, for having me. Thank you for those very kind words. Me understanding myself in a lot of these new ways was actually so much a part of my own journey. I didn't have this language before. I didn't have this information. And I absolutely didn't have a lot of the tools that I now talk about. So

Once I discovered how transformational they were, it really was an intuitive next step to see the Internet for all that it is and all that it isn't as really an opportunity to begin these conversations because I think quite globally we need it. So my interest in psychology is as long as I can remember, I guess, in high school when you start to get asked, like, what are you going to be when you grow up?

I was always really fascinated with understanding people, mainly driven by trying to understand myself. So I would have always kind of spoken that I wanted to be a clinical psychologist or a practicing psychologist, which is what I was for several years having a practice in Philadelphia. And I really came upon a really universal experience of psychology.

Speaking of having insight and awareness, right? And so many of us having that, the clients that I would see week after week, having all of these moments of awareness yet not being able to bridge that gap from insight into action the way they like to think about it and

Seeing the same in myself, I really first and foremost hit my rock bottom, my kind of dark night of the soul and really sought to understand, well, why am I struggling in the ways that I am? And really opened up a whole new world of science and the body and the nervous system and really understood attachment in a new way and how it impacts the science and the body and the nervous system. And that really set me on my own journey of healing. And then again, like I said, motivated me really to share that with other people.

How do you heal yourself while you heal others? I feel like that must be challenging. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's, you know, the journey in so many ways is that we're on. And I often like to reframe to this idea of healing other people.

My goal is, and I don't necessarily believe that it is possible, I can facilitate conversations, give information, hopefully in bite-sized understandable ways, give the tools of action. But I always like to reflect back to the individual doing the work. This is exactly actually what I saw with my clients. We would come up with plans of action and then

of those other hours out of the week outside of the 50 minutes that we would have together is them showing up in their body, in their relationships and maintaining the commitment to make the new choices to create the change. So, but not to say that, you know, I'm

I'm still on my journey. Absolutely. It's still, there's a lot of new challenging aspects of doing so much more publicly, but the struggle is still there. It's still real. All of the same habits are wired into my subconscious. And that's why I'm so often hearing me talk about my continued struggles because I'm very much on the journey alongside of everyone. You mentioned rock bottom. What did that look like for you? It looked like, and it

Interestingly, though not so ironically, came at a time where I imagined that I would start to feel deeply fulfilled by this life that I worked so hard to create. After checking all the boxes, going to school to get my PhD, finally getting licensed, opening up a private practice, being in a committed relationship, being in Philadelphia, which is my hometown where I thought I wanted to live for the foreseeable future. So having had all of that created around me,

Still not feeling connected to that life, feeling really unfulfilled, feeling really emotionally disconnected from my partner at the time who continues to be my partner right now. And it really looked like a lot of sadness without an understandable reason why, which was then a whole bit of shame, I think, that came up. Seeing all of the stuff that I had in my life. Why, Nicole, are you struggling alongside of people who don't have the

life that you've created. And I sought to understand why. And a lot of it comes up in the work that I talk about now. This self that I was being, this endless drive for achievement really for me began in childhood as an attempt to maintain the connections that were available in my family, as an attempt to fill this hole of no self-worth. And I think that naturally, many of us do things

externally within our relationship that we think are going to translate to us feeling a particular way. And when that doesn't happen, it can be really destabilizing. I think so many of us have blinders on and are unaware of our own habits and patterns that we are maybe carrying from childhood, things that are not serving us anymore.

But I think anyone who just clicked on this episode alone are clearly interested in healing. And maybe they're at the very beginning stages. If someone listening is interested in embarking on the journey of inner healing, what's the best way to begin without...

going in too far and kind of scaring yourself. Yeah. So to speak to the point of being blindered, I mean, a lot of us, a lot of listeners probably have heard of the concept of autopilot, this kind of very habitual way that many of us are just going about our day, the things that we do, the thoughts that we think, the way that we feel, the way that we show up in our relationship. And we've become so used to us

our emotions, our dynamics in that way that very much we are like the horse with blinders on it. So you'll always hear me when I talk about any process of change or transformation. I like to simplify concepts and I will always simplify them into two steps with the first step being, right, remove yourself from that autopilot, becoming conscious, begin to observe, be an observer, right?

of what are the thoughts that are running through your mind. We're quite habitual. We don't create new stories that we tell ourselves day in and day out. Chances are we're repeating the same narratives again that in my belief were created in childhood. Similarly with our body, if we're even connected

We tend to be very habitual in the emotions that we're getting stuck in day in and day out. So learning to shift our focus of attention from all of the endless distraction around us, even the distraction of those racing thoughts in our thinking mind, beginning to attune to how is my body feeling and then more so how am I showing up in the world.

Am I expressing those two true thoughts and those true emotions or am I suppressing myself and only showing parts? So awareness just to finish the loop in terms of that second step. Once I see more clearly what are the habits and patterns that are creating, so for purposes of this book, my relationship, my relationship with myself first and foremost, then of course my relationship with other people, once I have that conscious space, then I can begin to over time integrate new choices or new habits.

you

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you mentioned body connection and that stood out to me because that's something i've struggled with for a very long time i think that

feeling of like intuition and that gut feeling often goes away when you have a certain type of childhood trauma. How do we reconnect with our bodies? Yeah, my body and building a foundational reconnection back has been such a life changing. And that was the big piece that was missing really traditionally. We used to give all this power to the mind. The mind is very powerful. It can create new thoughts and new future imaginings. But

really we're bound by what is our body doing and saying in any moment. What I came to realize is one of the reasons why I felt so disconnected from the life around me was because I was so disconnected from my body and to speak to your very beautiful point from where my intuition lives. I was driven again by my nervous system, by patterns of activation and by my main way I've learned how to deal with it, which is by checking out. In my first book, How to Do the Work, I talk about, I call it my spaceship experience.

that more or less I learned to live on. Of course, I was still going through life and having relationships and interacting with other people, but it was very much doing so from a much more distanced way. And I mean, even just to simplify it again, the relationship we have with our body is really created in our earliest relationships and how present the caregivers around us were or weren't

to care for our physical needs because we're completely dependent on them. And ultimately then how we begin to think and feel about our own body and then how we begin to treat our body and the choices that we make. And ultimately, if we're not attuning ourselves

to our physiological needs, our physical sensations, all of these emotions, we're not going to be able to connect with that deeper intuition. So again, steps back or becoming conscious of how disconnected we are and creating that new habit consistently over time. I like to talk about even a simple practice of a consciousness check-in. I talk about it often in my

membership, the self-healer circle where members, it's suggested to set an alarm on your phone, put a post-it note next to the mirror that you walk by or set a designated time when I'm brushing my teeth or when I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, something we do daily. And when that alarm goes off or you alert yourself or at that moment of that activity, you've been to

begin to notice what am I paying attention to? Like, was I completely lost in thought? Was it about something that happened yesterday? Was I worrying about something that happened in the future? And without judging what it is that we're noticing, because that's that awareness piece, then we can make that second empowering choice, which is to refocus our attention away from whatever it was being distracted by and to tune in.

well, how does my body feel? What are my muscles doing? Are they tense? Are they relaxed? How am I breathing? Is it deep and even from my belly or is it shallow and quickened from my chest? How is my heart rate doing? And specifically, I'm noting those points because those are usually markers of my nervous system, my level of stress. So the more consistently we make that practice a habit,

the more over time we're going to be able to reconnect with our body. The more that we regulate our nervous system, if it is activated, the more we're going to be able to attune to our intuition. I love that tip. I'm going to do that ASAP, especially even in a conversation like this.

because I find myself getting caught up on the next question or I'm worried about how it sounds or how it looks. And in reality, the best thing I could be doing is being present in the conversation. And I think that could apply to anyone listening, whether they're in a meeting at work or they're having dinner with their husband, like being present is so important and it's the best place to sit in. I want to talk about recognizing the unhealthy habits and patterns because

I know for me, I've been on a wild journey and I think I felt like through my fitness journey, I was healed. I came to the end of it. I'm a healthier version of me. I felt like I was healed. Turns out there's a whole other level to unlock. And now I'm noticing...

new unhealthy patterns and a sense of addiction to achievement came out an obsession with work filling my time to the brim so I really had no space to be alone with my thoughts and I think so many people have these quote-unquote coping mechanisms that they use to escape what's going on in their heads

How do we begin to recognize what in our life is actually unhealthy and what's actually productive? I really appreciate you speaking from your own lived experience because I do think sometimes things that are celebrated, right? Exercising is healthy, right? I want to achieve in life. So doing things, right, will create that. And maybe I have endless obligations. So keeping myself on the run with my job and partners and children if they're in the picture, right? All of these things that I do think become celebrated, right?

to speak to your, again, very wise point, can absolutely be a function of our attempt to deal with deeper underlying discomfort. Because if my attention, right, is always outward on what I have to do next, you

even this healthy thing like exercise, then I'm not really paying attention to what's beneath the surface. And then more so, if I have this idea that this achievement or this body structure or physique or whatever it is, right, will make me feel worthy or lovable or will, right, give me the relationship that I want, now we really are caught in an endless loop of trying to do the things that

ultimately, and that's exactly what happened with me, being achievement driven because in childhood, in absence of my mom being able to emotionally be attuned to me, however it was that I was feeling or thinking or whatever it was that I was doing in the moment, she was very present to me when I was achieving for very well-intentioned reasons, right? Because many parents want their kids to be happy and successful. And usually some form of financial stability comes up in that imagining of what would create that. So-

For very well-intentioned purposes, I was so validated to do that I very much kind of entered that cycle because not only was I endlessly seeking my mom's love and connection and this deeper feeling of worthiness like I was sharing earlier, the byproduct of it was, oh, I don't have to deal with

this underlying discomfort, though ultimately it doesn't go away. So again, how do I differentiate or make a distinction? I think anytime we're living in that conscious space, right? So if exercise is a priority or doing and achieving is a priority, right? Dropping in and checking in with ourself to determine why is it that we're doing it,

right? What is the why? And are there moments where I can make the choice not to do it? Because when we think about achievement and exercise, I really had to attune to the physical body as much as it needs movement. It also needs rest and those silent restorative moments. And I love even how you're kind of describing an inability that I think many of us have that I know I had in being in stillness, being in silence. Sure.

She and I were talking, lived in New York City for a long time. I had an endless amount of social engagements and I would structure my time if I wasn't doing something to achieve professionally or in school. I had plans with friends and all of that again was my attempt to avoid the stillness that was so uncomfortable. So when we see the habits, we

We can kind of drill down a little bit, begin to explore what is my intention and are there moments where it's okay not to be achieving? Do I still feel whole? Do I still feel worthy? Do I still feel lovable? Or when I'm not working out, right, is it still okay? Or is my mind racing with all of the imagined things that are going to happen or come upon if I don't work out in this moment? Yeah. And I think the point you made about

thinking about the why is so, so crucial. I find myself getting trapped in these cycles of saying yes to everything. Like, yeah, I'll speak at that conference. Yeah, I'll go to that meeting. Yeah, I'll do that. Oh, last minute podcast. Sure. Why not? And I just start saying yes to everything. And I think checking in and being like, well, am I doing this because it's

filling space or because I truly want to. And when you make that differentiation, I feel like you also start doing things from such a place of purpose, you actually get a better result at the end of the day. 100%. I can make a case in terms of our nervous system as much as it needs rest, like I was saying. I mean, we need those restorative moments of solitude, of saying no, of being connected to the why, my purpose in doing the thing, so that when I do decide to show up

if it's a couple days later and delaying that podcast for a time where I have my resources, then my nervous system actually will be more grounded and more in that present moment and more able to achieve that flow state. And I've seen that in myself now that

I don't have a structured life. I mean, there was a time where I saw clients. So when my schedule existed, I had to show up to work. And now I live much more of a creative, you know, kind of schedule where I get to decide when I'm podcasting or when I'm creating new projects or writing books, whatever it is. And I've come to realize how important and how much those moments of rest are part of my creative process.

I've really had to settle into the seasonality in a way of our beingness, of our creation. A lot of times we just think of the doing, right? The act of consuming content to create content. And I've really had to understand that what equally goes into those moments of flow are the moments where I do say no. If it's

not aligned as an opportunity just because someone else wants me isn't just enough of a reason to say yes and or if it's not aligned with my energy and my resources at any given moment. I love that. I think so many of us are having people pleasing tendencies and just you saying yes

just because someone else needs you doesn't mean you need to is so huge. I think another thing that I used to struggle with and I feel like a lot of other people do too is this kind of blame game.

we fall in this pattern of blaming other people for the position that we're in or pointing the finger for inner struggles we're having. How do we get out of the rut of the blame game? Right. And I just want to tie this into as well, having this awareness, right? I'm a people pleaser. I externalize or I blame. I enter the blame game mode. Is

is only half the journey, right? Because the other half is saying no, to go back to the people pleasing example, right? Putting up that boundary, setting that limit, and then dealing, the reason why I'm emphasizing this is dealing with all of the different ways that we feel and what we imagine the person is thinking or feeling about us in any given moment. So it really is the embodiment. And that is often why we don't do it,

We have so much anticipatory fear of saying no that we don't actually create that new habit to say no. And then we're so consumed by fears of what they're thinking or concerns and difficulty around disappointing them and all the discomfort. I know that's what it was for me that kept me saying yes for so long. So similarly, we can notice that, you know, we are someone who blames. I very much was like that in a string of past relationships. I would

come to the conclusion after I continued to feel, probably not surprised here, not connected emotionally, I would come to the conclusion that, oh, well, it wasn't me, of course, because at this point, I'm a trained clinical psychologist. I'm very self-aware. I know how I'm showing up in relationships. It must be you. You're the problem, right? So there goes that blame. And endlessly, I would then seek another partner who I would imagine or hope would make me feel differently.

Again, I think that habit of externalizing starts in our childhood where there was a lack of emotional boundaries, where I know in my childhood I was taught directly and indirectly that I was and that other people could be responsible for what they did, for what they didn't do. My mom was responsible

express disappointment if she didn't like the way I was dressing at any given time and would remove her connection from me, would stop speaking to me, would give me the silent treatment. So all of these micro moments are a teaching that what I do, what I say, how I feel, how I express myself, right, does have an impact on other people. So as I think is the case for a lot of us, I then took that same approach. Okay, well, I'm affecting the world around me. So clearly what you're doing or not doing is

is the cause of how I'm feeling or how I'm not feeling. And then that played out in the cycle with relationships. Everyone became the problem but me until I really understood the deeper dynamics, which was that I was, right, saw that shift of focus. Oh, I am externalizing all of this blame. And I really began to understand the different role by consciously becoming aware of how I was showing up.

Am I actually expressing if I wanna be so emotionally connected? Am I actually sharing with someone what's really going on? Am I actually sharing my perspective or emotionally what's coming up for me? And more often than not, the answer was no. So while on the one hand, I'm blaming you for not being close emotionally, I'm holding you at a six foot distance.

And I'm not letting you. So again, while I say that to say, and I'm still much on this journey of, I can have all of this awareness. I can even from my mind's eye, see myself or in real time, I'm still like, I need you, but stay away from me or actually act in an agitated way and passive aggressive.

Because building that bridge to allowing emotional connection, for me at least, is still quite unfamiliar. And with it comes all of those childhood feelings and all of that unworthiness and that belief that, oh, I just have to modify and show up in service of you. And back then I go down that spiral. Is that like I need you but stay away considered confused attachment?

It's a version of anxious avoidant, depending on how you want or what awareness you have of those different labels. But if we really want to simplify it, how we show up in relationships is really modeled on how we want to show up, what our environments look like, what our relationship look like.

And for a lot of us, if we didn't have that emotionally attuned caregiver that was more often than not consistently available, we will have some version of an attachment dynamic that can look like that, that can look like explosive, a lot of reactivity that can look much more like my mom, just a lot of distance, the detached relationship.

attachment style. But if we really want to simplify it and talk macro, however we learned to show up and get whatever version of connection or love. And this is again why this book is so around this concept of love and unlearning because we've learned to relate in a very particular way. It was the only way we could at one time. And for some of us, it was the only way that kept us somewhat safe and

and secure in whatever dynamic was available. And then we continue to apply not only that definition of love in our relationships, though I talk a lot about the science and the neurobiology. And again, we continue to then operate in these confines of

driven more often than not by our body and our nervous system dysregulation in this way that we've learned to be familiar, which is why so many of us can read relationship books, can have very well-meaning friends that are shouting from the sidelines that this is the same relationship dynamic. Again, can't you see this is a red flag, if you will, and we still can't feel like we can help ourself before we know it. We're back repeating that same dynamic because it's become our neurobiological home because that's what we learn.

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I want to ask you, and this is a question that I personally wanted to ask, but then I saw a ton of followers also ask this.

Is being fully healed possible and how do we know when we are fully healed? Well, I, so if anyone listening has found the place of done, I know I've been literally on an endless search with this hypothesis again, right? When I checked the box, I had all this stuff in my 30s. I thought I was going to be able to just kick back and enjoy life.

I've yet to find that place. And I mean, jokes aside, I don't necessarily believe, I think we're energetic creatures as humans. I think we're in a process of becoming and evolving, which means as difficult as that is to kind of navigate the uncertainty and the lack of control that comes with impermanence and change and evolution. I do think the byproduct of that is the answer being there isn't.

And I think a lot of times when we're seeking that, if I just get to the end, for me, it was usually, if I just get to the end of my endless to-do list, I can relax.

Not realizing, and again, tying together a bit of what I was sharing earlier, not realizing that moments of relaxation, of presence, taking care of my nervous system was actually what was gonna create the opportunity to relax, not just powering through with little to no energy to do so, this endless list of things that I could do. So to simplify the answer, I've yet to find the place of done. I don't think it exists. And I think the more comfortable we get with living into presence in any given moment,

Because again, the reality of it is none of us have the ability. We can imagine what comes in the next moment, in the next moment, in five years from now of moments, but we don't actually have the gift of knowing exactly what it is.

So until we can really ground ourself in presence and stillness, maintain a responsive attention to our body and its signals in any given moment, attuned to our intuition, to use that language from earlier, I think the more that we're able to do that, the more we really do equip ourselves to navigate the inevitable uncertainty of tomorrow. Yeah, I feel like

part of healing is realizing that you are probably never fully healed and the levels just keep changing, you know? Like I feel like once we heal one part of ourselves, a whole new part reveals itself. And I think, as you said, taking moments of stillness throughout the evolution. I mean, relaxation and stillness can come even when you're on the pursuit of something. And incorporating that while working on the other things, I think is crucial. Yeah.

I want to talk about childhood trauma. I think a big realization for me a long time ago was that childhood trauma doesn't have to mean physical or sexual abuse. While obviously it can be that as well, it can also be repeated emotional neglect or a repeated stressful environment, a lack of consistency, as you mentioned. What would you classify

classify as childhood trauma because I think so many of us are realizing that we may have experienced that. And that was one of the biggest pieces of insight that helped me put, you know, a bit of understanding into my experience because I did work with people who had high levels of those, you know, kind of cataclysmic life-changing moments of abuse that are more easy to identify as trauma experiences.

And when I didn't have that, I mean, I tried it on for size. I thought, is there a memory I'm, you know, have deleted out that has happened to me? And the reality of it was no. And in the field for a very long time, we only focused on that sort of trauma. And thankfully, we've expanded now to understand what is now categorized as attachment trauma.

So the previous type, these like big moments can, you know, result in traditionally a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. Now we have a new categorization called CPTSD, complex post-traumatic stress disorder that again allows in all of these moments of, you know, emotional misattunement or of emotional neglect or the stress that can happen when there's an unpredictable

Right.

to downregulate our own emotional overwhelm, the byproduct for a lot of us is continued stress and overwhelm in the body, which is the actual definition of trauma itself. So understanding that really expands the definition to trauma can be not only what happens,

But what doesn't happen as well, and oftentimes it is in the dynamics typically around how emotions are navigated or stressful experiences. And again, if we didn't have someone that was able to help us understand what was happening, there's a lot of families that just sweep big emotions under the rug and act like they don't happen. Explosions happen, silent treatments go on for weeks at a time, and then it's over and nothing's spoken about.

And more so again, even with the awareness that emotions are important, it is so important for the parent, the caregiver or the partner, right? To actually translate that insight into being calm in those moments or returning to their own grounded presence or their own state of nervous system regulation, which is obviously if you're navigating life with children can be very complicated and very difficult, which is I think why so many of us raised by older generations

they didn't have this information they didn't have the tools they didn't have the resources to actually be calm and regulate it so many of us were left with some version of attachment trauma i pulled this quote from your page that stood out to me if you grew up in a home with constant screaming or yelling your body remembers you might startle easily or feel like sobbing when someone yells

So relatable. And I think, as you mentioned, this will result in a dysregulated nervous system for so many of us. How do we begin to heal a dysregulated nervous system and calm our bodies down? So as all things, the first step is attuning to our body and our heart rate and our breathing pattern and our muscles are two great markers. So when we're doing that check-in, just to build on this practice, noting, like I was sharing earlier, right? How is my heart beating?

how am i breathing um how do my muscles feel all that feel are they tense because our body our nervous system in particular is always on alert it's always scanning our current environment our relationships include it to determine whether or not we're safe in any given moment and those are the areas that our body will begin to activate and as we become stressed

Our heart rate will increase, our breathing will reflect that increase, and our muscles will tense. Physiologically, the fight or flight response is what that's called, that sympathetic activation. If we think about life on the prairie, if you will, that increased activity

Right. And heart rate and breathing and oxygen that comes with it is getting my body ready to overcome the threat by fighting it, which now looks like in our relationship, screaming, yelling, trying to overpower or dominate a conversation because I'm feeling threatened in this moment.

Or if that's not possible, I'll flee. I'll leave. I'll get distracted. I'll run right on the prairie away using all of that mobilized energy. If neither of those are possible or if the threat goes on for too long, and this is what ended up being the case why I went on my spaceship, we will, like a lizard or like an animal, we'll play dead.

So instead of having all of that energy at the ready, well, actually our muscles will feel very limp, weak, almost as if I can't get off this couch, even if you ask me to, I have no motivation. Instead of having a quickened breath or a quickened heart rate, I might not be able to necessarily feel my heart because I'm so disconnected from it or might be holding my breath or constricting my breath. And that's, again, a sign that I'm frozen is the technical term for that nervous system state. But a lot of times it mimics, right?

Low, depressed feelings, depressed motivation, right? I can't actually get up off and do anything or help myself in any way. So beginning to understand that our body is speaking to us in those ways will not only create the awareness. Oh, when I'm screaming and yelling, it's not because I'm a mean person. It's because I'm feeling threatened in this moment, right?

Or when I'm distracted or I can't keep my attention on a conversation because my mind is racing, it's not because I don't care. It's because there's something coming up in my body that's kind of feeding the need to flee. Or something coming up in the conversation that's too uncomfortable for me to pay attention to. Or again, if I don't have motivation, I don't feel like I can even do anything. It's not because I'm lazy or unmotivated. It very well might be because my nervous system has become so overwhelmed that it's quite literally shut me down.

When you mentioned the feeling of disconnection, it made me think of dissociation, which is something that I have struggled with for as long as I can remember. It still happens to me. It's definitely like a survival tool I used throughout childhood that comes up for me now, less so. And I think the exercise you mentioned, the body check-in, would be so great to do during a period of dissociation.

But even when I'm in therapy, if something comes up that's too much for me, I feel my eyes glaze, I'm gone. And my therapist can tell right away and she'll kind of draw it to my attention. Because sometimes it's difficult to even realize that you're entering dissociation. And I think a lot of people will relate in that I feel like I have a lot of black holes in my memory from childhood because I think I was dissociated a majority of the time.

Do we need to remember every detail of our childhood in order to heal from it? I appreciate you sharing so much of your journey, Mari. And I reflect the very similar journey around high school. I started to realize and wonder what I thought was physiologically wrong with my brain. Because I had no other way to assume when everyone else is telling me, you know, retelling stories of childhood Christmas and this thing that happened and this cool vacation. How do you remember that?

I have nothing. And then it became a running joke. Well, it's because Nicole likes to party. And so, ha ha ha, she doesn't remember. And then I'm like, oh, I tried that one on first eyes too. Maybe it's like damaged my brain or, you know, and I came to realize the reason why many of us struggle to recall because that's the difficulty that we're having. Our mind and body are actually remembering. But we can't kind of pull that movie screen up or retell it is because of, again, our

our nervous system. And when we're constantly stressed and our body is constantly releasing cortisol, the main stress hormone, especially when we're young and our brain is developing. I mean, that's one of the things about being human. We're born not only dependent, we're born still developing.

I mean, our brain develops into our 20s. So we have all this development happening. Our brain is growing, changing, you know, wiring networks together. And as cortisol goes up, which for many of us, it can begin in utero, which I know it did for me, having a mother. My mom found out she was pregnant with me when she was 42 years old, when she started to have morning sickness. She actually thought at first it was signs of stomach cancer.

had no idea that she was to be pregnant. We have a lot of health anxiety in my family. So I think about those several weeks before she was urged to go to the doctor and get the diagnosis of pregnancy. And then she had a whole host of worries of advancing age, maternal age back at that time. They thought there was maybe something wrong with me. Anyway, so sharing that to say, my first environment was so much cortisol,

because she couldn't regulate her own emotions. And then I had all this overwhelming cortisol once I grew up, not having that attunement and cortisol in particular impacts the hippocampus or one of the areas of our brain that helps us recall memories at a later time. So if we didn't again have that ability to cope or someone to help us co-regulate, and this is why now that I speak about it, I hear so many similar stories like you and like a lot of people that are like, oh my gosh, I didn't remember either.

Though, again, to emphasize, we do remember. So we don't have to. Some of us may never gain access. I talked to my family, my sister. She can't remember much of her childhood as well. So I don't have anyone to even tell me the tale of it. I have pictures. I can try to look. I might never remember in that way or recall in that way. Though what we can do is become conscious because we're a living habit.

Everything that we created to cope with that overwhelm, all of the different ways that we show up in our relationships with ourself and other people, the way that our nervous system is wired, those moments of reactivity and how we habitually deal with them, more so our beliefs.

All of these narratives we've created about ourself, our place in the world, our place in relationships, chances are we're born out of that early time. So we can become present to what it is that we're still carrying with us from that childhood. And again, use that as the start point to create those new choices. I'm curious if you feel like...

trauma makes us who we are because in some ways I've spent so much of my life trying to heal from my trauma and move on from it but in other ways I'm like I feel like it's my best asset that I have this experience and I am who I am because of it I'm curious what your thoughts it's a really great question um some people have started to talk about in the field or labeled it as a post-traumatic growth

This idea of all of the things, resiliency that can come with new perspectives, sometimes humor around certain things, right? That come with having lived the experience of trauma. So it's absolutely, I think, a part of our life experience. If I really want to be philosophical and dive in, I think who we are, right, is kind of the being that has gone through those experiences. So it's impacted by what has happened, right?

And then I think that often the question that follows in this idea too of like, am I ever going to be done, right? Will I ever go back to being, right, the person before the trauma or whatever it was? And again, I think that it becomes integrated into our experience.

Like we've, I think both been sharing, yes, there are still moments where it's there. It's alive when you're dissociating in therapy or I'm checking out in my own personal life or whatever it is. So it doesn't go away. It just becomes not as primary of a part. We're not just reacting in those moments from that part of our personality or only embodying these conditioned ways of being that I was offering earlier. Yeah, the tendency is still there.

The drive to think and believe in certain ways and show up in certain ways, though, I can be in my choice. I can see myself driven to do or say or think in certain ways, but I can still make a choice to maybe be all of me or to show something different. We've touched on relationships a little bit, but I want to ask, what is the best way to communicate with our partner or even our friends today?

Yes, I think to communicate it.

And I'm being intentional, just pausing there because I think a lot of us carry shame. Some of us are of the belief, oh, well, that was however many decades or years ago. Why would I bring it up now? So in really emphasizing that it is here, it is present, it is going to be dynamically present in our relationship. So emphasizing the importance of having those conversations and beginning to explore someone else's life experiences and more so to try it on from their perspective.

Because again, it's very natural that we're filtering the world through us. And you could even share an experience about your childhood, right? And if I didn't have that experience or I can't understand it, or I did have it, I might assume that you would feel the way I would or did.

feel about it without actually, so curiosity, I think would be the next suggestion. When we have these conversations, having them, the caveat being not in a moment of explosion where you're screaming and yelling about the childhood, right? That you're carrying into this argument, but at a calm grounded moment so that both people, even going back to what you noticed earlier, right? I can be distracted in conversation, right? Noticing when and being able to give your full attention

to what someone else is sharing so that you can then try on for size what their perspective might have been or how they might have felt about it, which might mean asking instead of assuming. Because I think quickly our mind is like, oh, well, I actually have had something very similar happen and I felt this when this happened. So I'm going to assume that Mari felt this too. Instead of saying, well, wait a minute, all of that's happening in my mind. Let me ask, how was that for you when that happened?

and then allowing the person to actually openly share. But again, having these conversations, not in explosive moments where I think it can be very natural, where we're kind of throwing it in someone's face in a very scorecard, scorekeeping, kind of gotcha way or demanding maybe in a really heated moment that you hear about what it is that is causing, but setting the time to have the conversations when both people are as calm and grounded as possible and really being curious

to ask and to hear. And then that's a whole task in of itself because what you might hear, right, might bring up something from your own past, might actually impact you in some way. So it might be upsetting. And then again, it's your job to be in your presence, stay calm and regulate it so that the more you're able to be calm during these conversations, the more you're creating the safety, especially for someone who struggles to share or to talk about, especially emotionally impactful events.

So much of the responsibility is like, oh, just tell me what it is. But in reality, the responsibility is for me to create that safe environment so that you can feel calm and safe enough to tell me. And then when you do tell me, it's not met with explosive reactivity or invalidation. It's allowed to be what it is. Which is great advice for parents listening too, actually. I think it's such an interesting concept, just even being in a marriage now,

My husband has, you know, wonderful parents who I've gotten to know and they're very, very consistent. Obviously, everyone has their own struggles and my husband struggles a little bit more being emotionally vulnerable, whereas I'm kind of used to it at this point and I tend to share maybe too much. But he had a very consistent parent, whereas I did not.

And that is super evident in our attachment styles and just, I guess, abandonment issues. My expectation is that he's going to leave after we have a brief argument. And that's kind of hardwired into my brain. I've been working on letting go of that a little bit. But I love the advice you gave. And I think one thing that's really helped me

prevent getting too emotional in conversations like that and having knee-jerk reactions is checking in and doing some deep breaths while he's speaking so I can listen and process and be grounded rather than thinking of my next response. I want to ask you about narcissism. I know you've done a couple posts on it and I think people and there's a strong response to narcissism. I want to specifically ask you about narcissistic parents.

What are some signs that you may have been raised by a narcissistic parent? I just want to talk really quickly about narcissism because I do see that word used pretty globally. Narcissism is actually, in my opinion at least, a function of our nervous system activation.

When we're threatened, again, just going right down to our evolutionary physiology, when we're threatened and my physical life is at risk for whatever's happening, even if it's something happening relationally, right? Just like I was on that prairie and I'm going to fight or flee this hypothetical threat, right? My focus is solely on me.

I'm attuned to what is threatening me, of course. I'm monitoring the environment, but I'm in self-focus mode, right? Because my survival is all I care about. That's why I become mean, right? I say and do things maybe that are explosive and hurt those I love because actually in that moment, I've deleted the humanity in a sense, in a very real sense of the person that I love. They're no longer my partner that I want to spend the rest of my life with. They're between me and my hypothetical safety.

So I ignore them or I scream and yell at them. So I just wanted to clarify again what my opinion and definition is because I want to normalize. We all have moments where we delete and we can't care and we can't shift perspective like we've been talking about and be curious. So a lot of times and very many of us have been raised that

by narcissistic or emotionally immature parents. Again, some could have been very well-meaning. I know my mom in a lot of ways kind of intended consciously to raise her family much different than

than the way she was raised. She was completely ignored by her father. She had a very cold, emotionally distant mother. So I know in her heart and mind and soul, she wanted to show up as many parents do and give us, I have two siblings, a different experience. Though not equipped,

to be in that state of calm presence, right? Always in her own survival mode in that detached phase because she was overwhelmed for too long. She actually wasn't able to be interested or to even define me as a separate human that had different wants and needs and thoughts and opinions. So,

The way we know often, again, is by understanding the dynamic patterns where you treat it. And again, this is another area that I think parents can be very well-meaning. They have a child. It looks like them and it seems to act like them. So now they're just a mini them. And there lacks that possibility and separation that, yeah, they might have similarities, but they're a unique family.

So projections can happen and we can assume really quickly what the child is thinking, feeling, wanting or what they want to be when they grow up, oftentimes for very well-meaning intention. So becoming aware of what were those early dynamics. Was there a separation? Was I treated like a unique individual? Did I have someone who wasn't explosive or was present enough emotionally to be curious about?

about who I am, what I think, how I feel. Did they not just try and solve the problem for me when I shared a feeling? Did they help me develop resilience and be able to navigate problems and emotions on my own? And again, if we don't answer yes to those questions and we had an endlessly explosive parent or an unpredictable parent

a completely unpresent or detached emotional parent, usually again, that was a marker that they were in their own version of survival mode. So for all intents and purposes, we could say that they were in that narcissistic state where they could have wanted very much to show up in a different way, but their nervous system was preventing them from doing that. Wow. I really appreciate that.

angle because I do think that the internet's perception of narcissism is super harsh and isolating. And I think having the empathy that the person who may have narcissistic traits or even NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, is probably coming from a place of a dysregulated nervous system and probably generational trauma as well. And I think

For me, having that understanding and being able to have empathy for their experience is healing on my end. You know, as a child of a narcissistic parent or an inconsistent parent, I think having that empathy can be really, really helpful.

If we did experience that, how does that show up in the child of that parent in adulthood? Yeah, I think one of the major reasons too, it can be really helpful because in childhood, when we can't have the emotional maturity to have this beautiful conversation and say, oh, this wasn't about me at all, our childlike brain and actually an egocentric stage itself

can only see all roads of anyone else's behavior leading back to us or the cause of what is happening or not happening in the entire world around us. So I think the reason why, Mari, to speak to your point, it feels so healing is a lot of us have these deep-rooted ideas that I caused. My unworthiness, my lack of love or lovability or whatever it might be created this experience of my parent being explosive or not being present to me. So I actually think that's an incredibly...

healing aspect of it. Though, of course, many of us are also becoming really present to what can be a shameful feeling reality that we carry those same kind of modeled traits or behaviors in absence of that safety and security, right? We've now learned to habitually do things to maybe regulate our nervous system. We're endlessly achievement driven, or if we're completely in shutdown, we might be underachieving, not actually going out and creating the life that we want.

we might find ourselves in those moments of explosive reactivity where even though we said we weren't going to do exactly what our parents did to us, we're still in those explosive cycles ourselves. So much like I think this entire conversation, it's

becoming present and not just like we're gifting our parents with kind of that compassion or that understanding. And that's not to say that some of us might not need boundaries and want to set boundaries in certain narcissistically driven relationships. That's absolutely part of the journey for some of us, but that compassion can come right back, right? If I can see myself

in these moments, not as a mean, terrible, hurtful person, but as a person who learned to cope in a very particular way, I might be able to relieve myself of that shame. If I can understand that my deep rooted feeling of unworthiness or unlovability is coming not from something that I am intrinsically am, but for something that I learned myself to be again, in absence of my parents having the tools or resources to teach me otherwise, then

then I can begin to make new choices too, obviously, because many of us want to then stop, begin to break some of those generational cycles. I do think we all have them coming from generations before us and we can create not only incredible change for ourself,

but incredible epigenetic change then for our entire generations as we learn a new relationship with our body, as we become more calm and more regulated, we're actually going to begin to change how our own genes are dealing with stressful experiences. And if we do choose to, not only are we going to impact our relationships, but if we choose to have children, this is true cycle breaking that I think lives at the physiological level. And it's so inspiring to even have conversations like this so regularly now.

because so many people are interested and are on this journey. I know I would have greatly appreciated hearing someone like you speak when I was younger because I think it felt just really isolating. Am I correct in saying that there's two types of narcissistic parent?

One that's maybe a bit more detached and dismissive and one that's maybe way more involved. One that sees the child as themselves and one who's like, "You're in my way." Yeah, that's a really great way to think about it. And I think sometimes the really attached one that lacks boundaries and not only sees similarity but might be trying to helicopter. I think that's a really common, right? Protect, insulate.

Right. Not like create, remove the problem for the child before it's even present. While we think on a lot of on the surface level, at least, right, that I'm doing that for you and your best interest, that you don't have to feel what I felt maybe in childhood. In reality, that's not.

still a very selfish intention, right? I'm doing that because how I feel when I see you struggling with a big emotion or being ostracized from your peers, it's too much for me. More so, it might even bring me back to when that happened to me. So even my very well-intentioned attempt at buffering you from life is actually coming from quite a self-focused perspective.

experience, right? I can't handle being with you in this difficult emotion because it's too much for me. So I try to either solve the problem before it gets there or remove the problem as quickly as you tell me it. Right. In order to heal our inner child, do you think we need to forgive our parents or simply have empathy for them?

I think that's a really, really great question. And understanding that we're carrying the wounding, a lot of us, the grief, the hurt, all the different ways that we feel not have having had what it is that we need it. I think the awareness and that kind of compassion or the empathy, like that understanding of

can lead to healing even in absence of whether it's, you know, we're forgiving kind of, because I think forgiveness too is something we confuse. It doesn't have to actually be something we even speak about.

to someone else. Because especially if there's a lack of safety with engaging with that relationship or the parents not physically present, they're not alive anymore, they're not in our life for whatever other reason that it is, we might not have that kind of moment of the action of what we, again, think forgiveness is. Though I think forgiveness can be quite internal where with awareness, right, we can...

Still holding space for all the different type of ways that we feel because I think, again, this is something we confuse. This idea that if I forgive, I have to not be grieving anymore, not be angry anymore, though we might still in moments be feeling sad, be feeling grief for what we didn't have, be feeling anger for unmet needs.

Forgiveness though can be an expansion of, I have all of these feelings about what happened. And at the same time, I have an awareness of why it is that this might have happened. And of course, some people might have a conversation. I think this is something I also get asked, right? Do you have to go to the parent and tell them what happened and then hear from them, however it is that they kind of

experience what it is. And again, we might not always have that opportunity. And some of us, if we do make that choice to have that communication, we might not always get the reaction that we want.

So can we have that conversation without expectation based on my own internal desire to want to speak my truth to my parent, even if they do react in a way that isn't what would be feeling helpful? Yeah, I feel like even the act of expressing yourself and getting it out of your body and just knowing that you probably won't get the apology that you're looking for,

could be healing. It was actually a question I had for you about how to approach that conversation, but I think what you said really summed it up. I pulled a quote from you that was really healing for me. Unpopular opinion, they knew what they were doing isn't always true. Most people are deeply unconscious living in autopilot. They've lost their own thoughts and patterns and don't evaluate their own behaviors or lives. Things are rarely that personal.

i think that applies here as well i think as you said a lot of us internalize that blame and assume that the actions of our parents were because of something that we did wrong and we can internalize that for years and years and years so having the realization that they probably aren't even aware of the way they were acting is super valuable and can be really healing i know you post about re-parenting the hurt inner child

Can you talk us through that concept? What does that mean exactly? Absolutely. I just want to add to beyond parents in our current relationships. Sometimes our partners, right? We think they're doing this because to get me, right? With a very, or they said this personalized thing in reality. That conversation I think absolutely implies. Or life in general, like at work. We personalize just like, again, much like that childlike way of thinking, right? We still retain, especially when we're stressed.

we're going to be more likely to see things through that personal lens because we're in that vigilant mode. So reparenting, again, is just the byproduct of this entire conversation that we're having is really understanding that all of these habits that are neurobiologically wired, this autopilot where we can't see the reality and where sometimes it's really difficult to hear from very well-meaning loved ones an alternate perspective or experience of us

That's all wired in all of this wounding and the reactivity and the habitual ways we've learned to deal with overwhelming emotions are all part of our life experience as an adult. Because I think this is another area. I know when I first started to read about inner child, I was like, this feels weird.

It feels so weird. I'm like in my 30s. The first time I ever did the exercise, I was like, I hate this. And because, I don't know for you, it was similar. I couldn't remember much of my childhood. So there was just frustration. I couldn't like locate. I'm like, you're telling me this is like thing inside of me. I don't think so.

Though I think in these moments where we begin to observe ourself and feel those explosive feelings as if we're right back in time, even if we don't exactly remember what was happening, is really clear evidence that that is still part. And I think that can be very relieving of the shame when we do allow in that possibility that these habits, again, came from a childhood place, even if it's difficult to acknowledge what happened back then, it is here and it is present now. And that can relieve some of the shame of

maybe the belief that this is an intrinsic part of us, right? I must just be mean or unloving or can't connect in relationships because that's what has happened so far. And I think in that, again, conscious state for a lot of us, it's building the foundational relationship first and foremost with our body. Because all the way, again, that we learn to care, like I was sharing earlier for our physical body, the way our nervous system is wired in these moments of reactivity, how we deal with stress in and of itself,

is coming from that childlike mode, which is why we act a little childlike when we are overwhelmed or having a really big emotion, right? We're screaming, yelling, we're slamming doors. I mean, we're doing things that if we have experience with children now are very much

how they are emoting or expressing their overwhelming feelings. So with awareness comes the possibility that daily commitment, I think a lot of us want to dive in and be like, oh, okay, well, emotionally, I want to like fix that. But that possibility happens again, when we're making sure that we're attuning to our body, we're noticing when we're kind of getting to that point of no return, where I'm going to start saying and doing things that, you know, I don't want to.

Or mean to, and that's why it becomes that daily commitment of daily action, of caring for our physical self, of exploring our emotions if we're so disconnected from them, and of over time learning a new way to deal with them. Because if we just want to put these tools in our back pocket until the next time when we need it, when we're getting ready to say or do the thing we don't want...

We're either not going to remember because our focus is so much on survival and what's happening, or we're not going to be able to successfully downshift how we're feeling. So it's the daily practice of honoring all of the habits that come from that wounded childhood. I know many of us who have experienced childhood trauma or have just had a challenging upbringing struggle with identity in adulthood. Right.

How do we regain a sense of ourself as we grow older? I think the process of finding ourself is like the peeling of an onion, right? First identifying all that is in us, all that are those learned behaviors and habits. And very much when I went through that existential crisis, that dark night that I was talking about earlier, right? I achieved all these things. Why don't I feel? One of the major things I noticed is I had no idea.

who I was while I appeared driven, right? Because I was going to be a psychologist and now I am that thing, that person, right? I didn't actually really know kind of my deeper interests, desires, purpose, and passion because again, I was so stuck in survival mode that for a long time, I just thought they were genetically things I didn't have gifted to me. I'm like, oh, other people have passion and purposes and I don't have those things.

I didn't have those things again because I wasn't operating as me. I mean, I would be deferential much to like dinner plans. What do you want for dinner? I don't know. What do you want? Right. I couldn't even attune to like what I might want to eat or how I might want to spend my time because I was so focused on.

on how I imagined other people wanted or needed of me or didn't want to disappoint. If I said something that I wanted to eat that they didn't want to eat, I mean, really, it got down to the micro of not knowing how I want to navigate my next few moments of time. And again, I think that as we age in biological years, it becomes more and more shameful to admit

that I could have created a whole life around me and yet I don't know how much it's coming from me. I don't know if I, and more, I think, destabilizing when we realize that I don't, I might not want this life that I spent so much time creating. So now we're really, again, peeling that onion back and talking about a whole nother process of grief.

and of mourning, this whole identity and all of the dynamics that might be now impacted as I get clearer on who I am and as I begin to make new choices. So again, the similar process is like understanding why, when we see all these habits in our life beginning to explore, well, why am I doing, right? The certain things that I'm doing, is this something I want?

And as we, over time, you can get more clear on and tune into, no, I want to do this one thing, but I continue to do these other things instead.

Such a good point. And I love the fact that you brought up the micro examples because I think so many people are going to relate. I can relate from just a couple of years ago and I'm still on the journey of really figuring out who I am. And I bring this up a lot on the podcast, but tapping into hobbies has been huge for me. I started horseback riding a year ago as an adult and I'm so in love with it. And I can't believe...

I don't know. I went years and years and years never having a hobby and never doing anything for fun because I was so achievement driven that I never stopped to wonder what I would love to do in my free time. And I found in my free time, I was losing my mind and ending up working on the weekends regardless because I wasn't comfortable being still. So yeah, I agree with you. Tapping into those hobbies and thinking about, you know, what do I really want in this moment? I pulled a great quote from you.

Most adults are still living for the approval of their parents, trying to get the love they didn't get as children. Living life for someone else leads to one path, regret. The most important skill to develop as an adult is the ability to disappoint.

How do we learn how to disappoint? I mean, that's one I'm still actively teaching myself. Like I was sharing very much like a people pleaser, disappointment and all the discomfort that came with not living into someone's imagination for what I could or should be in any moment was so incredibly difficult. And disappointment like any other emotion is learning to tolerate how my body feels. The racing thoughts and narratives and imaginings that are running through my mind, right? So it's beyond just...

hearing like, oh, I should be able to tolerate disappointment. And it's actually teaching my body how to tolerate those moments. For a long time, when I came to the realization that the West Coast was more aligned with the weather and the sunshine, and I wanted to leave the East Coast where I was living, I was so concerned about how it would be for my family.

of whom I was living very close to them in the same city at that time. And I knew, I mean, ever since I left for college, my mom was actually begging me to go to college closer, wanted me to go to college in Philadelphia. And I said, no, thank you. I'm going to upstate New York. So I was very clear on the level of closeness, physical proximity. And for a long time, I wouldn't even allow myself. I mean, I've loved California since I visited it here when I was 12 years old with my family.

though I squashed down that love. And as I got older and began to travel out here much more frequently, that love blossomed, but I could never imagine sharing with them that I wanted to move so much so that I would fantasize about leaving in the dark at night and just one day calling them like, hey, I'm in California now, being safely away from them. So saying that to say disappointment and all of that again is a learned experience.

Have we in childhood learned how to deal with, did we have the space to even disappoint our parents or were we domineered and controlled and there was no option, right? We might've expressed what we wanted and it was told to us that that wasn't a possibility or were we able to kind of explore ourself and have moments of going against ourselves

What comes to mind too is when you talked a bit about conflict too earlier, conflict is a natural part of a relationship, even with children and their parents, right? Having differing opinions, having different desires or wants for any given moment or emotional experiences is a natural part of life. But if we didn't have that modeled, how to navigate differences in childhood or moments of disappointment, we probably don't have the physiological ability to

to tolerate it. So it again is teaching our body not only affirming that I can disappoint people as I affirm to myself still when I do, it's actually sitting in all of the physiology and all of the stress and all of the worry about what the other person might be thinking or feeling about me now that I have disappointed them. And then the practice of just doing that consistently over time so that you can tolerate greater degrees of disappointment because that's the reality. We're gonna disappoint people in life.

we're going to need or want something or express something in a given moment that's going to go against the expectation of what someone wants of us. And that's again, a natural experience of navigating life with different other people. Yeah. It makes me also think of being misunderstood, a little different but kind of similar. And I'm sure you can relate being public facing. It's something that I used to struggle with on a personal level and now it's almost amplified because it's on a mass scale.

How do we manage feeling misunderstood and being okay with it? I, yes, absolutely. I'm learning and the amplification of now so many people, right, that can misinterpret, misunderstand in any moment. So again, acknowledging, becoming aware of when that is impacting us.

and also taking, again, tying up from the beginning, right? The problem isn't the people misunderstanding us. That's natural. People are going to interpret through their lens, through their past experience, are going to project onto us. And that's just a natural part of life, whether you're in the public face or whether or not you're in your private experience. So I think that's,

going to happen. What I've noticed in myself are moments where it's not their fault, what I can take responsibility for is my engagement with it. Because I don't know if you have this experience when I'm at a low, when I'm feeling stressed out, when my body is stressed and in those states of activation that I was sharing earlier,

those are the moments where I'm gonna go doom scrolling. I'm gonna go to that one account because I know what they're saying about me and I'm gonna see what else they're saying about me now. So I'm matching, right? My stressed body, this is what it does because it's always sending those signals to our mind. Before long, my thoughts are gonna match what's going on in my body. So my thoughts are gonna become clear.

stressful and I have an endless, you know, places that I can go and find misinterpreted opinions about me. And I do now begin to, and yes, sometimes I still doom scroll through them and get myself even more upset, but I've maintained the ability to kind of be aware that it's not them. I don't, my goal is never will I demand they take down their pages or blame them for misinterpreting me.

You know, that's a reality. What I can do though is empower myself and notice when I'm getting ready to click on the thing that I know is more of an indicator of my own stress. And maybe in that moment, instead of making that choice, go to do something to calm my body down or release my energy in a different way. Absolutely. And I think the moment we feel panicked and like we need to explain ourselves is the moment we need to sit back and maybe check in and think about why. Another quote, I'm sorry, I'm obsessed with your quotes is,

You can't communicate with someone committed to misunderstanding you, to someone unwilling to give up their perspective, to someone whose ego needs to view things a certain way. No response is a response. Sometimes it's self-care. Love that. Your new book, How to Be the Love You Seek, releases on November 28th. I'm lucky enough to have an early copy right here. I feel so blessed and honored. Tell us why you decided to write about relationships. What went into this book? What was the process?

Actually, it goes back to something you said earlier, Mari, where you said there's different levels of healing. And we can think we're, you know, gaining traction, having some insight, you know, healed in a certain way. And then something else kind of arises. And the something else that often arises, and I see this often is, oh, I'm marrying along on my own. I have a new relationship with myself. I'm either not in a relationship or I am. And in my relationship...

I still have all of these habits and patterns or dysfunctional dynamics from my childhood. So that really is what inspired me as being the next kind of intuitive piece of work after putting out how to do the work, which is really focus on myself and the fact that we have this subconscious world and all of these habits and patterns that are really difficult to break.

then I think the next area we naturally look because we're all social creatures. We're all in a relationship with someone or something at any time, ourself being the first one. It became a very natural progression, especially because that is typically, and I spent quite so many years as a couples therapist. So felt very stuck alongside of many of the couples I worked with back then without having these holistic or body-based tools to help

to intervene in terms of what was happening. I witnessed, I was in a lot of dynamics where there were these, you know, repeated conflict cycles for me. Again, a lot of feeling disconnected, even though I was always in a relationship or always around people, feeling very alone. So intuitively that became a next project that I wanted to put out.

Incredible. Well, congratulations. Thank you. Now it's time for the question we ask every guest. I started this podcast because I believe everyone's pursuit of wellness looks different. What does wellness mean to you? Wellness means to me to be connected to my body day in and day out and really attuning to whatever it is that my body needs, whether it's movement or moving through discomfort.

Again, right back to that conversation with disappointment. One of the realizations I came to is how much I avoid it, not only emotional discomfort, being vulnerable, sharing my feelings, how much I learned to avoid physical discomfort. Not to the point of obviously hurting myself, but learning how to breathe into and stretch really tight muscles that for me over decades of my life actually started to constrict

hunch my posture. So wellness is really attuning to what my body needs, even if it's those uncomfortable moments where what I need is to release my energy or to stretch my tense muscles or to be in stillness, especially as I continue to have so many projects and things that I want to create and do and things that I always could be focusing on.

That daily commitment begins every morning where I'm faced with all of those habits of, oh, you should get into your email or you should go into your membership portal and say hi to the members or, oh, you should go edit your book and saying, no, what I should do first or what I can do first, I should say, is care for my body and see what it needs and it might need in that moment not to do work.

And that's okay too. Incredible. Where can everyone find you and the book online? Absolutely. So the book should be available wherever books are sold. We do have a website up, How to Meet Yourself. I mean, that one also exists for the workbook. I forgot about that. Howtobetheloveyouseek.com. It has all the different retailers listed on there, though, any place you buy books.

At this point, we're pretty much across all of the social media platforms. It all began on the Instagram account, the .holistic.psychologist, though, whether it's TikTok or Twitter X or YouTube, you can give a version threads.

I give a version of a search for the holistic psychologist and find an account. Thank you so much, Nicole. This was amazing. Thank you for having me. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram at Mari Llewellyn with the guest you want to see next.

I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our bloom greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share and leave a review. See you next week.