← The Sabrina Zohar Show
The Sabrina Zohar Show
194: How To Actually Heal Your Nervous System And Change Your Life w/ Nicole LePera
01:04:05
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- [00:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:31]
Sabrina Zohar
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:33]
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Sabrina Zohar
How did I not know Rack has Adidas?
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Dr. Nicole Lepera
Just so many good brands?
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- [01:00]
Sabrina Zohar
Have you ever had something happen in your life where you react in a way that doesn't make any sense based on the situation? Right. The pinch just doesn't match the ouch. Somebody says something to you and next thing you know, you're screaming at them, you're cursing them out, you're losing your fucking marbles. Well, that doesn't just happen by accident. That's something called your inner child. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar show. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. Welcome back, babes. We got such a special episode today. I have been counting down the days. Dr. Nicole Appara is in the studio with us. Her new book came out, reparenting your inner child. And I am so excited and grateful to have her. We have the best conversation. We give you guys some tools, some things that you can actually implement. And as always, guys, thank you. Thank you for being here. Don't forget, rate, review the show, leave a comment, engage with the community. Let me know what you guys think. Whatever you guys want. Don't forget, if you want to work one on one, ask a question, join one of the courses. Everything is at Sabrina Zohar.com available in the link in show notes. Same with ad free. Whatever you guys want, we got you. And if it's just to be here, thank you so much for tuning in. All right, babes, without further ado, let's get right on into it, shall we? I'm so excited to have you in the studio. So you and I get to connect today because not only do you have a book that's coming out that I'm beyond excited to talk about, but you're just here, and I love you and your work so much. So I'm beyond grateful that you're here. And before we get into all the fun, could you please share a little bit more about yourself to the audience so that may not know who you are?
- [02:24]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Absolutely. I'm super excited to finally be in person. It feels like so long ago we first connected. So I'm Dr. Nicole Lepera, the holistic psychologist. I really started to speak more, I think globally, when I was several years into my practice of clinical psychology. I was living in Philadelphia at the time. I got all of the certifications to do the thing of therapy. And I was finding that I was several years into pretty dedicated work with a lot of my clients, and I started to feel really disempowered. I started to continue to hear an experience in my own life. Just lots of feelings of stuckness, a lot of awareness. And I think a lot of us are coming with more and more awareness with all the conversations that people like yourself are having. Yet I continue to hear an inability to change. So feeling very similar in my own life, having what I thought was all of the tools, all of the knowledge, and not really being able to translate that into action, really started the journey that would now become who I am today. And now I like to speak about things and think about things really holistically. I'm of the belief that there are traces of why we are who we are often that begin in our childhood. And that can explain, I think, a lot of the things that many of us remain stuck around or feeling broken about.
- [03:40]
Sabrina Zohar
And I'm curious, like, because inner child work, right? We hear. I hear this all the time. And I know even for me, like, I met my little. My little inner child, right? However we want to say it, I met her accidentally. Like, no one had ever talked to me about it. It's not like, wow, it was such a public thing. And then I went on this journey. For me, I did academe treatment because I felt stuck. Same. Very similar of like, icon. Consciously understand a lot of things, but why I couldn't understand where I was coming from. And so when I met her and I got to see her, right? I was. It was such an experience. But I wanted to kind of even start with what is what Is your inner child. Because I think a lot of people hear everything, what is and what isn't it.
- [04:16]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah. And our inner child really is kind of the learning that has happened so early on in life. In our childhood, it's all the different patterned, habitual ways that we've learned to create safety, that we've learned to navigate our emotions, that we've learned how to connect with other people. And the issue that even I'm hearing in the way you beautifully describe it, a lot of us, we might have even heard of the concept, but it's really hard to connect with the experience because the experience lives not in our mind, it lives in our body. It's all of those patterns in our nervous system, the ways that we habitually deal with stress, the ways that we connect or feel disconnected from the world around us. And again, in childhood, when we need it. Other people to show up for us, we learned pretty much how we need it to be to show up, to maintain the connections that we were relying on to survive. So when I think about an experience, the inner child, it's more like you're describing it. It's a. A memory. It's a lived experience. It's in those moments where our body is having a reaction, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere, oftentimes either disproportionate for what is happening or not. You know, we're not. We're not having a reaction in moments where we need to. And those are the moments where we can understand that something is happening a bit deeper than what is logically, maybe playing out on the surface.
- [05:34]
Sabrina Zohar
For me, that was a biggie because I knew, of course I knew. Oh, my dad's this, my mom's.
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Commercial Voice
Right.
- [05:38]
Sabrina Zohar
You know, consciously. But actually, what I hear often, and I'm curious what, when I say it, what you think I hear it all the time of, like, I had a perfect childhood. I didn't have that. That's, I think, where I wanted to start. Because I think it's easier for us to start. If you've had the big tease or you had all the big stuff, sure, we dive in. But when somebody is saying, I don't understand, like, I don't know why I feel this, or I had a great childhood. I'm feeling so much anxiety where. What are even those steps to help anybody? And, like, how does that happen if we. It feels almost like there's a. An incongruence between the two.
- [06:08]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah. I think part of it, and this was very confusing for me because when I looked back to what I Could recall from my childhood, which was very limited. I saw two physically present parents. My mom was present more often than not. I saw all of my physical needs being met. I knew that I was supported and urged to be successful. I mean, like I said, I gathered all of the certifications I can to, you know, really be achievement driven. What I did not have, and I did not have the language to understand, I did not have it yet was I did not have emotional attunement. So I think a lot of us, when we look back, and this is pretty, you know, traditionally, for a long time we did define trauma as a big event, a big t, instances of abuse or neglect that happened. And so when we understand that we have a lot of needs that begin just with our developing nervous system, we cannot soothe ourselves for several years for, you know, well into our 20s even. So we need to learn how to cope with emotions in childhood. And that's where what sets up an experience of emotional overwhelm from a very young age. So the way we know now is again, in moments where we have a felt sense of urgency. And having had experience of anxiety for decades of my life, I mean, everything felt urgent. Everything felt like it was waiting for the next shoe to drop. I was always bracing for the next bad thing that would happen. Oftentimes in moments where we feel an all or nothing response, where we feel overwhelmed. Right. Those might be moments while, yes, we might have had our basic needs met, but that usually is indicating that we did not have our emotional needs met. And I can make a case, as I do in the book, that often I think when we look back, we can feel like we blame our parents. Why didn't they show up for us in these ways? And the reality of it is over generations, I mean, parents were really ill equipped. Emotional language and conversations and the fact that our nervous system needs another nervous system to co regulate with, this is all a newer science. And it was not reflected in parenting, you know, books, dogma, teaching. And a lot of us were raised in a generation where emotions weren't talked about. We were told to cry it out in a room. And I think that has left a lot of us now as adults with that lack of emotional attunement that we need it. And also with the same experience that, you know, many of us have. We look back and we're like, well, what happened? And then we feel more confused. We feel more like something is wrong with us when we don't have necessarily the story to make congruent to why we're struggling the way that we are 100%.
- [08:37]
Sabrina Zohar
And it's interesting, as you were talking, this, this kind of vision came to my mind. My nephew's 11 and my sister and her husband have done literally everything they possibly can to give this kid the best childhood, right? And they're amazing parents. Now he has this incredible anxiety and he's terrified of being alone at night. And my sister kept saying, I just don't get it, where did this come from? And it hit me one morning and I said, you know, Jame, do you remember what you did when he was a kid? And she said, no. And I said, sleep. You did the sleep stuff where she would leave him in his room for 30 minutes and you couldn't go in, right? Leave him, let them self soothe. And I know, like you just said, you think you're doing the best, right? Our parents did not know this is what the books are telling them to do. Well, what happened, my nephew, before words could even be used, is terrified, doesn't feel safe, learns to shut down, has this immense anxiety, doesn't get why, doesn't trust, but does trust. It's this wild, wild amalgamation of emotions and feelings. Now we're aware of it, we can watch it and go, okay, I see what happened. This is where it came from. This episode is sponsored by Better Help Guys March includes Women's Day. Oh, I love celebrating any woman, especially women that are making a change between caring for others, managing unseen responsibilities, emotional well being. Oh, it could be so easily overlooked. And to me, I want to shout out my mama this year for Women's Day. And just as a baddie woman in general, she has been the glue that kept our family together, always putting herself first. But at the end of the day, it wasn't until Mama Zohar realized she needed to go to therapy as well so that somebody could be there for her, somebody could support her. And it wasn't just what she could do for everyone else, but how can she be there for herself? That's why I love better Help. Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. my favorite part is that they do the initial math watching for you so you can focus on your therapy goals and baby your emotional well being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up to get 10 off@betterhelp.com Sabrina that's better. H E L-P.com Sabrina for me, I wanted to know a little bit more because we did get a lot of people asking. I'm confused about like the nervous system. And what do you mean? The nervous system remembers, but the brain doesn't. Like, if you could give a little bit more about how as a very young age, your nervous system is collecting all this data. Data. And a little bit more, I think, about the science behind it because it's fascinating.
- [11:01]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
It's life changing when you understand it. Because in those moments we can gain a deeper understanding for, say, your nephew why the struggle is there. Right? Because we can beat ourselves up from the parent perspective and from the. The person perspective who's having that experience of seemingly. Right. Can't settle anxiety out of nowhere. Something I also want to add is that these patterns come through generation. So sometimes it sounds like in your. In this situation, right, the thing that happened was located in the childhood, your nephew's childhood. But I make a case that some of the things that happen, this neglect, this lack of attunement, could have happened generations ago. And so a lot of us are living with this unresolved emotional trauma in our body that we don't necessarily have the objective story around. So when our nervous system in childhood, we are developing. And those of us who have any experience with children know that language development happens much later. Learning, though, happens from the moment of conception. And that's why I'm even bringing in ancestors and early environments, because our first environment quite literally is in another human's body. That is when, right, scientifically, a nervous system begins to develop. Our heart, our brain. So we need to start thinking even before we think about, well, what happened once we're an infant. Did I have parents available able to soothe me? Meaning, were they able to calm down in stressful moments to offer me the calm that I need? But we need to begin the conversation and get curious as to what was happening in utero. Because the more stress, the more cortisol in a body, the more that's going to cross our blood, brain barrier our placenta and begin to affect our development. So just simplifying nervous system development, our nervous system is developing. It's going to dictate how we clearly we think, how much we can plan future action, how we can regulate our nervous system, and even how we can express ourselves. But we're taking in all of this information from our environment before we even have logical words to make sense of what's happening. Which is why we have these moments of overwhelming sensation or underwhelming sensation where I know I've spent decades so far away, as I call it in my skin spaceship, that it was almost as if I Wasn't in a physical body. I was so detached from all of the overwhelming emotions. So nervous systems develop again very early on. We learn based on the cues sent to us in our environment, directly, indirectly, how we need to be what is safe, what is unsafe, what emotions are safe to express, and ultimately how we need to show up to belong. And that's the learning that then we repeat, giving us a false sense of safety, predictability. For some of us, we wrap a whole identity around these habits and we come to determine I'm just the perfectionist, I'm just the people pleaser, I'm the helper, whomever I've learned that I am. But again, all of this happens before we have logical language to make sense of what happened to us. Or again, what we can then do to shift and change these patterns, which
- [14:01]
Sabrina Zohar
makes total sense when we really zoom out. Because I think general tra. Generational trauma is a very real thing. It gets passed down. Right. I think of the one statement at least that changed everything for me was my parents did the best they could with the information they knew, but that still doesn't mean it worked for me.
- [14:14]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Right.
- [14:14]
Sabrina Zohar
And that was me being able to say I can be angry at them for life. Right. We could say I hate them and all this, but how's that helping?
- [14:20]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Right?
- [14:20]
Sabrina Zohar
That's just consistently continuing in that pattern versus even as you're talking, like I didn't realize it's even in utero. It's so back there. And I'm like, those are even moments that as we are not even conscious of, we don't know what our parents experienced when, before we were around that maybe could have developed. And then all of a sudden we come out and we are born with this anxiety. But I am curious, like when we think about the nervous system and all of the different. Whether it be fight, flight, freeze, fawn and flop. Now there's a fifth one, right?
- [14:48]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yes.
- [14:48]
Sabrina Zohar
Yeah. Okay. When you think about all of these different aspects, is there like, what's the nature versus nurture aspect of it? Like, are we predestined for some aspects? Like in your. Like what you've seen? I think just in the studies, is it both? Like, I'm just a little bit curious of if that's written in the stars.
- [15:03]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
I think that's a great question. I think it's. It is both. It's an interactive because. And again, this is the beautiful wisdom of the human experience. The human individual vessel, you know, body is always in interaction with their environment and particularly with different stress in Our environment. We are, we're physiologically wired to determine and detect when things are stressful, when they could be risk to our life or our physical survival. And then we adapt or we cope with them. So we are a walking interaction with the environment around us. And we need to be, that is what is allowed humanity to procreate and to, you know, be as prolific as we now are. So in that communication between, right, the individual and the environment, there's always that kind of bi directional then relationship. So if in childhood there was a lot of unpredictability, it makes sense for a nervous system to become hypervigilant or always scanning, always bracing, waiting and looking always for that next threat at hand. Because that in childhood was adaptive. That might have been the difference between you getting out of the way from an unpredictable parent who might have caused you physical or emotional harm in that moment. So what began in childhood as an interactive, right. Kind of survival based mechanism for a lot of us ends up being the pattern that then keeps us stuck. So, and then interestingly, I could go down a whole nother rabbit hole of why the confusion sometimes is right. We can do these beautiful brain studies and say, right. So for instance, if you were probably to, to scan my brain, you would see a very overactive. I'm going to simplify brain science. You would see a very overactive amygdala or kind of emotional center and probably a underactive connection to my prefrontal cortex or the part of my brain that can pause, that can be a little less impulsive, that can be a little more forward thinking.
- [17:00]
Sabrina Zohar
Sorry, are you me or you
- [17:03]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
universal we that struggles with this? And I'm, I'm able to bring out these examples because they are so universal. This is the situation that a lot of us are experiencing. And quite literally, right. If you brain map it, we could say objectively, your brain looks different. Right. All these pathways, some are fired up and others are not as fired up. Again, I'm really simplifying. So then the question very naturally is, well, what is what came first? Right. Did the brain and firing patterns produce the symptoms or did something cause the brain to form in that way? So again, I am of the belief that because we're always trying to adapt to our environment, it is both. But remember, right, these adaptations began in environments, some of which have been generations before with our ancestors. So a lot of us quite literally are being born with more sensitive nervous systems with more reactive, right. Emotional behaviors. And we can see that very early on. But again, I would make a case that These began somewhere, you know, in our past generations, based on their need to survive those early environments.
- [18:13]
Sabrina Zohar
God, the brain is so wild to me.
- [18:14]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
It's crazy.
- [18:15]
Sabrina Zohar
It's crazy. And I'm curious because I think a lot of people like, I love. That's why I love all of this. I think it's so fascinating everything and all the work that you do. But I wanted to really understand. Understand, like when we're thinking about that body sensation, like, are we looking for something specific? Is that urgency? Is there something that is simply coming up that will give us the understanding that our inner child needs us?
- [18:33]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah, I think if those of us, if we can rebuild a connection back to our body, you will notice an overwhelming, you know, sense of sensations often then connected to a sense of an urgency. I have to right do something next where we almost are then certain of what it is that we have to do. We can then in our mind sometimes, if we are disconnected from our body, we'll first notice what's happening in our minds. And what we will notice is an all or nothing, a very black and white sense of thinking where things are very extreme. We're so certain that things are, you know, this extreme, whatever it is that we're experiencing. And so an adult self can be flexible, can be grounded, can hold, hold space for the possibility that there are possibly two extreme options, but can then kind of guide the behavior forward in a much more flexible way. So a lot of times, again, it's those moments where we feel underwhelmed, overwhelmed, we feel certain. And again, thinking in terms of black and white and extreme, all or nothings are great markers that something from an earlier time might be present.
- [19:38]
Sabrina Zohar
I see the black and white thinking a lot, especially in dating. And I'm. I'm. You and I are on the same side of the Internet. I know you see it too, like the avoidance. Are bad people never date. That did. And what I. I feel from that is I. I sense dysregulation. I see that it's because when it's that binary of it has to be X or Y, it can't be anything in between. I used to do that because to me it was easier to cope that way. If I have an answer, my brain doesn't have to go looking for one. And I already know it, and so it must be this. But what I also found for me, at least personally, was I used a lot of, like, I filled in the blanks with a lot of my core beliefs. They must not like me because they didn't answer Me, because why would anybody like me and nobody wants to be with me, as opposed to stopping and saying, oh, wait a minute, does this sound familiar? Have you said this to somebody before?
- [20:20]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Right.
- [20:20]
Sabrina Zohar
Like, this doesn't feel right. And 99 of the time, the sensations are what gave it away for me. I'd get. My chest would feel heavy. Your leg is like, you're gonna stamp it through the floor. You're feeling this intensity. And I always had to figure, but I just met this person. How could I feel like my world is gonna crumble and end? Because this person didn't call me back after a date? And so I was curious, why do some triggers hit us more? And could we actually talk about triggers for a second? Because it is wildly misused. I don't think people genuinely understand. And that's okay, but could we, I think, talk about, like, why do certain things, like, I'm great in work, that doesn't impact me, but the second I start dating, I'm back to being a kid again. I'd love to know a little bit more.
- [20:59]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah, well, you're beautifully describing it, Sabrina, when you are referencing the fact that our brain will fill in a blank. And the reality of it is why we love to consider ourselves all knowing. And we do have access to a ton more information and we can do a lot of research and figure out who someone is, but the reality of it isn't, this is so hard for us as humans to, you know, allow to be the reality, which is we don't know. There is so much uncertainty and our brain is always making snap decisions to try to figure out. It's not making decisions based objectively on what's happening. It is quite literally pulling from our past experiences and anything so now going into what a trigger is anything in a current moment that resembled something in our past. The distance. Right. The fact that someone gave me a short reply to my text, or they didn't reply back to me, or they're not asking me on the next date. As quickly as possible, we will make snap judgments then based on the similarity to a past experience. So if in childhood we had a physically absent caregiver and an emotionally absent caregiver where there was a lot of space, then we will start to assign that same early meanings that we assigned in childhood, which in childhood, all narratives often usually go right back to us. We are the center of our world. We can't. We don't have the ability to zoom out. Like, we gain an adulthood where you can say, oh, well, this person didn't get back to me because they're busy at work or they maybe aren't interested, but maybe I'm not interested as well. Like all of these, these things that we gain capacity to do in adulthood, we don't have in childhood. And it is safer in childhood to make us the cause of the happenings or non happenings in our life because then we get a sense of control, right? If we can modify just how I am, if I can cross that bridge of distance or if I can get comfortable with maybe the natural distance that my parent is giving me, right? Becoming hyper independent, then, right then I'm safer because I'm maintaining the version of connection that's possible. So simply a trigger becomes a moment in present time when a past experience resembles. And again, it could be something happening out there, something that someone else is doing, the lack of response. It could also be something happening inside the elevated heart rate that happens as I'm getting nervous about what could this mean that this person isn't responding to me? And then again I will fall back and assign those early meanings. And the reason they feel so big is because of all of that early emotional energy, all of the lack of safety, the risk, all of the right identity, belief. It's all there and present right now. Which is why the most frustrating thing can happen that a lot of us experience, which is we have a very well meaning loved one looking or experiencing our very disproportionate reaction and telling us to just calm down. It's not that big of a deal. And so what we do have to understand two things. It is a very big deal. We don't want to invalidate the own, our own emotional reaction that we're having in those moments. But we do want to give ourselves an opportunity to regulate in a different way, to soothe in a different way, to maybe get our adult self back online to determine that much like maybe this person is offering us, it isn't as big of a deal as it once was. But in the moment we're living it. It's as if we're that child again with very limited resources where our only option was to do the thing that we now are experiencing ourselves doing. Which is why a lot of us then feel a lot of shame on the other side of it.
- [24:30]
Sabrina Zohar
I was actually curious. When we think of shame and guilt, right, that happen, I think that comes up a lot. Is that something that, is that a coping mechanism that we learn? Is that something that we learn early on, like defense mechanism? I mean, we hear self sabotage, right? We See all these things thrown around. But I am curious, like, does that come out of malice? Is that something intentional?
- [24:48]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Shame is wired into us. It's actually an evolutionary emotion that helps us to stay connected because as an individual human, we are much less safe than two humans, than a group of humans. So shame becomes kind of our internal sensor of connection, right? So people are often shamed when they act out of bounds, right? When they don't follow whatever the predetermined rules for that group or that system are. Whether shame is directly spoken to us and we are shamed through words or indirectly, right? We get that look or, you know, we're not necessarily talked to unless we're acting in a certain way. So shame is kind of our, our social guardrail in a sense that we need to keep connected to those around us. So shame, however, can turn toxic when we become overwhelmed by shame, when we become identified with shame, when our whole being, you know, becomes based in shame versus based in these very small, acute moments where shame can be very helpful, right? If I were to do something that would hurt someone I loved or hurt my standing in a community, that's important to me, it's helpful to have that little marker, that sensation where I feel a little embarrassed and my cheeks get a little red and I kind of have that self consciousness that's keeping me and my connections right in alignment. So that is helpful. But what a lot of us have experienced in childhood is shaming. Whether it was in our, you know, our family units. A lot of this comes from the school system where children who don't fit into the predetermined, you know, sense of, you know, academic success and what society has prescribed is the rubric and the, you know, syllabus to get there. That can really be then shaming experiences children who don't feel like they fit in with peer groups and then we begin to identify as shame. Shame is a nervous system, then reaction. It shuts us down, you know, from connection and protection. But a lot of us begin to then live a shame based identity where we're either hiding behind the scenes all the time because we're too shameful to show any aspects of ourselves, or shame will then come up in moments in relationships or in certain situations where we don't feel fully comfortable.
- [27:04]
Sabrina Zohar
This episode is sponsored by Butcherbox. Guys, you know, protein is the word of the year for me and my health. I am so focused on protein, but not just any protein, the right one. And that's why I love Butcherbox so much. Butcherbox delivers over a hundred premium protein options straight to your door including 100 grass fed beef, free range, organic chicken, crate free pork and wild caught seafood. Tech guy had a field day. He ordered so much beef and every time we have dinner he always looks at me and says this is butcher box and I know it because it tastes so delicious. I already know where it came from. And the best part is every box ships free and members get access to recipe inspiration tips and exclusive deals that make every meal easier, healthier and more enjoyable. As an exclusive offer, new listeners can get their choice between organic ground beef, chicken breast or shrimp in every box for a year plus $20 off when you go to butcherbox.com Sabrina that's right baby. Your choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast or shrimp in every box for an entire year plus $20 off your first box and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com Sabrina don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. As you say, I got chills. As you said, the school unit because growing up having ADHD we were undiagnosed. My brother was diagnosed, he was this very classic like bouncing off the walls, needed Ritalin. But as the women, right, they didn't understand what we were going through. And so it was all of my life like you need to not be so much, you need to keep quiet. Why are you speaking so much? You're speaking so fast, right? There was all of this shame. But then I also had my mom telling me to be yourself, right? There was a lot of conflicting messaging. And for me growing up, I didn't understand, I didn't know what to do with it. Then I get into an adult life, I don't the to do with this, right? I didn't have the tools then. What makes me think that all of a sudden because I have a credit card now my brain is going to figure out how to do this therapy. All those things help. But even now I'll catch myself. Let's say somebody makes a comment about my speech, right? Like which is totally fine. Everyone is allowed to say whatever the they want because it's the Internet. But let's say somebody makes that comment and instead right there could be to somebody who has never heard that they might say oh that's weird. I don't know why you'd say that but like man, it doesn't impact them. For me it's the end of the world, right? My whole. Because what do I see it as? You hate me, you don't want me around. Who I am is a Problem that is so deeply ingrained. But if I didn't have all of the steps, I wouldn't have a idea. That right is because my father shamed us and he didn't want us around and we were a threat to his identity. But I think for the average person, they don't understand how to get there. And I wanted to know when we talk about reparenting and when we talk about understanding, before we get on to the how you can reparent, my bigger question is, how do we help people have this awareness to understand that component? Because it took me nine years of therapy to go, go, ah, this triggered me. It made me feel this. I feel very small. You know, sometimes I have that knee jerk reaction I'll write off and then I have to delete it and I have to sit with it and then come up with an answer that feels a little bit more appropriate of like, that's your experience and you can have it elsewhere. But I wanted to know, for the average person that may not have had this many years of experience, how do we help them to understand that difference between, just because you're feeling this now doesn't necessarily mean that the other person is the, the problem.
- [30:19]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
I was giggling when you were sharing that because I just had an experience this morning of shame. So a little bit of background. My mom is someone who of the generation put a lot of emphasis on physical appearance and understanding where my mom's generation came from. Because physical appearance, you know, often then resulted in financial security of having a home, having a family, and having her needs met. So how that translated to then me growing up is I always, my mom always had a comment on how I was dressed and what my hair looked like. And it felt very critical of the comment. Quite often it never, I never really looked the way she would want me to look. And so through my 20s, the way that I expressed myself is I went to this completely other extreme and I would, I shaved my hair and I wore a mohawk and I wear ties and I was like, pretty much, f you, mom, I'm gonna present myself in this completely opposite way. And so sharing that because, you know, shame and these like, inner this, these beliefs about who we are, don't, don't leave. So I knew very often early on that my mom wanted me to look a certain way and wanted me to perform a certain way academically and athletically. And again, all of this for my mom was geared at me being financially or safe and secure into adulthood. But I know all of this. Yet how do we know in the moments. What do we do in those moments? And like I said, time and space are often our best friends to gay our her own clarity. Because as recent as this morning, I happened to send a picture of my outfit to Lolly, my partner, because she's my stylist and I want her to see how I looked. And I took the picture, and her first response back was cutie. So that was nice. Thank you, Lolly, for saying cutie. And then the next immediate response was whether or not I was going to do my hair. Now, meanwhile, my hair, to me, was done, seemingly. So in that moment, instead of just taking this as feedback right, from someone else, she perceived my hair in a certain way. Maybe it looked crazy. Maybe she had a different idea for how my hair would look. Look, doesn't matter. How I took it was evidence of complete personal failure. I cannot do my hair. What is wrong with me? Why? Why I even go podcast today if my hair. If I can't even get my hair right, who am I to talk to the world and tell them these ideas, right? So that moment, right? And I thankfully, because I've had awareness. So what do we do in the moment to simplify the question then, right? We pause. Right? In that moment, my heart started to race. I felt annoyed. I was going to write something. I think I did, if I'm honest. I wrote a little something back that was not the nicest. But then I gave myself another moment, another moment. Maybe I put my phone down and I allowed my body to calm down. And then I was able to have a greater perspective, which was, yes, it is not just she's not making a statement about me as a person. This has nothing to do with how I'm going to perform today or what value I'm going to be able to share with other people. This was solely a statement about my hair, right? So sometimes we need to. When we tune into again those moments of urgency, of overwhelm, we're getting ready to fire that text off. These are the moments where we can't just override our body. We can't just calm down. We have to actually intentionally allow our body to calm down, either by just taking time, by doing some deep breathing, by taking a walk around the block, by not thinking or repeating the thing that upset us over and over and over again. Because I think a lot of us do have this experience a couple hours, a couple days later, we feel a little sheepish that we said that thing or did that thing. Because now with a perspective shift initiated by my body actually Calming down so I can have a new perspective. When we're in an emotional reaction, we are locked and loaded. And sir, I was certain that her statement had everything to do with who I am as a person. It took my body calming down for my mind to then open up to. Yeah, it could be that. It also could just be a million other things. She wants me to look good. She wants to make sure that this goes well. She's proud of me. A million other things could also be the case. But a lot of us won't have access to this whole internal conversation in real time, in the moment. We need to take moment away. We need to understand that our body is activated and coloring then what we're going to see, say, or do next. So it begins with that first awareness. Something's happening, right? My mind, my heart's racing. My mind is racing. I'm getting ready to act out of character. And if we could just hit pause in that moment, step away. But again, the important part here is not step away and just keep repeating, how dare she say that about my hair? Who the hell does she think she is? So, you know, that is the difference. And step away and be present to something else. Not think about that. You know, just move our attention from that singular focus. Because that is what our mind will naturally do, right? She's the problem. That comment is the issue. So I'm going to ruminate and repeat what happened over and over and over again. So I come back now to the exchange or the, you know, interaction. I'm more locked and loaded that I'm certain I'm right. So that's the only caveat is behind the scenes or in my mind, what is happening. But time away, time for my body to calm down, I think, will naturally allow most of us to access a more reasonable ground itself, or at least one that can communicate even if we still land on, you know what, that was completely out of line. That's not my conclusion here. But if it were to be, because I can imagine people are like, well, what about in the scenarios where someone really did cross a line, or this was really an issue that we need to then speak on, then at a later time in a grounded moment, we can still communicate or assert what it is that we need to, once we've had time to determine that, yeah, this was inappropriate, I do want to speak up in this way.
- [35:52]
Sabrina Zohar
And the biggest thing that you're saying that I love is like. But we also have to validate that experience for ourselves. Because if I don't sit and Say, hey, that did hurt me, right? I didn't love that. Or like, my version would be, yours is the hair. Mine would be, oh, slow down. Right? And if. If someone says that and you're like, you want to jump at them, and you're like Bart Simpson, you want to strangle you instead of going, oh, hey, maybe that's just they're giving you feedback. Truthfully, this is why I hate the toxic positivity of just us. Think positive and stop feeling sad and always be hot, good vibes. Only because it's shaming us. It's gaslighting ourselves into saying, well, is there something wrong with me? Did I do something wrong? There's no way that we're actually going to make progress instead of saying, I'm going to take a minute. Maybe what they said was hurtful, but I also don't need to kill this person for what they said, because I don't innately think off the bat that people are trying to hurt me. But I used to. I used to be that girl that I assumed everyone had malice intent. And you're trying to hurt me and you want to bring me down. So it was projected onto everything I did. If the heterosexual norms, if the guy didn't call me, it's because he doesn't like me, instead of stopping to say, maybe that guy just, like, didn't connect with you, and that's okay. Doesn't mean that it has to be anything about my worth. But that took reparenting and being able to be present in my body and say I'm allowed to be uncomfortable doesn't mean I have to do anything about it. And so I want to now get into the meat and potatoes, right? Reparenting, the inner child. What does that look like in practice? What does that mean to you? I'm really curious.
- [37:16]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
I'm actually giggling when you said, you know, getting uncomfortable, because I think that's a really big foundational aspect of this reparenting journey that a lot of us overlook. And it is a lot of times grounded in spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity, giving us this idea, even around stress, that the ultimate goal here is to be stress free, you know, negative emotion free, like you said, to be good vibes only. And that's just simply not the case. So reparenting is really building, rebuilding for a lot of us, a foundation of safety and security in our body first, where regardless of what's happening around me, I know where my limits are. I know how to find my way back to safety either because I'm developing new tools of my own to self soothe or because I'm learning how to open up and receive support and comfort from another person. It also means taking small moments to separate ourselves from other people. For the many of us that are in a meshed codependent relationships where we become someone else's or we take their problems on, you know, and we're the appeaser, the people pleaser, we've completely lost ourself. Then it's taking small. Making small daily choices to create boundaries, limitations, separation, so that I can more fully be me. It's about learning a whole bunch of new resources and tools to navigate our emotional worlds. While emotions are kind of prepackaged in us as humans, like they're evolutionary experiences, we don't know how to deal with them. Especially if we didn't have someone modeling emotional maturity in childhood. Most of us had emotional immaturity model to us, where we had parents who just became their emotions and they were unpredictable, eruptive, sometimes abusive. Or we had parents who suppressed their emotions so much that this was very much my family. If it wasn't always something in the terms of something to worry about, there wasn't much emotion. And my relationships then in my family felt very surfaced, felt very disconnected, which is not then surprising that up until my really my. This last decade, my 40s, you would have heard me complaining about my relationships. Even though I was sequentially, serially, always in one. I was always lonely. I never felt fully connected. I felt like that same familiar stranger to the partners I was choosing that I felt to my family. So they're small choices that we can begin to make. And that's the reality. As frustrating and maddening as it is, we have to teach ourselves how to become emotionally immature into adulthood. And then we can start to express ourselves more authentically, saying what we think, sharing our perspective. And then ultimately we can become more connected, not only to the partners, the family members, our loved ones that we're choosing, but our community.
- [40:04]
Sabrina Zohar
I was gonna say, I think most of the issues that people write in about or have to me come from. There's something that happens that triggers you. And again, trigger doesn't have to be bad. It doesn't mean that someone hurt you intentionally. It could be. When Ryan told me no once, it was something so minute I said, do you want to do something? Do you want to go something? And he goes, nah. And he walked off. Did he do anything wrong?
- [40:24]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
No.
- [40:24]
Sabrina Zohar
On paper you're allowed to say no, I lost it. I went. And like we said, Earlier. Put your phone down. Put your phone down. Your phone does not help ever. I don't know what time ever that it really helps unless you're calling the police. But putting my phone down and stopping. And I literally had to say, whoa, okay, what's coming up for me? I was like, wow, I feel really overwhelmed right now. And I said, okay, what was so upsetting? Who did I feel like was talking to me? And I was like, that was dad instantly knew, okay, then I'm not here right now. Had to stop. Then when he came back in, I said, hey, can I share something? And we were able to work through it. Now, I think if I didn't have any of these tools, I would have popped off on him. And so what the. Do you think you are. Why would you say. Or shut down complete, like, fine, I'm just not going to talk to him today. You know, he'll. Then you're gonna say yes eventually. That's what I would do as a kid. But, you know, I wanted to hit on. Because I think there is a misconception that I see quite often that when we regulate, like, you have so many beautiful videos of like, you know, put your hands in the ice water, do these. All these different things of acute. Of your nervous system that you're safe or to do things to regulate. But I think that we get a misconception that people have, is that that's. That act is what's going to make you feel better, right? That, like, because I put my hands in water for 30 seconds, that I'm going to stop and go, oh, okay, well, I'm done. That doesn't hurt me anymore. And now I'm fine. But I wanted to know, how can we use the tools and then what comes after that? Because I know in my own work what it does, but I want to hear clinically, what does that allow those acts allow us to do?
- [41:44]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Well, first we have to be aware of. I think what we're both indirectly speaking of was what is the expectation here? Right? Is the expectation to not feel upset, to never feel disappointed, to not have frustration or an uncomfortable emotion? Is the expectation, if and when, if you can make space for, okay, we might have those as humans, but is the expectation to go from, say, a 10 of an emotion to a 0 near immediately? Right. And a lot of us have those expectations, understandably. So when we're uncomfortable, our brain will naturally try to find the quickest way to ease that discomfort. Right? Which often involves ignoring it, distracting ourselves, projecting it outward. So we first have to be aware of what is the expectation. Because a lot of us are setting ourselves up to fail when we have expectations that we go from right, the 10 to the 0, and suddenly I'm fine again. So once we understand that we have that expectation now, we can be a little more realistic with some of these tools. These tools will help us help our body get back to baseline. They're not miracle tools. They need to be practiced consistently, especially if our body isn't used to going. And again, I'm simplifying it from stress to calm. We have to actually teach our body, through consistent practice, how to downregulate, which will probably more initially look like I'm a 10, I'm. I'm furious or I'm devastatedly sad. Now, if, you know, I go move my body or, you know, stretch a little bit or do some ice water, whatever it is we want to do, I might just go down a little bit. So then what happens next is so much more important, right? What happens next is can I continue to move in the same direction of the future that I want to create, or do I fall back into my old habits? Because what often happens next if we're not actually doing something different to help our body cope, if we're just ignoring. Avoiding. Right. Trying to white knuckle it and not actually pay attention to what we're feeling, then our stress level, instead of going down, it just keeps going up, and that's when we're most likely to return to old, dysfunctional habits. So it really is about teaching our body how to cope in a new way, which takes time, which takes practice, which begins with awareness of what are we expecting to happen, and then the commitment to quite literally expand our capacity for discomfort, for frustration, for uncomfortable emotions. Understanding that as we do that, not only can we bounce back quicker, but then we're actually making space for the positive emotions, the joy, the creativity, the connection, all the other stuff that most of us want to get without the bad.
- [44:33]
Sabrina Zohar
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- [46:49]
Sabrina Zohar
I was gonna say I see that a lot of this like it's almost like that, you know, tik tok generation. Not to offend anybody in this, but they're like I want immediate right. I I don't want to feel this like I have people all the time like, can you make a 15 second video on how to heal anxious attachment? And I'm like, ah. I mean, I can't. It's not going to help you very much.
- [47:04]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Touch.
- [47:05]
Sabrina Zohar
Because I think a lot of us use the external. You know, it's funny, I hear this all the time. And it's probably the number one question I get, what do I do? And when I hear that, I hear, I hear a child, I hear a kid going, I don't have any choices, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to access this. And it does break my heart because when I hear it, I want to give them a hug. I want to say, you're allowed to not be sure. Like, that's okay. We can say, I don't know what the to do right now. I haven't the slightest. But my mama always taught me was when you don't know what to do, don't do anything at all. To take a minute to stop and, and feel. And I was curious because you, I think you described that so beautifully of like, is it explanation or excuse? Right? Like, what are we doing with all of this? But now I'm curious. Like when we're dating, I think it's easier. Not easier, but I think it's a little bit more manageable when you're not in a relationship to say, okay, wow, I have some alone time, right. I can remove myself. I'm not seeing this person all the time. But I think in a relationship, if you start to notice this, that maybe it's your inner children that are starting to have these issues, what can you do when you're with somebody? Like, how can you try to repair this?
- [48:04]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah. And the relationship is what then complicates it. Right. Because we can picture two quite literal inner childs, you know, relying on their old coping skills in times of stress. More importantly and foundationally, often two people relying on their old identities. Right. Create it in their earliest relationship. So. So we're not actually two grounded adults. More often than not relating as with each other, we are, you know, children wrapped in our old identities and the roles that we play and the dynamics that we play. And especially in these moments of stress or conflict, we're relying on those old coping habits. And again, very few of us have had the attunement that we needed to develop healthy conflict resolution skills, which first involve not only sharing our opinion, but hearing from someone else their perspective and then kind of negotiating on a workable solution. We're not equipped to do that. Which is why relationships for most of us become so challenging. Though you will notice I talk about kind of spheres of development or different kind of aspects of development that not sequentially but that happen after another in a sense. And I specifically put authenticity to be oneself after we develop tools to emotionally be mature and intimate with another. And the reason for that is, is we learn more about ourself when we're relating. And this isn't just romantic partnership. So this is not to exclude anyone whenever we're relating interpersonally with another individual. Right. That's when we, this is why people say relationships can be our greatest, you know, trigger and our greatest teacher, you know, because of that we see and learn more about ourselves as we're relating to someone else. So in, in relationships it's really about, you know, in those moments where we know that we are in a, you know, childhood emotional reaction or when we are aware that our loved one is. Because those are the moments where that mismatch, that conflict is going to occur. Or again, we're going to rely on those old coping tools. And it's not just for us to say, well, I'm calm, I'm grounded, I'm emotionally mature. In this moment, I know what I need to share and express my needs. If we're trying to speak to a partner or a loved one who is having their old reaction from the past, then they're not going to be in a healthy mind state. So it's again about gaining our own self awareness about understanding how we have learned to re relate to other people, including how we have learned to navigate conflict with other people. And then giving our partners that same kind of grace and awareness and compassion in those moments, understanding that that they too will have reactions that seem disproportionate or they will play roles or try to play roles in a relationship with you that are the most comfortable that they have learned in their own childhood.
- [50:46]
Sabrina Zohar
And for anyone listening, this is never to excuse that behavior. It's for us to understand it. Like I, I'm not a fan of the binary and thought of like, oh, all anxious people are crazy. It's like, no, please don't use that verbiage. This person's having a really big experience. It might not be appropriate. Right? The pinch doesn't match the ouch. And I'm with you on that. And you know, you haven't this person like limerence, right? This obsessive of like I have to have them this fantasizing of other people. And I can hold space because I can say well, as a kid, I had to fantasize in order to cope. So I understand feeling the idea of somebody, but. Okay, what do you do with that? To the same point with somebody who's more avoidant. When I see my partner shut down, I know that it's not because he hates me and he doesn't want to talk to me and he thinks I'm pathetic and I'm a loser. He does that because he doesn't know what to do with it. He. He's flooded. He gets overwhelmed. I see it with my own family. My sister's a little bit more avoidant leaning. She doesn't know how to process the emotions. And I think that's what breaks my heart about. I think a lot of the content that we see or just the material is that one is better, one is worse. Well, at least the anxious person's communicating and the avoidance. Not to me, I don't. That doesn't feel like a fair divide because I just think it sounds like. And correct me if I'm wrong, one person's just handling it by going in, the other one's just handling it by going out.
- [51:57]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Right. And I think it's based in this idea of. It's kind of back to this conversation we're having earlier about control, right. If you would just stop or do more of. Right. Again, then I would feel differently. And to me, that's kind of an externalizing of our power even. It's not to say that someone's behavior, action or inaction, of course, right. Might not cause us to feel. And that feeling could, you know, indicate a limit or a line or a boundary is being crossed, of course. But if you are fully in the case of limerence as well, right. If I meet this ideal person, right. That hypothetically may or may not even be there, this idea that this type of person will make me feel fulfilled, connected, loved, whatever it is that's giving so much power to external circumstances. And again, in childhood, though, that was such a protective, beautiful, powerful thing that our mind did for us, right?
- [52:49]
Sabrina Zohar
It created the.
- [52:50]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
This fantasy world where we could cope with overwhelming emotion by leaving the world as we knew it, right? By imagining a different family that we came home to, or we were treated in a different way by our peers, right? And so we then relieve the suffering of what's actually happening. But in adulthood, when we do and need to develop more agency, more choice, when we need to develop discretion and understand when what. When limits are being crossed and when our childhood is coming right back, then it gets it can confuse, I think, the decisions ultimately that we're making. So understanding, again, our fantasy world, what we're thinking, how we imagine or wish or hope or desperately want to control someone. To be often is, again, an attempt of an inner child who feels out of control, who is feeling something overwhelmingly uncomfortable. And this manifestation of imagining is the solution in that moment, Right. If only, then we follow that up with, I will feel different. So understanding we're doing that then will allow us maybe to create the opportunity, right. To reflect back and ask ourselves, right? If I were to assume that this person's gonna keep doing or not doing whatever it is that's happening or not happening right now, what can I do to support myself? What can I do to nurture myself? Is there support that I can gain elsewhere outside of this relationship to help me navigate that moment? Now, again, even in that ladder, if we're relying on someone else, it's not this person, right, who can't show up for us in this moment. For whatever reason, we're still taking the agency back, right? We're asking for support in a healthier relationship.
- [54:27]
Sabrina Zohar
Hearing it, you were like, oh, yeah, so easy, right? Oh, that's all I do. And it's like, but I, I, my heart goes out. Like, I was her, I, I was the girl that, like, could not get my shit together. That when a guy, I mean, I remember it, no joke, it would be like, I would text a guy that I like and say, hey, like, do you want to get drinks or dinner or something like that. And I'm talking two, three minutes. Like, if I didn't get that immediate response, I would go, okay, guess not, not proud of it. And then I would get the message maybe an hour later from them of like, hey, while I was in a meeting, you know, I actually was excited to see you, but after this, I don't think it's a great idea. And then I go into like, no, I'm so sorry, Please give me a chance. And I think in the moment, I genuinely believed, I'll never do this again. Don't worry. Yeah, but the reality is, of course you will. Of course you will. Because that doesn't just go away because this person said, slapped you on the wrist and said, I found your hand in the cookie jar. Get it out. And I think I'm curious to kind of wrap this up. What are some long term, like, sustainable things that you do to reconnect to your inner child just every day.
- [55:25]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah. And I appreciate you asking me, even me, my ability to share this morning's. Moment, right. Of inner child coming, coming out. Right. Right. Not surprising. I have a big day, I'm talking to people, I'm presenting a book. So, right. My anxiety, my stress is up there. Not surprising that this is the moment right where I land on that, oh, you are telling me I'm a failure narrative as opposed to the other ones that I've practiced cultivating. And even as recently as the past six months, you were speaking about pausing earlier. Life still happens. And my instinct in a moment of overwhelm is to appease other people, to make the overwhelm go away. Right. If there's a problem, I'm just gonna say or do whatever it is I think you need me to say or do to make this problem go away. That instinct is still there. My lack of clarity, even in those moments, especially in those moments of what, what I want or what I need isn't fully formed. I'm not clear. I don't know why. Bringing it full circle because I've spent so much time out of my body tending to other people my whole life, so. So for me, it was reminding myself in these moments where I'm unsure, where I don't know where these old reactions are coming to the surface. What you said earlier, Sabrina, and pausing, that has been my go to when uncertain, when old habits are coming. And I continue to reiterate, old habits are still present for me in my relationships with myself, with other people, with how I present myself to the world. They don't go away. What I've developed a bit more of a capacity to do is to pause before I react in that old habitual way. So for me, it's a daily conversation, commitment, you know, living in this awareness. I will say there's many moments, especially when stressful things happen or exciting things. I spent two years writing a book that I'm so excited about, writing it, about sharing it, so even positive stress still registers as stress to my body. And when stress goes up, those are the moments where old habits are right at the ready, right. To keep me coasting in the way I know how. So again, here I am, someone speaking. I have all of this awareness in the world, and yet I still have stressful moments that make those old habits present. Right. That I fall back on those that I'm the first, you know, the first thing to do that I throw away with is my body. I stop moving my body, I stop eating well, I stop sleeping well. I start to live in my mind more where I'm analyzing and I'm thinking And I'm not in my body. So a lot of us notice when we're already. The habits are there again. And I'm sharing this because these are the moments where we shame ourselves. We think, oh, shouldn't I be over this already? I do think, you know, life healing, it happens in waves. You know, we think we get past something, and then here is another experience that reminds us, oh, no, right. That habit is still there. So it's a. I even end the book by kind of, like, describing this ongoing process. There's no, like, done. I haven't, like, checked the final box, even though I would love to find it and be done with it. All right. It is this, like, evolution of just awareness as we though. Right. Begin the journey of reparenting, reconnecting. What we do change is we develop a little more trust. I have a little more trust that I can say, pause, I don't know yet. And I have a little more trust that the relationships that are meant for me and that are important to me will be on the other side of that. I also have trust that if in pausing moments, if things or people go away, something that I could not tolerate space, I now understand I don't desperately have to grab on to things that aren't meant for me. This doesn't mean, though, that all of that experience of living that is. Is comfortable. It's still very uncomfortable. The habit to say, you know, what.
- [59:08]
Sabrina Zohar
What.
- [59:08]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Whatever it is that you want is fine with me just to maintain that connection. But I've learned, literally, how to coach myself, talk my inner child through these moments. I've learned how to give myself grace when I do repeat older patterns, you know, and fall back into dysfunctional habits. And I learned the commitment to keep showing up again and again and again until I create the change that I want.
- [59:32]
Sabrina Zohar
I love that especially. I remember my therapist once, she goes, how are you? And I said, I'm okay. And she goes, well, taken. Okay. And I remember just being like, oh, oh. Like, that's okay, right? It doesn't have to be anything. What you beautifully describe is like, you're a human. You're a human going through human experiences. You're a human who cries, who laughs, who. Who doesn't feel great all the time, who does feel good at sometimes. And I think that's really the biggest thing here because I'm with you when I hear I healed my this, or I'm a healed version of this, like we were talking about dinner of when I see, like, oh, I only want someone with secure Attachment, that's this, that, and the other. And you're like. Like, I don't think you understand what this means, because if you truly, genuinely understood what this meant, we wouldn't be using this type of verbiate. We would act it in different ways and we would be corresponding. Because for me, I don't do clickbait. That's why you want to know how someone's emotionally available. Have a conversation with them, tell them something, how you feel, see how they react to it. That's a great way. Instead of the see this and do this and get your detective lens out and make sure you can figure it out. That feels like we're a child again trying to figure it out, as opposed to being the adult to say, you know what? The why doesn't really matter. What matters is where I'm at right now. And to me, I think that's the most beautiful part of this, that there are going to be so many people in dating and relationships that are not going to do that. And that's okay. But that doesn't take away from us. And the fact that if I'm doing it, you're doing it, that means there are other people doing it. So we're not alone.
- [60:51]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
We are not alone. I love that it's such a beautiful thing. I mean, for me, the greatest gift has been to connect with community. Like, I was, like, feeling so alone, even though I've lived as you did in New York City, always people around, right? But always feeling alone in a crowded room, and always, I think, believing, as I think a lot of us do, that I. That I am feeling the way I am, alone, disconnected because of something wrong with me, not because of, again, all these beautifully wise adaptations that my body has made for me, given my. Not even my only earliest environments, my entire lineage. Like, I understand, right, why all of these, these. These patterns have come. And that has been one of the greatest things, is to now connect with other individuals that I don't immediately. Right. I didn't immediately feel fully connected. But just knowing that there's other humans who are being human, who are sharing, who are struggling in the same way that I am, that has been just the greatest gift and honestly the greatest inspiration. Because I truly believe that as we continue to break these cycles for our own families and show up differently again, that's how we really do regain control and we empower ourselves not only to change ourselves and our family lineages, but I do believe that this is us changing the world, learning how to be, you know, more empathetic. More truly connected and more authentically us. Because that's what the collective does need.
- [62:07]
Sabrina Zohar
100 to me, getting what I had. Like when I say, you know, you get your parents or you give yourself what you give your future kids what you didn't have. To me, that's not money. I didn't need money as a kid. I didn't need the Barbies and the toys. What I needed was to know that I was safe. What I needed to know was that my parents were there, that they weren't going to leave me. And that who I am is okay. Something so fundamental. Or that it's okay that people don't like you. That's okay. Teaching kids that you're allowed to be uncomfortable. You don't have to. I'm sorry, you don't get a participation award. You lost. And that's okay. You're allowed to lose. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. To me, that's the greatest gift. And if I have to give that to myself for right now, that's where I'm at and I'm okay with that.
- [62:43]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Yeah, that is the greatest gift. That's truly raising and reparenting ourselves to be more resilient humans. And then. And giving that gift first from modeling that and then obviously being that safe space for anyone that we're connected with.
- [62:54]
Sabrina Zohar
Oh, Nicole, this was. I mean, you and I probably could go off on 1200 tangents, but please,
- [62:59]
Commercial Narrator
I was just getting started.
- [63:01]
Sabrina Zohar
I was like. And then I'm like, it's been an hour. Tell us where can we. I mean, we're linked the book, but where can people work with you, find you, learn more from you. And please plug the book.
- [63:08]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Absolutely. Reparenting the Inner Child is available where all books are sold. It's also on audiobook. I happened to read the introduction this time, so it is a bit of my voice on it. Super exciting. Whole other story about my inner child that we could go down that rabbit hole. Another time of book reading.
- [63:21]
Sabrina Zohar
We'll link everything. Guys, go follow, go learn more from Nicole. And thank you so much for coming in.
- [63:26]
Dr. Nicole Lepera
Gosh, thank you for having me. It's a joy.
- [63:38]
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