144. Dr. Nicole LePera on Intergenerational Trauma, Anxiety, Ego States, & Advice for Teens

Apr 20

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Today's guest is Dr. Nicole LePera, a clinical psychologist, author, podcaster, and creator of the "Holistic Psychologist" platform that has amassed over 6.5 million followers on Instagram. Dr. LePera shares her holistic psychology approach—which involves a united philosophy of mental, physical, and spiritual wellness—with her mass audience to equip people with interdisciplinary healing tools. In this episode, we discuss what it means to treat mental health holistically and how it can make therapy more effective, how intergenerational trauma is passed on and how teens can begin to heal from it, what ego states are and how they can be impacting your mental health, what anxiety can look like in the body and how you can start to teach your body to be peaceful, and her number one piece of advice for teens.

The Holistic Psychologist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.holistic.psychologist/

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+ The Holistic Psychologist Youtube

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+ The Holistic Psychologist TikTok

+ The SelfHealers Circle

+ How to Meet Yourself

+ How to Do The Work

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Episode Sponsors

🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Nicole: [00:00:00] The answer isn't. Putting the lid on it, getting really good at distracting ourself away from it and marching toward this idealized idea of what happy is. It's actually learning how to be stress resilient, how to go through hard, difficult emotions. So actually the many of you listening that are dealing with a lot of emotional, you know, overwhelming, upsetting.

Feelings. That's not to be avoided. It's about developing the skills, the resources, the community, the support to navigate those. Because the gift on the other side of that is such an ability to be resonant, to be empathetic, to truly understand what it is to be human

Sadie: Hello, hello and welcome to Sheep Persisted. If this is your first time listening, I'm Sadie. I'm a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. I started sheep persisted after a year and a half of intensive mental health treatment, and I'm really working to make this the resource that I wish I had had.

And so today we are covering so many topics that are relevant to mental health. We have a phenomenal guest on Dr. Nicole Lap. She is a [00:01:00] clinical psychologist and also an author podcaster. You probably know her from her Instagram and social media handle at the holistic psychologist.

I love her content. She provides so much information and educational resources on so many aspects of mental health and therapy, and today we're diving into just a couple, but they're so important and so relevant to mental health. We are talking intergenerational trauma.

We're talking about anxiety, we're talking about ego states. We're talking about her advice for teenagers struggling with their mental health. She's truly an expert in the field and and such a thought leader, especially in the intersection of social media and mental health. So honored to have her on the podcast, and I know you guys are gonna love this conversation as much as I did.

There was so much to learn. I got to pick our brain about things that I'm personally interested as well as asking so many questions that I knew were gonna help you. This is an amazing one. As always, if you enjoy this, make sure to share it with a friend or family member, and if you share it on social media, tag me at Sheep Resisted Podcast and I always repost and give [00:02:00] you a little shout out.

So with that, let's dive into this amazing conversation and I'll see you next week

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I am so excited to have you on. She persisted. This has been a dream interview and I just can't wait to pick your brain about so many different topics today. I'm

Nicole: excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Sadie. Of course.

Sadie: So I would love to start with a pretty foundational question, which is all about your, your brand and your philosophy, which is being a holistic psychologist, and for listeners that haven't ever taken a holistic approach to healing or don't really understand what that concept is.

I would love to get your perspective on why that kind of resonates with the work you're doing and how that shifted in your therapeutic journey, like as a therapist of being a more traditional psychologist and then embracing these more holistic approaches.

Nicole: So it was actually my journey through being, a much more traditional therapist that I think evolved me into working holistically.

Which for me means honoring the integrated nature of our human [00:03:00] experience, the mind, the body, and the soul, the spirit, the essence, however it is that you define what gives us each our unique spark. And so coming through, Having been a, a client, a patient, if you will, struggling with anxiety for as long as I can remember at this point, and opening up a much more traditional practice, for lack of a better word, based in the mind of things with this idea, you know, to speak to the gold standard in our field, which is cognitive behavioral therapy.

This idea that, you know, become aware of what you're thinking, change the way you're thinking, and ultimately you'll begin to feel and to do differently. And at first I was really empowered. I mean, In the business of wanting to help people understand themselves and more so wanting to help the suffering that I was able to resonate with or relate to in, in my own journey with anxiety.

And what I saw and experienced several years into my practice was that I was working with humans at this point who would come to see me week after week with increasing amounts of [00:04:00] self-awareness. Yet the number one complaint, if you will, That I would, would hear from people is I just feel so stuck. It's like I know all of the things to do differently, to create change, to feel better, and yet when I leave this office, it's, it's just more of the same.

And for me, it took first getting curious, well, why is this the case? Why are all of these tools that I went to a whole lot of school to be able to use on myself and other people feeling the same stuckness in my own life? Why isn't it working? What I came to realize is that when we were leaving the body, half of things, our nervous system in particular out of the conversation, in that much more traditional way of working with just the mind, I mean, we are le leaving out the large majority of our human experience.

So again, that's what holistic has come to mean. For me, it's honoring that we do have all of these different aspects of ourself and that many of the ways in which most of us find ourselves stuck. In our a adulthood, [00:05:00] you know, is, is based in this conditioning, these patterns, this underlying imbalance of what we've once come from.

So it's again, honoring the integrated nature and also looking at the language, I think many of you might've heard, use is the root cause. Why am I stuck in the ways that I'm stuck? And more importantly, how can I actually embody that?

Sadie: Yeah, I love that idea of embodying change, and I'd love to hear what the difference was before when you were hearing .

Patients come in and be like, I, things aren't shifting. I know what to do, but I don't know how to implement. Things aren't changing versus after. When you're taking this more embodied, holistic approach, what were the differences in things you were recommending, or questions you were asking, or ways that they were going about their life, and then beginning to again embody that change?

Nicole: I think what, what I had seen, our inability to build that bridge into action was because in reality, the large majority of us. A conscious participant in our, in our day-to-day life, we're living on that Autopilot probably is language that [00:06:00] most of us have heard used we're repeating habits. We're not a conscious being.

Typically, if we wake up tomorrow, we'll go about our morning the exact same day. We went about many previous mornings. Similarly, in our mental world, we assigned the same meetings to our event. We're. Habitual creatures and just apply this back to that old practice. When we're having conversations of self-awareness, when we're intending new actions in the future, we're often in a different part of our brain entirely.

We're in a much more conscious state where we can see new solutions to familiar problems. Yet when we leave that door, what was happening for so many of us myself, include it. We're no longer that conscious being. We're allowing all of that is stored in our autopilot. All of those habitual reactions to be directing what's happening next.

So to give language to, I think what happens when we embody that shift. Is one of empowerment. We get to see how even if it has been [00:07:00] happening outside of our awareness, we have been a more passive participant because it's understandable when our autopilot below the surface is calling the shots.

We don't feel empowered. We feel like, oh gosh, that thing happened again, and I did the same thing I. Do. When we make that shift to see what's happening internally, what I'm feeling that are then directing what I'm going to do now we can be that empowered participant. We can say, okay, this has been part of my story.

Now I can begin to make those new choices. And until then, really understandably, we feel like a passive participant, often a victim to our life circumstances cause we don't have that space.

Sadie: Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts on that victim mentality, which tends to get a really bad rep, and kind of being very aware of the ways that you, things are not going your way, or that things are happening to you.

What are your thoughts there? Is it effective to have that self-validation? Is there a place for it, or are you much more on the empowerment side of that spectrum? And when it comes to approaching that, [00:08:00] especially from an inner monologue perspective.

Nicole: I think it's a, an honest part of our journey because the reality of it is when we're thinking in that self victimizing way or as if something is happening to us, it's likely because.

It did at one time. Yeah, there was some degree where our needs weren't being consistently met, whether that was objective physical needs, financial needs to sustain our survival or our emotional needs. So when we, and I saw this in myself, coming from a family that was locked in survival mode, none of the adults around me had any ability to tolerate the daily consistent, overwhelming stress.

It came out in behavior, their inability to cope. It came out in language where I would hear a lot of external blame. Well always something happening. And if this didn't happen, I wouldn't be stressed. And before long I saw that same patterning in myself. Understanding again, of course, I don't feel empowered around stress.

I was never taught the tools to deal [00:09:00] with upsetting emotions. So they did just create cycles of reactivity in myself. So as. Part of the journey, I believe is in empowerment. Shifting the relationship with that, which once happened to us, it is still very important to hold space for how we feel about that, which happened to us not just to bypass and say, well, I'm not a victim now.

That doesn't help me and squash that. I feel hurt. That I feel angry. That I feel grief and probably a million other things about what once happened. So I think it's holding space for all of it, not bypassing how I feel about the very real ways my needs weren't consistently met, allowing that to be part of my emotional experience and at the same time, holding the hope for a possibility of a future where I have a different relationship with it.

I don't allow it to drive my. But again, I'm standing in its presence. It's still there. I'm still in pain. I'm still hurt, I'm still angry. Yet I have access to those same [00:10:00] long-term solutions that were only present in that treatment room. Yeah.

Sadie: One of the things that I love about your content, whether it's your books, your podcast, your your Instagram page, is that you can go and consume this content and immediately have access to these really nuanced and very complex concepts that would take like literally decades to get to these revelations in therapy. Whether it's generational, healing, or different ego states, or even just what you're talking about with a victim mentality and creating space for that. Like if I were to go into therapy and have many times and try to get to that point, like it would take decades and yet you're making all of these insights and revelations very.

Accessible, explained so clearly in a very validating way. And because our audience is young adults, it's teens, they're probably haven't gotten to this point in their life where they've naturally come across the idea of how ego states are impacting them or generational healing they're probably not aware of all these things and how they're impacting their life. So I would love to kind of do a mini crash course [00:11:00] on what these concepts are, explaining them to people that haven't come across them naturally in their therapy and healing journey.

And then some quick tips about like what to be aware of or ways that you can set yourself up for success. In, in navigating those, the first one that I would love to touch on is generational healing. So for people that have never heard of that concept before, maybe saw it in a TikTok, but have done no work on the matter, what are, what are your thoughts?

What should listeners be aware of?

Nicole: I appreciate, you acknowledging the simplicity of some of these concepts. Yeah. It took me a bit to get to the place where my brain works very naturally in breaking down concepts, though, if I'm being honest, so much of my internal monologue and probably things that we'll talk about from my own intergenerational.

Was of suppressing, watering down mincing words, flowery painting it in a way. Cause I didn't know, you don't maybe really wanna hear what I think about the matter. So just using that as a moment of kind of acknowledgement, not only for myself and my own journey, but again of one of the ways this, this past plays out of a [00:12:00] difficulty just saying what we mean.

Because we go through this whole internal censorship process, again, oftentimes as a byproduct of these early environments. So when we think about intergenerational healing or trauma is usually what it's contrasted with. It is the reality of how we are connected beyond just the people that we immediately were raised in or around, or with whom was in the same home.

That when we're talking about these pattern habitual. Being, we're talking about generations that even come before us in the most simplistic way of when we just think about generally beliefs. If listeners maybe just think about certain things that their family comes to believe culturally, religiously, just things that our family does that other families don't do, chances are they came from somewhere.

They came from a culture of origin. They came from a religious institution of origin. They. Passed on in words in dialogue and in action. We now know through science that what [00:13:00] also has been passed on, not only are these more what I would call simplifying it mental concepts, constructs that influence us through generations, like we might come to believe similarly to our, you know, grandmother because everyone was raise.

Similar belief system. What was also passed on are the way our genes function. We now know that in addition to dna, which I think is the most common thing, we're like, oh yeah, I'm genetically related to this individual DNA is only part of the story. The other part of the story is to really simplify epigenetics is how our DNA turn on or turn off, how they impact us as an individual and what we now have.

Especially when we're talking about intergenerational biology patterns. Now, any generation that has come before us that has dealt with traumatic stress or overwhelming stress without the adequate resources to deal with it actually does imprint us biologically. It does impact our stress system again, to really simplify things.

So now when [00:14:00] we are. We're not born as a completely blank slate. We're born impacted by the thoughts, the mind, the beliefs of generations that come before us, and the large majority of us are also imprinted by the biology, by the physiological experiences of those that have come before us. So of course then the work shifting the conversation into healing is becoming aware of all of those patterned ways of being that were passed on to us from people.

That we have not even come to know and won't come to know, and creating again, that space for us to begin to break some of those habits that aren't serving us, thereby literally healing our mind and our body for then all of the future generations to come.

Sadie: I would love to get your thoughts on generational.

Trauma and healing, especially in the, the lens of being a teen. Because I think something that's so unique about struggling with your mental health as a teen, at least in my experience, was that there's this narrative like, I don't have the autonomy to make shifts or to to change things because [00:15:00] I don't control where I'm living or where I'm going to school or who I'm interacting with.

It just feels like there's so little choice. And yet so much of your, your content, even when it's messaged towards adults, is that you have so much power over your thoughts and your belief systems and your behaviors. And so I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts there, especially as a teen when you're still in this environment that maybe isn't the most effective or isn't the most healthy, where maybe like if you could wave a magic wand, you would shift that, but at this point, that's not possible.

So what steps can be taken to begin to jumpstart that work? Begin to. Increase that awareness and improve those relationships in yourself, and then set yourself up for success in your relationships long term. I

Nicole: really appreciate this question, Sadie. And ultimately I think it, it becomes two parts. And the first step of it, cause it's very much a process, is, you know, Gaining acceptance to how things are right, allowing yourself, creating this space to feel however it is that you feel based [00:16:00] on the very real reality that you are living.

And the reason why I'm pausing on this is, is twofold. First and foremost, I think. We don't know, what we don't know. We're so kind of blinded to, to our circumstances that it's painful to say, you know what? This is happening in my family. I'd rather look the other way. And you know, or this is happening in my peer group at school.

I'd rather it not be, I'd wanna, I found great ways to distract myself from it though. If I can just consciously be present to this reality, then I can be present to how I feel about this reality, and that's a hugely. Step for so many of us. You know, when we're present to that, we can also see all of the moments where we're wishing or operating as if things are different.

I think we cause ourselves so much suffering when it is difficult and painful to come to the awareness that maybe we don't have the present or emotionally connected caregiver that I know I did not have. Right? So we might, instead of living in that reality that, you know what, there's a [00:17:00] distance here between me and mom, or maybe things are happening at school that are painful instead of.

Allowing ourself in acceptance of the pain. We hold an expectation that things are somehow gonna be different magically tomorrow, that mom's gonna morph into being a different mom. That these peers at school are gonna stop harassing or bullying us. We try to create a different reality in our mind, either by not allowing ourselves to see and feel about the reality, or by idealizing and holding this expectation that if I just show up differently tomorrow, Things will be different.

So when we're able to ground ourself in how things are, which is again why I described it as a process, I think for a lot of us, then we can make space for that next step, which might be to modify how I am showing up, right? So just using my example, if, if, if I've come to realize that my mom, for whatever reason, is unable to be emotionally connected with me instead of imagining that she's somehow magically present and close tomorrow, I.

Find another relationship that's safe and supportive that I can [00:18:00] begin to share things that I wish my mom could maybe connect with me on Similarly, right? If I'm going into school and things are hurtful that are happening with a peer group and I'm really honest about how hurtful they are, I might be more likely to create a boundary to begin to limit my time, my presence, my action around that peer group.

Of course, Ever possible. So then we can give ourself the opportunity to change. But that doesn't happen until first, we allow ourselves to be present to how it is currently, how we feel about it in a very grounded present way. And then when possible, we can begin to modify how it is that we're showing up.

Sadie: love that, and I think there's so many steps there that listeners can take so many shifts that they can make to start to improve that relationship. And if you're doing it at this point, that really does carry on to the rest of your relationships later on in life. And those skills, whether it's setting boundaries, looking for someone that will meet your needs in a more effective way, those are skills [00:19:00] that will serve you for, for the rest of your life.

Today's episode is brought to you by Teen Counseling. You guys know that whenever I have a therapist on the podcast, I like to mention teen counseling because even when you know that therapy might be a helpful resource or you're interested in starting your therapy journey, it can be difficult to know how to move forward.

How do you find a therapist? Where do you look for a therapist? It's a very overwhelming process. If you haven't heard of teen counseling before, it is Better Health's branch of online therapy specifically for teens. So clinicians, therapists, counselors that specialize in the adolescent population, which is so important to make sure you're working with a therapist that specializes in your age demographic.

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So to start your therapy journey or continue your therapy journey, head to teen counseling.com/she persisted. Again, that is teen counseling.com/she persisted to find a therapist today.

The next concept that I wanted to ask you about is this idea of ego states and ego and how that can get in our way. I think most people have at some point heard of that concept. Maybe it was like in school, in some like writing piece. Maybe it's more from a therapeutic perspective, but for listeners that really do not understand how that impacts them or how that might be showing up in their life, what are ego states and how is that impacting our mental.

Nicole: think this is another one of those concepts that some of us might have met in a book. Yeah. With [00:21:00] nice, flowery language and it's all like, okay though, what does that really mean? Like mm-hmm. What do I mean when I say this is my ego? How can I understand this in a relatable way to see and apply it in real time?

And the most simplified as I often do, way that we can describe ego. Our self narrative, what we've come to think about and believe and feel about ourself, that, again, is created out of our lived experiences, out of our earliest relationships. Many of us, you know, whatever age it is, into our teens, well into our twenties, we begin to limit ourself by all of these externally driven, oftentimes and created stories about.

Based on other people, based on other people's experience of us, we come to know ourself only as this story in our mind. And again, the reason why I'm being very intentional here is when we begin to pay attention to our ego. So just dropping in to your mind. Notice, how do you [00:22:00] mentally describe yourself?

How do you verbally describe yourself to other people when you're talking to others about yourself, what are these stories and narratives that you've come up with and holding in space for the reality that they came out of? Earliest experiences, out of the early ways you were able to make sense of the world, or things that you've heard about yourself, and to then make room for the possibility that.

While this might have been validated, so say for instance, you're someone who's come to know themselves as shy, right? Maybe you're shy because it didn't feel safe. I'm very much sharing a part of my own. For a very long time. I was a painfully shy child adolescent into my teenage years. It wasn't necessarily that Shai was who I was, but I had a lot of language about me being shy and disconnected and withholding and not sharing things with other people.

I've come to realize that all of these stories about being shy, why I was shy, because I wasn't considered my emotional needs didn't matter in my. We're all born out of my earliest [00:23:00] experiences. So seeing the labels that we assign ourselves, the ego-driven narratives are essentially just how we make sense of the world based on, again, the experiences that we have had allows ourself then to question what it is.

So the simple way to begin is to notice. Notice when you say I. Notice when you think I, what is the story that chances are you've been repeating? How are you defining and describing yourself? Chances are that's probably gonna match onto how you're being than in the world. And then giving yourself the possibility that there might be more to you.

There might be more to the wholeness of your being. Then you've been limiting yourself in terms of the thoughts you're thinking and the narratives that you're then living.

Sadie: One of the things about doing this work, and especially looking back at your, your family of origin and these patterns that were modeled or these dynamics, is that it can be really almost like unsettling is the word to describe it, where you're like, whoa, everything I thought I knew was wrong, and now I have [00:24:00] to like, Readjust how I view the world and my relationships and my family.

And it can be very disorienting and overwhelming. And like you mentioned, and maybe either you mentioned or when I was listening to interviews before this to prep, you mentioned it there. but we really do prefer the constant. We prefer what we've experienced our whole lives. Rather than a change or a new environment, even if that new environment is maybe preferable or better or healthier.

And so I would love to get your, your advice and insight on how to navigate that huge shift and that change of your insight of your family and , your generational trauma, whatever it is. How do you recommend that either patients or audience members cope with that big shift in an outlook almost and the emotions that that can bring?

Nicole: I think first I wanna, you know, celebrate, any of us who are allowing into our conscious awareness a new version of reality of events Yeah. Space for ourselves. Because it is a very brave [00:25:00] and courageous thing to do. There's a reason why we've, you know, constructed and maintained a particular narrative or way of being, especially in our family of origin.

Likely because it was safer, likely because the pressures, you know, in the external world and in the internal world, you know, kind of created that felt necessity to look away to be this one way. So the first thing is to celebrate, whatever you know, moment. It is moments in time where you begin to allow in this new consciousness, because then that will allow.

For those new choices and actually, Sadie, what we're discussing here is that bridge that I would see and witness and experience right alongside with all of my clients and in my own life of all of the, the know better, right? All of the insight, all the awareness, all of the books with all these beautiful concepts, and unable to build that bridge into action.

Because the moment we start to think differently, we start to do differently. Now we're having a new embodied back to this holistic model of being [00:26:00] experience that is unfamiliar to my mind and my body. That will then trigger and activate my nervous system, which is always on alert, always looking to protect myself and keep myself safe and in the unknown of the unfamiliar.

Could be a possible threat that I've worked so hard to avoid. So before long, I have all of the mental reasons to convince myself out of doing the new thing. I have all of the body-based resistance where I just, I don't feel good. I feel uncomfortable. I don't feel like myself, and before long, I'm right back.

In those familiar patterns. So I share about this to hope to equipped listeners or anyone on this journey to expect it not to expect even the most logical things that you know are gonna be better and make you feel better over time to be easy. Not only are we turning a conscious spotlight on, for many of us, all of the deep-rooted, suppressed emotions, ways of being that I've tried to navigate all of this and now we're present to it, to this alternate reality of my family.

And. Feeling about how it was for [00:27:00] me to be a participant, a part of this family structure. Now I'm going to be doing new things. I'm going to be challenging that subconscious part of my mind that would prefer me even if they're not serving me to stay in those familiar patterns. So we want to, and. I'll talk often, especially in my, in my membership, the self heal circle, about a daily commitment to making and keeping a small daily promise, honoring that so many of us, when we decide, when we come to the realization that we wanna change, we wanna overhaul our life.

We understandably wanna start doing things completely different from top to bottom, starting tomorrow with this idea that, okay, well the quicker I change, the quicker I feel better. Though anticipating the presence of this resistance, the fact that when I talk about doing new things, it will challenge my literal nervous system in my body, making me wanna find safety elsewhere back in those familiar habits.

And because consistency is key to create new habits, actually changing our mind and bodies, we wanna set ourself up to succeed. So chop that endless to-do list down. [00:28:00] Pick that one small commitment that you. Intentionally keep to yourself for the foreseeable future and, and you're doing that. Not only are you beginning to create the new habit, you're empowering yourself beyond that resistance.

Cuz there will be moments when even doing the small new thing is not what you wanna be doing, not what you should be doing. It's uncomfortable to do. But showing up within that alignment of I set this intention is teaching your body how to feel safer and safer in that.

Sadie: Yeah, I love that. And I think that element of goal setting is, is a really unique and interesting thing, especially in the context of anxiety and mental health challenges.

When I was doing all of my like new year's resolutions and goals and reflecting this year, I was thinking a lot about that and I remembered the year before actually, I was talking about my goals with my therapist and she was like, you know, it's really common. For people with anxiety to set these insanely ambitious, crazy goals.

And I was like, okay, wait, why? , this doesn't make sense. Like wouldn't, if you're anxious, you wanna avoid, maybe we would do less of that. And I was thinking about that a lot. [00:29:00] And I think a huge element is that complete, almost misperception of a lot of things in our life, whether it's like a timeline or.

Threat, or how realistic it is that something will happen when we're anxious. We really blow those things out of proportion and our mind is like, this is definitely gonna have a huge impact on your life long term. This is definitely gonna be life or death, make it or break it. And I think that translates to the goals as well.

We still have those skewed timelines and skewed perceptions, and then we are very ambitious, want to change all of these things. And that's not always necessarily. Going to be effective. So I love that insight about sticking to one thing, maintaining that progress, and then building on that with time.

Nicole: Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and to really, again, simplify anxiety.

Anxiety is a symptom of immobilized or overly energetic nervous system. So being a chronically anxious person for as long as I can remember, I can attest to as much as I desperately want it, peace, quiet, to slow down, to have nothing to do. Freedom is what I would call it in those moments. It was [00:30:00] so uncomfortable.

I was nearly crawling. Skin, my mind was racing. I had all of this pent up, agitated energy that made sitting stillness, slowing down all things that the nervous system needs to be able to do when it downshifts from that sympathetic, anxious based response into the more parasympathetic, grounded, safe response.

It actually feels so foreign and so uncomfortable that my, my tension in my body, the fact that it never felt safe just to slow down. I was getting all of these messages of why I shouldn't be slowing down, that I, I couldn't embody. That's safety. So I think that's an important part of this conversation, especially for the anxious individuals that are listening.

As much as you might hear me profess how important it is to be restful, to take a moment of peace and of stillness, your body might not be sending that message that it's safe to do that in that moment. To your mind, your tension in your muscles, your elevated heart rate, your quickened breath might be sending the complete opposite, that you better get your butt [00:31:00] up off that couch and tend to whatever is threatening in my environment.

Even of course, if there's nothing present there, which is again bringing this full circle, why? Working holistically, coming to that realization that I can't just white knuckle it, I can't just want peace. I have to teach my body peace so that in those moments I can actually have the opportunity to slow down.

Stop. Yeah. Allow my nervous system to rebalance. I

Sadie: love that, and I remember that exact experience when I was in residential. I went to a dialectical behavioral therapy program, and they always teach mindfulness first, and yet it's always really difficult for this population of individuals to be mindful and to meditate and sit with their thoughts because their thoughts are so distressing and their baseline is So overwhelming. And it's funny because lots of people that do D B T do it a couple times through and it's like the third, fourth time. Then you're like, oh, I get why they're teaching mindfulness first. Like this makes sense. But especially in those early stages, that idea of being peaceful or like fully paying [00:32:00] attention to what's happening right now and not getting pulled towards the past or the future is really, really difficult and really uncom.

Nicole: Yeah, 100%. And it took me funny enough too, I, I met the concept of mindfulness in my early twenties, logged it as a great concept thing I should do, dabbled it in a bit, and very similarly felt like I'm too uncomfortable, I'm crawling outta my skin. My thoughts are nowhere that I want to be, and back on to autopilot.

I went. So again, I think it's really natural. and we will often talk about ways to become conscious in action then. So maybe for any of you listening, Who sitting doesn't feel safe to be still, to be with our thoughts. And this is exactly how I began my practice for me, because I have lived in the city up until this portion of my life.

So I was always commuting on foot to my office. So those times of walking were, when I made that commitment on my walk, I would pay attention to just how it felt using my. The feel of my heels, my tension, and my muscles as they were, you know, it was [00:33:00] shifting along my walk as being that focal point because sitting didn't feel like an option.

My thoughts would race. Having that more body inaction movement, and then I evolved that into it. Much more intentional yoga based stretching practice to try to release some of the tension in my body. But again, just sharing all of this, there's many ways to become conscious. It doesn't necessarily have to be, I'm in a room, I'm in the um, you know, shape or whatever it is on my cushion.

Silence. A lot of us that's just not approachable and knowing that we're still firing up that conscious part of our brain, rebuilding that connection to our body in those moments of movement or activity, maybe it's listening to music, not moving the body, but putting music on and not just becoming consumed by the thoughts that are happening in my head.

Tuning into the melodies, the beat being present to the act of listening. And again, I could insert any action, but just giving that as an opportunity for an entry point for all of us. Simply don't feel safe stopping being with ourself and our.

Sadie: Yeah, it's so funny you mentioned that because that was what, literally the tip I was gonna [00:34:00] give cuz we did a music mindfulness group at residential.

Every Friday we'd all pick our song, we would be mindful, we would give our thoughts and it is a really great way to practice that skill of paying attention to what your thoughts are and the sensations around you, but you're not just sitting in silence and having nothing to focus on.

So it's a really great way to start that practice and can be super, super effective

Nicole: as well. Music is still very much, a part of my journey every month in the self humor circle. One of the pieces of content that we offer, and I put it together myself, is a playlist because I discover that music was an entry point.

I now like, you know, map it onto the concept of the month, but I very much appreciate the process of me monthly having this opportunity to reengage with music and to, to listen to it in that way. So that's a great, beautiful.

Sadie: Yeah. The last thing that I wanted to touch on is this idea that teens are in a super unique position.

It's pretty widely understood that your teenage, adolescent years are a very critical period for mental illness development. It's like 75% of mental illness will develop. [00:35:00] During this timeframe. And so that in itself is a little scary. You're like, wow, there's a lot on the line right now. Better do this.

Right? But there's this also really unique experience where if you learn these skills and you practice these belief systems or thought processes or coping skills, you are really setting yourself up for success and you are giving yourself an amazing foundation to pull from in your adult ears and.

Experience more challenges, which I found even just getting out of the very overwhelming, more emotional for like biological regions, teenage years. It's easier to cope with because you're like, wow, I have so much more control over my emotions. Everything is not on the line as I become more logical.

But I would love to kind of get your thoughts on what the key skills or insights are to establish during this time period if you could. Almost wave a magic wand and be like, I wish that all teens were equipped with this skill or this belief system or this knowledge. It would really set them up for success.

What would those concepts be? [00:36:00]

Nicole: I think the, the greatest gift, you know, whether you're a teen listening, whatever age that you are listening. That we could give ourselves is a relationship with our emotions. Even those that are distressing and overwhelming and very much might be a part of the teen experience, understanding that our hormones are changing, our biology is changing.

We have a lot happening in our peer groups at schools and our homes to compound all of this and. Even when the emotions that we're feeling are really big. I think a lot of times society has, has given, I don't know if this this is the case for your listeners, but I think a lot of messaging in society is, is gives emotions a bad rap.

This idea that it's to be avoided or that happiness comes when we're not feeling anything but joy at all times. And I'm saying this to a version of myself as well, who in absence of having, you know, a supportive, attuned. Caregiver in my home, I shut down all of my emotions. I learned how to avoid and to channel and to only do the things that felt useful to me and validating for me, and to stay away from all of the things[00:37:00] that provoked any discomfort in my mind or in my body to just shut down the lid on all of my emotions and to really then limit my experience of life, my ability to tolerate the emotionality of living as a human being.

Life is meant to be felt. I think that's what colors us and our existence and our experience, and it is what allows us to connect with other people to the depth that I'm able to understand myself emotionally, be present to my own emotions is then gonna be the depth that I can meet you there. So it's understandable that I felt so disconnected because I really wasn't attuned to my own emotional landscape.

So there was a very long. Segue into the gift we can give ourselves is a relationship with our emotions being present to what is present for us. And if we don't have the safe space in our home, or the safe caregiver in their own balanced nervous system to help us out in those moments, we can and need to find that support.

The answer isn't. Putting the lid on it, [00:38:00] getting really good at distracting ourself away from it and marching toward this idealized idea of what happy is. It's actually learning how to be stress resilient, how to go through hard, difficult emotions. So actually the many of you listening that are dealing with a lot of emotional, you know, overwhelming, upsetting.

So the takeaway, wherever we are coming to this awareness, exploring ourself in a new way is.

Integrate and make space for our emotions. Learning how to be present when they are indicating, you know, something that's happening for us. How to turn in and begin to understand, get curious, and to develop new ways of navigating those. Again, it's not about avoiding our emotional world because again, that's what makes [00:39:00] us and colors our emotional world, though it is about getting support.

Finding the safe containers, finding the safe relationships to begin to explore how to then safely relate to our emotion.

Sadie: I love that and I think that's the perfect way to wrap this up and really give people a amazing action step to work towards. Where can people find your books, your podcast, your social media, all of the things.

Yes. So

Nicole: all of the things. The new workbook, how to meet yourself, as well as my first book. How to Do the Work is Available Well, where all books are sold. So wherever it is that you like to buy books, you can probably put it into the search bar and find it there. There's also a website, how to meet yourself for information on where to find the books.

At this point, I'm across every social media platform, so however it is that you consume content, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, if you search the holistic psychologist, you will likely land on my page. So whatever it is that your zone of preferences for content, I absolutely suggest you [00:40:00] check it out because there's a lot of free resource.

An incredible community that of other humans that are engaging in these similar conversations around what I hope is practical, understandable content, bits. Pieces that you can then begin to apply in your own journey. So come find me on whatever social media platform you enjoy the most.

Sadie: I'd love it.

All of that will be in the show notes, and thank you so much for joining me today.

Nicole: Thank you so much for having me, Sadie, and thank you all for listening.

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