Transcript
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A listener production.
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This is Crappy to Happy and I'm your host cast done.
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I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and.
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Author of the Crappy to Happy books.
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In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring,
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intelligent people who have something of value to share that
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will help you feel less crappy and more happy. And
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in today's bonus episode, I am thrilled to bring you
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Doctor Nicole Lepera, otherwise known as the Holistic Psychologist. Doctor
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Nicole is also a clinical psychologist who found herself frustrated
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with traditional models of therapy and so wanting more for
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her clients and herself. She began a journey to develop
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a holistic approach to healing that unified the mental, physical,
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and spiritual aspects of our being. In twenty eighteen, she
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created an Instagram page to document her journey, and in
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a relatively short period of time she has gained three
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and a half million followers from around the world, so
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it's fair to say her message is resonating with a
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lot of people. She's also just released her first book
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called How to Do the Work, which is now available
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in all Good bookstores and I know that you are
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going to gain something of value from this conversation with Nicole.
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She had so much wisdom to share. Without further ado,
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here is that conversation, doctor Nicole Leperra. It is such
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an honor to have you on the crap at a
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Happy Podcast. Thank you for being here.
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Today, Thank you so much for having mecass.
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And congratulations on your brand new book, How To Do
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the Work. I have a copy here that I have
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been devouring and I know it's going to be so
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well received. I wanted to start Nicole by asking you
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your incredibly popular Instagram page called The Holistic Psychologist. Your
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tagline is Holistic Psychologist. For anybody listening, can you just
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give us a couple of cent it's definition of what
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is holistic psychology?
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Yeah, Holistic to me, CASS means honoring the interconnectedness between
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our minds, our bodies, and our souls and acknowledging that
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a large reason why the majority of us are struggling
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at creating change in our life is for an underlying
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imbalance in one or all.
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Of those areas. So that's what holistic means to me.
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I really appreciate that. As a clinical psychologist, myself, and
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I think you have had the same experience. We have
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all confronted some of the limitations of traditional kind of
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talk therapy. Is that fair to say from your experience
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as well?
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Absolutely?
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I mean disempowered is the number one word that I
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kept coming up against in terms of feeling really disempowered
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as I continued to watch myself and really my clients
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that I had accumulated year after year of talk therapy
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work with being stuck. So yeah, through that empowerment, I
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really began to explore why that was and saw some
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glaring limitations in that old model.
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Which led you on a journey not just for your
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client's sake, but in your own life. Right. I think again,
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many of us who are in the helping and healing
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professional professions have had our own struggles. And so where
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did that take you in terms of your exploration of
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alternatives or what was missing in that traditional approach. Yeah.
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So when I when I dove in to try and
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understand why I remained so stuck and why again all
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my clients were so stuck, I really began to investigate
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the role of the body in particular. I think that
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was really the first foundational shift that I made before
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I even meet space for that other indescribable essence based
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spiritual soul entity that I believe we all have that
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like usness in us as humans. But for me, it
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was really opening the door to understanding our biology, our physiology,
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particularly around our nervous system, in terms of its role
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that that was playing in that starkness and in our
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mental wellness in general.
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Can you talk to me more about that, because this
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is key. Right when we go to psychology school, we're
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not taught how to work with our body, how our
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experiences get stuck literally in our nervous system. We know
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now it's crucial to as you say, holistic healing. So
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can you talk a little bit more about that, about
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what you maybe what you were experiencing physically, what people
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listening might be experiencing physically, or what those connections are
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between the emotions and the body. Yeah.
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Absolutely, I mean I will just speak from my own
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clinical training. The gold standard in the school that I
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went to, and really in clinical psychology here in the West.
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At least, is CBT.
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Is this idea that, right, if we start with a
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new thought and if we repeat that thing before I
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know it, I feel differently, and I behave differently in
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the world. And as you know, listeners who might pick
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up my book will read I dedicate a whole chapter
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to the power of belief, or essentially the power of thought. However,
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thought doesn't operate in a vacuum.
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Our mind.
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Our brain is attached to a body, a body that's
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communicating it, that's sending signals to our minds, to our
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brains all day long, and a lot of us are
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sending signals of dysregulation, signals of imbalance, namely signals around
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an activated nervous system that no amount of changing our
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thought can shift.
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So for me, it was.
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Really understanding the role that those physiological disregulations were playing
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for me. I had a multitude of symptoms wrapped up
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around that dysregulation from a chronic experience of just general anxiety.
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I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. As long as
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I can remember, I was always on edge, always waiting
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for the next threat in my environment, afraid of bumps
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in the night, that someone was breaking into my home,
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that hyper vigilant state that typically comes with tension, with
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elevated heart rate, with that kind of waiting for the
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next shoe to drop feeling.
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For me, I also had a lot.
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Of physical symptoms, as a lot of us do, comorbidly
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hand in hand with the psychological. For me, I had
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sleep issues. I never slept well. I was up with
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racing thoughts all night. I had digestive issues for as
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long as I can remember. So it looks a bit
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different how those dysregulations express itself, but those are really
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really common ones. And for me it was confusing because
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I saw similar patterns in my family. I saw my parents,
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my sister, all struggling with anxiety, all having more or
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less the same physical symptomology. So for a very long
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time I endorsed the model that was in the field
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for you know, history, which is that that was all
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determined biogenetics. So of course, what my parents have I
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now have. And it was until I discovered the new
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science of epigenetics that of course honors our genetics, if
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you will, though also empowers ourselves because it honors the
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role that our daily choices are making. And what I
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came to realize the reason there was so much similarity
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within my family, as probably many listeners might also be
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able to witness, is because of what we all learned
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and what we were all modeling to each other, so
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we were exhibiting those same dysregulations, though not because of
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the genetics entirely because of the choices that we were
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living day in and day out. So for me, that,
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as I say, it kind of like cracked a door
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open because for a while I didn't think I had
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the opportunity to heal. I thought that my conversation my
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lifetime would be one of managing my symptoms, making that
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panic or ways so I could make it just enough,
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but always imagining I would be an anxious person. I
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even identified I was an anxious human. I had OCD tendencies,
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That's just who I was. So for me, it was
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a crack of light that I didn't believe wholeheartedly at
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first that I was capable of healing. I tried to
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bat that away and think, Okay, everyone else can heal
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by making different choices, except for me, until I began
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to make those different choices, until I began to actualize change. Now,
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as part of the holistic psychologists, I created the self
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Healers hashtag because I believe now so implicitly in each
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of our abilities to create actual healing in our life,
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and I.
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Think that what you just said so many people will
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relate to. I talk to people all the time who
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have taken on that identity and who really believe that
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I will just always be this way, and so as
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you say, it is so empowering to realize that this
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is not necessarily the case, that they're possibly is a
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way forward. I wanted to talk to you just in
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terms of the mind body connection, really briefly for anybody
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listening who's not familiar with it. The ACES study all
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the way back in nineteen ninety five was fairly groundbreaking
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study which identified that early childhood adversity was directly linked
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to later physical, really negative health consequences physically and psychologically.
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So we might expect.
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That kids with trauma would become more depressed or grow
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up to have substance abuse, but also things like diabetes
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and stroke and heart disease thirty forty years later, having
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these health negative health outcomes. I think that was really
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groundbreaking obviously, but.
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Also what it did.
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I mean, the items on that survey are physical abuse
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and neglect and family violence, and like those really what
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we I considered to be those really big, major significant
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Traumas you talk in the book about the necessity of
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widening our definition of trauma, and this is something that
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I would really like you to talk some more about,
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because I think there are a lot of people who
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don't necessarily identify with those major, severe, terrifying traumas.
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Can you talk a bit about that.
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I am that person.
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When I took the Ace's scale myself, I scored a one,
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barely and for me, you know, for most of us,
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I think upwards of sixty percent of the population, scores
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are one.
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To put it simple, it's not very high.
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Yet I worked in inpatient units, I worked in substance
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use facilities.
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I worked with people who had upwards of ten.
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On that scale, and yet I was seeing the same
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habits and patterns in our daily life. For me, it
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was patterns of dissociation, disconnection and all that kind of
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falls downstream of not being connected to my physical body,
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my emotional self, and definitely not my spiritual essence. So
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for me, that was a point of shame, of concern
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and either even further strengthening. This is just that how
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I am narrative because I had no other explanation for
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why I was struggling, because I didn't have the reason.
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Too, as a lot of us believe.
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So I am very much a proponent in removing essentially
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the label of trauma from the event itself and acknowledging
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that there doesn't have to be a certain threshold for
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something out there to be considered a trauma and reapplying
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the label of trauma to the experience of the event,
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and that allows us to then honor all of the
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individual differences that impact how we experience something or when
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our nervous system feels overwhelmed, And that is what I
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feel contributes to the same habits and patterns regardless, so
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being a human for many different reasons, not feeling like
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we have this support around us, not feeling like we
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can self express in that full way, it still leads
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to those same habits and patterns that come from those
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before and after moments where life is turned on its head,
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as is often the case when we do suffer those
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big tea of trauma.
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So I'm a proponent, like I said, of.
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Applying the label to how is the event experience, and
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that allows us to honor that some things that someone
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might not consider big were big to us because we
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didn't have the tools or the resources to handle it,
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so they overwhelmed our nervous system just the same.
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So it's almost like all of that accumulation of I guess,
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emotional injuries that we all sustain as a child and
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throughout our lives. Would you say that's how I sort
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of think about.
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It, absolutely, because if it becomes then an onion, because
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we become we adapt to all of those experiences, we
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cope in some way that then for the most part,
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largely might have owned consequences by wearing the mask, by
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playing a role usually in service of keeping our less
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overwhelmed safer.
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They then those.
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Habits and patterns begin to accumulate their own set of
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negative fallouts or of consequences.
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So right, it becomes this onion that I believe the.
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Process of healing is peeling back those layers of conditioning,
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allowing us to be fully reconnected with our authenticity in
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physical self, in emotional self, and in spiritual self.
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I was just thinking earlier this week, I think as.