Holistic Psychology with Dr. Nicole LePera

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappy to Happy and I'm your host cast done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and. Author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. And in today's bonus episode, I am thrilled to bring you Doctor Nicole Lepera, otherwise known as the Holistic Psychologist. Doctor Nicole is also a clinical psychologist who found herself frustrated with traditional models of therapy and so wanting more for her clients and herself. She began a journey to develop a holistic approach to healing that unified the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of our being. In twenty eighteen, she created an Instagram page to document her journey, and in a relatively short period of time she has gained three and a half million followers from around the world, so it's fair to say her message is resonating with a lot of people. She's also just released her first book called How to Do the Work, which is now available in all Good bookstores and I know that you are going to gain something of value from this conversation with Nicole.

1:21 She had so much wisdom to share. Without further ado, here is that conversation, doctor Nicole Leperra. It is such an honor to have you on the crap at a Happy Podcast. Thank you for being here. Today, Thank you so much for having mecass. And congratulations on your brand new book, How To Do the Work. I have a copy here that I have been devouring and I know it's going to be so well received. I wanted to start Nicole by asking you your incredibly popular Instagram page called The Holistic Psychologist. Your tagline is Holistic Psychologist. For anybody listening, can you just give us a couple of cent it's definition of what is holistic psychology?

2:03 Yeah, Holistic to me, CASS means honoring the interconnectedness between our minds, our bodies, and our souls and acknowledging that a large reason why the majority of us are struggling at creating change in our life is for an underlying imbalance in one or all. Of those areas. So that's what holistic means to me. I really appreciate that. As a clinical psychologist, myself, and I think you have had the same experience. We have all confronted some of the limitations of traditional kind of talk therapy. Is that fair to say from your experience as well? Absolutely? I mean disempowered is the number one word that I kept coming up against in terms of feeling really disempowered as I continued to watch myself and really my clients that I had accumulated year after year of talk therapy work with being stuck. So yeah, through that empowerment, I really began to explore why that was and saw some glaring limitations in that old model.

3:07 Which led you on a journey not just for your client's sake, but in your own life. Right. I think again, many of us who are in the helping and healing professional professions have had our own struggles. And so where did that take you in terms of your exploration of alternatives or what was missing in that traditional approach. Yeah. So when I when I dove in to try and understand why I remained so stuck and why again all my clients were so stuck, I really began to investigate the role of the body in particular. I think that was really the first foundational shift that I made before I even meet space for that other indescribable essence based spiritual soul entity that I believe we all have that like usness in us as humans. But for me, it was really opening the door to understanding our biology, our physiology, particularly around our nervous system, in terms of its role that that was playing in that starkness and in our mental wellness in general.

4:11 Can you talk to me more about that, because this is key. Right when we go to psychology school, we're not taught how to work with our body, how our experiences get stuck literally in our nervous system. We know now it's crucial to as you say, holistic healing. So can you talk a little bit more about that, about what you maybe what you were experiencing physically, what people listening might be experiencing physically, or what those connections are between the emotions and the body. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I will just speak from my own clinical training. The gold standard in the school that I went to, and really in clinical psychology here in the West.

4:53 At least, is CBT. Is this idea that, right, if we start with a new thought and if we repeat that thing before I know it, I feel differently, and I behave differently in the world. And as you know, listeners who might pick up my book will read I dedicate a whole chapter to the power of belief, or essentially the power of thought. However, thought doesn't operate in a vacuum. Our mind. Our brain is attached to a body, a body that's communicating it, that's sending signals to our minds, to our brains all day long, and a lot of us are sending signals of dysregulation, signals of imbalance, namely signals around an activated nervous system that no amount of changing our thought can shift.

5:40 So for me, it was. Really understanding the role that those physiological disregulations were playing for me. I had a multitude of symptoms wrapped up around that dysregulation from a chronic experience of just general anxiety. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. As long as I can remember, I was always on edge, always waiting for the next threat in my environment, afraid of bumps in the night, that someone was breaking into my home, that hyper vigilant state that typically comes with tension, with elevated heart rate, with that kind of waiting for the next shoe to drop feeling. For me, I also had a lot. Of physical symptoms, as a lot of us do, comorbidly hand in hand with the psychological. For me, I had sleep issues. I never slept well. I was up with racing thoughts all night. I had digestive issues for as long as I can remember. So it looks a bit different how those dysregulations express itself, but those are really really common ones. And for me it was confusing because I saw similar patterns in my family. I saw my parents, my sister, all struggling with anxiety, all having more or less the same physical symptomology. So for a very long time I endorsed the model that was in the field for you know, history, which is that that was all determined biogenetics. So of course, what my parents have I now have. And it was until I discovered the new science of epigenetics that of course honors our genetics, if

7:13 you will, though also empowers ourselves because it honors the role that our daily choices are making. And what I came to realize the reason there was so much similarity within my family, as probably many listeners might also be able to witness, is because of what we all learned and what we were all modeling to each other, so we were exhibiting those same dysregulations, though not because of the genetics entirely because of the choices that we were living day in and day out. So for me, that, as I say, it kind of like cracked a door open because for a while I didn't think I had the opportunity to heal. I thought that my conversation my lifetime would be one of managing my symptoms, making that panic or ways so I could make it just enough, but always imagining I would be an anxious person. I even identified I was an anxious human. I had OCD tendencies, That's just who I was. So for me, it was a crack of light that I didn't believe wholeheartedly at first that I was capable of healing. I tried to bat that away and think, Okay, everyone else can heal by making different choices, except for me, until I began to make those different choices, until I began to actualize change. Now, as part of the holistic psychologists, I created the self Healers hashtag because I believe now so implicitly in each of our abilities to create actual healing in our life, and I.

8:42 Think that what you just said so many people will relate to. I talk to people all the time who have taken on that identity and who really believe that I will just always be this way, and so as you say, it is so empowering to realize that this is not necessarily the case, that they're possibly is a way forward. I wanted to talk to you just in terms of the mind body connection, really briefly for anybody listening who's not familiar with it. The ACES study all the way back in nineteen ninety five was fairly groundbreaking study which identified that early childhood adversity was directly linked to later physical, really negative health consequences physically and psychologically.

9:29 So we might expect. That kids with trauma would become more depressed or grow up to have substance abuse, but also things like diabetes and stroke and heart disease thirty forty years later, having these health negative health outcomes. I think that was really groundbreaking obviously, but. Also what it did. I mean, the items on that survey are physical abuse and neglect and family violence, and like those really what we I considered to be those really big, major significant Traumas you talk in the book about the necessity of widening our definition of trauma, and this is something that I would really like you to talk some more about, because I think there are a lot of people who don't necessarily identify with those major, severe, terrifying traumas.

10:21 Can you talk a bit about that. I am that person. When I took the Ace's scale myself, I scored a one, barely and for me, you know, for most of us, I think upwards of sixty percent of the population, scores are one. To put it simple, it's not very high. Yet I worked in inpatient units, I worked in substance use facilities. I worked with people who had upwards of ten. On that scale, and yet I was seeing the same habits and patterns in our daily life. For me, it was patterns of dissociation, disconnection and all that kind of falls downstream of not being connected to my physical body, my emotional self, and definitely not my spiritual essence. So for me, that was a point of shame, of concern and either even further strengthening. This is just that how I am narrative because I had no other explanation for why I was struggling, because I didn't have the reason.

11:14 Too, as a lot of us believe. So I am very much a proponent in removing essentially the label of trauma from the event itself and acknowledging that there doesn't have to be a certain threshold for something out there to be considered a trauma and reapplying the label of trauma to the experience of the event, and that allows us to then honor all of the individual differences that impact how we experience something or when our nervous system feels overwhelmed, And that is what I feel contributes to the same habits and patterns regardless, so being a human for many different reasons, not feeling like we have this support around us, not feeling like we can self express in that full way, it still leads to those same habits and patterns that come from those before and after moments where life is turned on its head, as is often the case when we do suffer those big tea of trauma.

12:10 So I'm a proponent, like I said, of. Applying the label to how is the event experience, and that allows us to honor that some things that someone might not consider big were big to us because we didn't have the tools or the resources to handle it, so they overwhelmed our nervous system just the same. So it's almost like all of that accumulation of I guess, emotional injuries that we all sustain as a child and throughout our lives. Would you say that's how I sort of think about. It, absolutely, because if it becomes then an onion, because we become we adapt to all of those experiences, we cope in some way that then for the most part, largely might have owned consequences by wearing the mask, by playing a role usually in service of keeping our less overwhelmed safer.

13:02 They then those. Habits and patterns begin to accumulate their own set of negative fallouts or of consequences. So right, it becomes this onion that I believe the. Process of healing is peeling back those layers of conditioning, allowing us to be fully reconnected with our authenticity in physical self, in emotional self, and in spiritual self. I was just thinking earlier this week, I think as. I was reading your book, it occurred to me that we're all talk about being authentic and living our authentic life and being true to ourselves, but so many of us, for so long would have no idea what that really is, because we're these walking bundles of coping strategies and defense mechanisms.

13:46 That just get layered and layered, And. You're so right, it's just a case of slowly peeling those back, I think before we can have a hope of getting to the truth of who we are underneath all of that. And I'll second that, and I'll offer that when I began my journey, I as a trained clinical psychologist, I. Had all of the book knowledge. I did not necessarily know how that translated to me. Emotions might as well have come from another planet. I really had no idea of how to reconnect with my emotional self and how to take the meaning that those emotional markers were sending me. I had no idea who I was, and that contributed to what I described when you read the book, is my dark knight of the soul, the screaming out of that deeper place, that deeper sense of who I am. A lot of us now have come to associate that with a word intuition, right, our intuition?

14:44 Where is that deep space of us? This? And I'm here to offer it's okay if you don't know who that person is or how that person feels right now. I didn't as well. One thing I can assure you. Is that we all have that intuitive space, that inn sense of who we are, what we want, and what we're meant to do. Most of what has happened to us is we become so disconnected that it becomes modeled. We're not sure what is pinging from that intuitive space and what isn't and or we might retain some connection to those pings, but we might have developed the habit of not trusting it, so we outsource and we look to other people to tell us who we are and how we are instead of ourselves. So I'm here to assure listeners we all have that authentic space. And again, like you beautifully, it's peeling back the onion to reconnect with.

15:35 It another time that I really resonated with. You mentioned it in your book, and I remember when I first heard. It a little while ago. It really resonated with me. And that is emotional addiction I see I have seen in myself, and I also see in a lot of the people that I work with too, this constantly creating drama, austraius or overwhelm and never really feeling comfortable when things had just come Can you talk a bit about that and how that comes about that emotional addiction. I think it's so. Common, absolutely, and I appreciate that you bring it up and you acknowledge casts your own kind of witnessing of that. I think a lot of us do have that kind of resting state of feeling that we tend to revisit.

16:21 For me, miyan is anxiety. It became my home base. I was so used to how it felt to feel the stress hormones of cortisol, of adrenaline, to feel that nervous system activation, that a running joke in my household from my childhood was my middle name ought to be because when I didn't feel stressed, the most I was on repeat. What I would yell to anyone that would listen is I'm bored. So the running joke in my family was Nicole. Your middle name might as well be Nicole. I'm board lapera. And for me, I now retrospectively understand what was happening, which was that in absence of that stimulation, I did have a sense of oftness. It didn't feel like myself. Flash forward into adulthood, I would witness myself, instigating returning to those stressful moments, returning to those possibly stressful thoughts, or triggering a stress in my relationship, picking at something to activate my stress response. Most of us have that the more we can become conscious of our habits and patterns, the more we can become aware of how often we revisit certain emotions. And likely it's because our bodies become so familiar with that state that when we're out of that state, we feel uncomfortable, because our body and our subconscious in particular, prefers the familiar, because according to our subconscious, that which has been known before

17:51 is much safer than that which is not known, than the unfamiliar. So there's a very deep part of all of our human selves that does not want to change, that likes the familiarity of what it's used to. I would be the first person to admit if you were to ask me what I wanted in life, I would have screamed from the raafter's peace. Yet when I had a moment where I didn't have that activision, something deeply felt not comfortable to me. It's that agitation and the restlessness. I think too, that so many people are just I mean, I teach meditation and mindfulness, and people really really struggle with just sitting still for five minutes and being alone and in a calm state and being alone with their thoughts. And I think with regard to that, we gravitate to what is familiar, even if it's deeply uncomfortable. I think that we see that, and it's often talked about in the context of relationships and recreating relationships that are stressful or you know, unhealthy, because we're familiar with that dynamic, and a lot of people listening would relate to that, But I don't think we've necessarily always talked about it on that individual level in terms of just I think about myself and just like going towards like overloading my schedule and overworking and you know, just creating all of the conditions of overwhelm and stress.

19:16 And we tell ourselves. That we're just you know, we're just busy, and we're just really high achievers or we're perfectionists, but in fact, all we're doing is just creating this constant world of unnecessary stress. Yes, I second that as a fellow overachiever. For me, it became back in time, my achievement was two things. It offered me a channel for that agitation that for me and all hits us differently feels very visceral. I feel it in my body. I feel like their energy is stuck and I almost want to crawl out of my skin. So for me, doing performing gave me a channel for that attention, I mean that energy. The other byproduct was attention when I performed and I brought home that AA or I was excelling at softball as I very naturally did, that was when my mom was able to be the most present for me. She loved me playing softball and was present at my games and very much. That was how I was able to feel that connectivity. So this actually ties into how we operate in relationships, which I believe are formed in our most earliest relational experiences. What we are modeled, how we experience ourself and how we relate to others becomes a practiced way of being that in our childhood is often born out of adaptation, born out of the circumstances that we can't control. Because here we are, and we're a child, and we're a very adaptive child.

20:45 So we learn how to create. Bonds with those around us as fully or not fully as they're able to offer it, and then that becomes the model for which we continue to relate. So my overachievement started very early. The role I played in relationships started very early, and then we become very repetitive. So flash forward in time, I'm still very in achievement driven individual who struggles to acknowledge and honor myself in those moments where it's at odds with what I think I should do. I want to just go. Back for a minute to that ACES study and that mind body link in terms of the ways that it manifests physically. Essentially, what they've uncovered I guess is it's this toxic stress of those overwhelming traumatic experiences or responses in the body that accumulate over time. Are you able to talk a bit about that process, just for anybody listening who's interested in that link, because it's pretty significant link.

21:46 Absolutely. I mean, so, when we have a stress reaction, our nervous system is activated. We have our sympathetic typically nervous system, the one that's associated with fight or flight is activated, and we go into the mode of dealing with the issue at hand. We have a cascade of physiological shifts and changes that happen in the body. Then as a result of that regulation into that upward that activated sense. Because we have to remember, all of this is crounded in our evolution. Within that moment there being a perceived threat, whether it's real or imagined. You know, our brain, our mind is very powerful. It really doesn't matter. And then our responses and our resources are summoned. And the ones in particular that we have to become worried about are when our cortisol goes up. It affects the whole hormonal system in our body, namely around.

22:40 The HPA access. And too much cortisol not only disregulates our other hormones, but actually creates inflammation in our body. And that is a problem for our nervous I mean our immune system, who begins to register there at it activates in our immune system, now sending a cascade of immune regulating chemicals. The large majority of us, when we're stuck in that sympathetic response system, are having all of those dysregulations falling like dominoes, where then we're becoming inflamed. Inflammation is activating our immune system, and then our immune system is right activated in our bodies and causing all of that downstream.

23:24 The thing we have to worry about is when that all travels up into our brain, and a lot of us struggle then with mind cloudiness, brain fog, and a lot of that is connected to an inflamed brain, that dullness of thinking. The cloud over our brain is the end result of all of this cascade of upregulated hormones that never shut off. To deal with stress, we need all of that response system I just described. However, we also need to downregulate to come back into our and digest or our power sympathetic nervous system. When all of our regulatory organs can go back and sit in their resting state. And when we don't have that, when we have that wash of chemicals that never shut off, we do enter into a toxic stress experience.

24:17 It, like I said, has impact not. Only on our visceral organs and our gut, but more problematically upstream in our brain. And then over time that chronic stress and inflammation. Obviously, as you said, it's having an impact on all of the systems in our body have a time creating disease. Yes creating disease, and that's why there's such an interconnection with physical issue illness symptoms, and psychological and that stress and anxiety in particular. So what I was describing earlier, some of my as long as I can remember, symptoms of constipation, of sleep issues, all of those are systems that are directly impacted when we're overactivated in our sympathetic because we're not able to rest. So what did I say earlier, My sleep was off, We're not able to digest.

25:12 I happen to be incredibly constipated for as long as I can. Remember, holding on to food. And it's because again, our nervous system isn't shifting into our power sympathetic, where our rest and our digestion hums along as it ought to. Yeah, and I'm thinking of the range of autoimmune diseases and all of those things that people are experiencing, and so many people on the one hand maybe seeing a therapist to deal with the mental health issues and the stresses and the struggles of life, and on the other hand, going you know, from doctor to doctor trying to work out what's with this the health complaints and never necessarily.

25:53 Linking the two. And I'm wondering too if maybe some people clearly these links are very direct unproven, but I think for such a long time maybe if we tried to link emotional stress with physical complaints, people interpreted that as, Oh, they think it's just. In my head, you know. So there was that resistance to that idea. Yeah. Absolutely, And I'm happy and being you brought up autoimmune. There is a very near and dear self healer that I reference a couple times in the book, and her name is Ali, and she's been on an incredibly inspiring transformational journey that began with one glass of water. But that began at a time. Where she was in her mid twenties and she was suffering debilitating symptoms of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. Onwards of getting ready, her and her family were getting ready to find housing for her, a housing facility where she would have the supports that she needs to continue assumingly into her decline and with the daily commitment to begin to create change, with her becoming aware of new information on nutrition and the role nutrition play in autoimmunity. Why is nutrition important? Not only does stress cause inflammation, Gut damaging foods cause inflammation. The more chemical laid in food we eat, the more of certain types of food products can actually poke holes in our gut. So when Ali began her journey, little did she know that. Of course it didn't happen overnight, but her staying committed to what began is one glass

27:24 of water and then creating nutritional change in her life and creating other habits and practices helping her to downregulate her stress response. Ali is I think maybe a year and a half, two years into her healing journey, and she is currently symptom free of multiple sclerosis. So I share her often. That maps on right to this idea of a lot of our autoimmunity and our symptoms of all of the category of autoimmune diseases sometimes are very directly connected to our stress responses in our body and or the way we're caring for our physical body. Yeah, that's amazing. I've been listening on an audiobook to Gabor Matte's book When the Body Says No Great.

28:10 I'm sure that you're familiar and have. Read that book, but it is fascinating for anybody who is interested in some of those case studies about people experiencing how stress and early experiences impact and manifest. As physical disease. I hope that. You're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you epps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and. Review, Nicole.

28:55 The book is called how to Do the Work, and you mentioned yourself, here's circle and empowering people to do this work. What is involved in doing the work? Yeah? So doing the work and the reason why I intentionally in the book was titled this it's really to honor the role that creating new change in our actions, embodying change in our actions plays in creating transformation. It's beyond thinking just thinking differently or reading things in a book. At some point we have. To translate what we're learning, integrate it into how we begin to show up differently, whether again it's honoring our body and caring for our body in a different way, or learning how to regulate our nervous system. A large reason why myself and all of my clients were stuck is because it's incredibly difficult to build that bridge into action. Because, like we talked about, we don't actually want to change.

29:49 There's a lot of discomfort that comes along with doing the unfamiliar, with creating new ripples and our relationships in our lives that are new, that are unfamiliar, and that are uncomfortable all of us. So a large reason why we were struggling, and a lot of us struggle to get better is because we're unable to build that bridge. And if I were to speak honestly, I would go as far to say, I think those of us that have the insight, that know the tools, that maybe even know the habits that they want to break and might know where they come from. For me, that that was such an incredibly frustrating place to be stuck because I had all this insight, I had all this awareness, yet I couldn't watch myself do anything about it. I was unable to put the bricks down to walk over to then being differently. So the book it being titled the Work, I think, really is honoring the fact that create change, we have to begin to show up differently in our lives.

30:47 Yes, and you mentioned the story of Ali, which is just incredible, and that it started with a glass of mot and you do I have heard you talk about, you know, this idea of keeping a small daily promise to yourself, and I for could just say that the reason that I love this idea is because I think that in this space and I probably relate it to things like the diet space and the weight loss space, when there are these things that we know are very limited or that they're not going to that don't work, dare I say, or they're not going to work completely, and then when the results aren't there, people blame themselves like that didn't work for me, And I hear that that's the way you're supposed to That's what you do is you go and see a psychologist, or you go and do this and you do CBT. But that hasn't worked for me, so therefore there must be a problem with me, and which you know, it's just really unhelpful.

31:49 So you introduce this idea of keeping a small daily promise to yourself, I guess as a way of kind of building that self trust. Would you say, can you talk. About that love that you said that word self trust? I believe that's exactly what that is, an action of It doesn't matter about what the promise is. So I shared Ali her promise was a glass of water. I've heard other promises. I've lost my teeth. Before I go to bed, I take a minute and I write one affirmation in my journal. Doesn't matter what the promise is. It's the action of witnessing alignment between intention and action. And so many of us, to speak to your point, yes, have had set many great intentions that we haven't been able to keep up with to consistently actualize. So doesn't matter the promise to anyone listening, whatever the keep it small.

32:38 This is harnessing again our subconsciousness preference to stay in the familiar. So the more we stack on, the more we're likely to create that resistance or create that overwhelm. Because what we're looking to do cast is do it consistently. So while some of us. Might be a white knuckle a life that looks different from top to bottom tomorrow, chances are somewhere down the line we're not going to be able to keep the seven new promises that we intend it. I want to honor, though oftentimes that's a reaction out of the incredible discomfort that we feel. So very naturally, if I change my life from top to the bottom, I'll get better, quicker. However, the goal is to integrate these new choices into new lifestyle how I now live what I do. So smallness is key. Doesn't matter what the promise is, it's the action of keeping it, because yes, it rebuilds a lost self.

33:28 Trust you over time, sometimes even unbeknownst to yourself. Begin to not roll your eyes when you make a new promise, begin to know that you know what you set the intention to show up and do this thing tomorrow, and chances are you will. And here's something else even if you don't. Because there are some days where we're not going to make the choice to show up, and. There might be some days where I want to suggest you make the choice to show up. It's important to honor where we're at. Though, Once you drop those into the bucket of confidence, you know that. Your routines are right around the You know you're not going to. Spiral down back into all of those old habits. You know that you can stay committed because you've showed yourself, you created confidence in yourself.

34:10 Yeah, I love that. And it's a bit like that idea that you know, I think you've you've touched on this. The other there's micro commitments, those little micro changes that almost fly underneath the ratear of the phot or flight system that is going to kick into gear if it thinks that you're going too far out of uh the ordinary or the familiar. So you can integrate these these tiny habits that over time build on themselves. And then watch for the presence of resistance, which will likely be part of the story when you try to diminish it, you try to tell yourself and tear yourself down that it's only something small, it's so still silly. Why bother label that for what. It is that you're subconscious preferring that you stay in the same old, familiar rut. However, you can empower yourself.

34:55 You can walk through that discomfort. You can tell that voice thank you. I'm all set. I'm safe to move into the unknown, and I'm going to continue to keep this problem. I mean this, keep this, this this intention for myself. Nonetheless, I'm intrew interested in some of this, like particularly the gut health which you talked about before, and the obviously the understanding that we have now about the gut brain link. I did an episode of the podcast earlier, if people listening haven't heard it on particularly gut health and I'm really into. This food mood kind of connection. What have you found. Nicole to be particularly helpful in healing the gut?

35:36 Is that too big a question? I find it kind of like, well, what do I do? What do I eat? What supplements do I take? How do I heal my gut? Yeah? I love. I love to hear a cass that you're you're sharing this message because I think, Yeah, those of us in the field haven't been trained around nutrition and even or urge not to even dare speak of nutrition in many ways, though it plays an integral part. For me, it was foundational a little bit. I know that a lot of the food I was eating that I considered healthy wasn't actually what my body needed, wasn't serving my individual nutritional needs. So to heal the gut because it is very individualized. The foods that make me feel well and the foods that make you feel well might be different. I'm the biggest proponent of creating a habit of consciousness around the body. Body consciousness, particularly around consumption. What that means is obviously the foundation of learning how to be present to our body and its signals, which for many of us is a journey in and of itself, because again, some of us don't feel safe in our bodies. So to cultivate safety, to do the like we're speaking of, learn how to regulate our nervous system so that I can embody myself and then over time, tune into how my body feels. Once I'm there, Now I can gift myself with being consciously present when I eat.

36:57 As simplistic as this might. Sound, I know I'll be the first one to admit I ate for so many reasons that weren't my body telling me I was hungry. I didn't know when I was full, and half the time when I was eating, my mind was a million miles elsewhere. I didn't really know how food tasted, nor did I understand how it made me feel. So once I was embodied and I was here, then I had the gift of tuning in, discovering what is a hunger feeling versus a million other things. I'm uncomfortable and I want to distract myself, Oh so I'll eat, or I'm thirsty or a. Million other things. Learning how to differentiate hunger and then more importantly, tuning in when I eat that meal of whatever it is do I feel like it gave me energy? Or do I feel like I want to go take a nap right afterward? When we eat, we should feel satiate it, and we should have energy available to us to go about our day.

37:50 And what I began to realize. Time and time again is that I didn't feel so great when I ate certain types of food. So I was able to individualize, essentially my nutritional plan based on what works for me. So I don't ever prescribe prescriptions of eat this not that I know that each of our individual bodies has the wisdom knows how it feels its best, and if we begin to cultivate a conscious relationship with our bodies, we can find our way to the food that makes us feel and perform our best. I think that's such an important message, especially when we are still for all of the work that is happening and the change that's happening in terms of pushing back against the diet culture and the drive for thinness and all of that unrealistic body standards that women hold themselves to.

38:40 I know a lot of women who are still purely motivated by making my body smaller and eating for health, not just physical health and nutrition, but psychological health and wellbeing. They are so connected. I think that's a really powerful message to get out there. Yeah. So then you can shift yourself into a space where you may choose to make the choice not to eat a certain food at a given time, and we can reframe it. It doesn't have to be about restriction in that moment. It can be about that food is not going to make me feel well for what I have to go and do next. And you can also gift yourself with the opportunity, as I still often do with eating the food with consciously saying yes, I'm going to for me.

39:24 I'll share an example. I have come to learn that the more gluten I eat, the worse I feel. I get an agitation, I lose energy. This goes along with sugar processed sugar too. I even get a little bit of breakout around my chin. So you can tell visibly when I'm eating gluten or. Too much sugar. Sometimes I love me pizza, I love me some ice cream. I still eat it though I'm conscious. I know that as when my ice cream cone is done, and if I have ice cream cone three nights in a row, I might feel a little crappy on the fourth day, though, I entered into that relationship consciously, so I'm not ever going to have a restriction. I'm just going to advocate body awareness and your body will speak. You may still choose to eat the food, though you're gifting yourself with empowerment because you're choosing yes.

40:12 And a lot of what you were talking about them around the food and the food choices really was about slowing down and tuning in. You talked about consciousness and conscious body is mindfulness at the court, like, is that a big part of what you teaching and encouraging people to practice as well? It's huge for me. I think it's the foundation of everything, just the ability to be present to what's happening exactly. Mindfulness is another word for consciousness and to speak to something you brought earlier upcasts, I discovered mindfulness when I was in my early twenties, when I needed it the most, because I was one panic attack after the other. Though to like you shared, I was the person who couldn't sit still, who didn't want to have that moment of meditation, so I didn't do it.

40:59 I began to create the habit of consciousness. Years later, not through sitting meditation, like many of us consider through being mindfully or consciously present in my day today because for me, hooking my attention on what I was doing, on my sensory experience of say my meal, just in the context of this conversation felt a little less threatening because it gave me a hook for my attention that wasn't my overwhelming mind or my internal world or all of the feelings that were bubbling up. So I'm the first person to give that suggestion anywhere we can create mindfulness or conscious awareenes the same thing is going to go a long way to build that foundation.

41:39 Because I couldn't agree with you more. It is foundational. Yeah, And I personally have been just for my experience, have been meditating for many years, and I can happily sit in meditation, but I'm now much more drawn to mindful movement and really connecting with my body because I felt like that was something missing for me. So yoga, and I mean even I've just done a little course in tapping, AFT tapping and things like EMDR that are connecting with our nervous system in that way. I think that getting in there too, some of those body based mindfulness practices are really important as well. I know you talk about yoga as being a really part of the healing process too.

42:21 Yeah, movement in general. I like that, even just expanded it, you know, beyond yoga, just how can I be present in a moving body. I'm reading a fascinating book. Now about how movement early in life begins to shape or the ways in which we move begin to shape actually our self concept and then how that shapes our movement. And then again we have another onion that's kind of falling in another direction and movement and mindful movement. Because my offering is always this those of us that maybe have a consistent meditation practice, we're say every morning we sit in meditation for five, ten, fifteen, whatever many minutes. It is my wondering or my offering is. Alway is a suggestion to explore, witness what the rest of the day looks like outside of your meditation moment, right, And chances are, if you're like me, the rest of the day looks like that autopilot.

43:11 Right. So if I've meditated, access my conscious self, you know, tuned into my spirit, my essence, you know, checked in, and then I go right back into that autopilot that's going to be the most predominant in my day. So I'm always thinking about life in consciousness because it's not enough to, in my opinion, do anything in a limited way. We need to integrate it into our way of being. How we're showing up outside of the meditation room. One hundred percent would agree with that. Sit down and meditate for ten minutes, take monthsllness done, and then carry on the rest of the day and. Get back into my mind exactly. We've all been there, no Cale, I'm really conscious of your time. There are so many I could talk to you for hours, because there are so many other really useful strategies and approaches that you're outline in the book, and I'm sure they're in self Healis circle as well.

44:02 You talk about in a child work, Can I just give you like a couple of minutes to talk about the importance of that. Yeah, in our child work is integral in my opinion, because I believe we all carry childlike aspects in again, are subconscious that oftentimes are driving our daily reactions, whether it's just the general habits and patterns we learned of maybe how we care for our physical bodies, our emotional bodies, our spiritual selves in childhood that we just generally repeat that we've never updated, that. We've never checked in to see how are they serving me, honoring that. A separate human taught them to me that was possibly limited in their own tools and their own connection with their self. So many of us need to just update generally how we're caring for our childlike self in addition to those moments where we're in our childlike mode where we're having the really big emotion that chances are if you witness yourself consistently enough, you might see those older, coping things. For me, it was the dissociation, right or the explosion When I couldn't dissociate, or when the feelings piled up enough, I would have those moments where it would turn into an explosion outward. And how we can understand that is through that lens of the inner child.

45:19 We don't have to shame ourselves as I often did. Saying mean things, doing mean things to those I love is an terribly shameful experience to have. However, if I could pull back and understand what was happening underneath in that moment and understand that for most of us in those moments of extreme emotion, there's a wound itself, a wounded child inside that has something that was very difficult to experience in childhood, that coped in the only way that. They knew how. Our goal then in. Adulthood is to look compassionately upon that wounding, and of course then to create yate new ways to navigate those very difficult experiences when most of us just squash it down, shame ourselves, or have the idea that because we've gained numerological age that we should be at a different state of functioning. And I'll be the first to admit that there are still moments of emotional reactivity that I have, or emotional immaturity as I call it, where I'm not a safe person, where I am exploding out or withholding in that I could continue to learn how to compassionately care for my inner child and give her some new resources in those moments of need.

46:37 There's a huge amount of self compassion wrapped up in all of this work. Isn't there that self kindness? Because so many of us plagued by self judgment and self criticism and shame, and it's so damaging and just gets in the way of progress. However it shows up. It never is helpful to facilitate any kind of progress. Oh, goal achievement, Absolutely not. And this is why I speak endlessly about the why, because there is always a why. There is always a reason why we're reacting as we are, we're doing as we do. That can be the healing shift for the large majority of us.

47:22 For some of us, it's just that reframe. Seeing that reaction as a wound, as a cry out for a need that's unmet in that moment, can be the pivotal shift that can into that compassion that actually allows me to relax and to meet that need. Obviously, it's not as simple as that for all of us. Some of us have to cultivate compassion, and that's a process in and of itself. And learn some new tools. But for the most part, we as humans love to be our own worst critic. We sign up for it readily, and we stay really commit it to tearing ourselves down. So you and I can be like, oh, just self compassion, but I want listeners to understand and that it's not as easy as flipping the self compassion switch, or you know, hearing you or me suggest you do it and now you've done it.

48:07 It's actually another action. It's an act of practicing self compassion in each and every moment, especially in those moments where we want to run from ourselves. Yes, I love that you say that. It is it's almost like in that moment when I could get busy and finish the housework, or I could give myself five minutes to sit down and rest. You know, it's those tiny little actions, isn't it that we actually demonstrate to ourselves that we honor ourselves and value ourselves that get dismissed constantly in the business of life. Absolutely, So to piggyback on that and build on the small daily promise idea and honoring possibly those small moments, that is another step in the process. Observing, celebrating, acknowledging that you did that thing, that you did, hit pause, that you didn't pick up the text from someone who you really imagine needs you right now. But what you need to do is just take a moment for yourself.

49:03 That person will be there in five ten minutes when you have the resources. Honoring those moments and saying, hey, I'm honoring myself right now, and that's a big deal. You've got loads of tools available. As I already said, I've just got one last question. It's just in the back of my mind for a person thinking, Okay, well, I understand that the saying is my biography becomes my biology. You know, our emotional experiences get launched in our body. We've all heard it. The body keeps the score. Okay, I've got this stress in my body, McCole, I've got this trauma stuck and I'm having these reactions or whatever is going on. How do I start to shift it out? Is there a simple process or practice that people can start to implement to start to move that trauma out of our physiology.

49:52 So after we obviously build the base of foundational consciousness awareness knowing those markers, I mean, this goes such a long way, cash because a lot of us almost take ourselves by surprise when we have those reactive moments driven from that trauma, childhood wounding. We want to get really intimate with all of the moments that lead up all of those activations. When I begin to feel my thoughts are to raise, when I begin to feel my heart rate go up, we want us be able to be embodied enough to tune in early enough to create change when we need it. Because I'll be the first to admit there is a point of no return once I'm up to level seven or eight or nine of activation, like get out of my way, actually, because I'm not going to be able to intervene on myself. I'm off to the races. I'm going to say and do the thing I don't want to do in that moment. So learning my four, my five, when I can begin to make new choices, and then that again, that's individual for each of us. I described me, I feel tension, I feel an agitation in my energy, and I feel it kind.

50:56 Of upping my heart rate. Someone listening might learn different kind of cues in their own body. And again, if we're dealing with any sort of that nervous system activation, all of the symptoms we've been talking about, one of the most helpful tools is breath work. I'm always talking about breath work, harnessing the power of the fact that we're always breathing and learning how to intentionally create changes actually. In our nervous system state. Learning that we can sometimes even through the act of breathing. Something I've learned for myself as my stress anties up. As I get six and seventy eight, I actually begin to hold my breath, and that could be the difference me catching that I'm holding my breath and remembering to breathe, for me to give myself a nice calm, diaphragmic or belly breath in that moment might be the difference from going over that tipping edge. So breath work is always really helpful energetically because it maps right onto shifting from sympathetic activation down into that beautiful power sympathetic state that we've been talking about.

52:01 Yes, I start always five minutes before I hop onto any podcast episode. I sit and take those deep belly breaths just because I always feel a bit, you know, nervous and about talking to somebody new on the podcast. I think it's just such a great practice to get into and do it regularly. It's the simple things that can make such a profound difference in the long term. Yes, on this healing process. And that's something that I think and on, which is that it is a long term process. We don't often get the immediate shift and change right. So someone listening may, Okay, belly breathing cool. I'm going to assure you might go out and do five deep bellly breaths and feel really no different, especially if you're you know, up at that ten and your nervous system has been activated for thirty.

52:49 Some odd years. As Mayne was two, four deep bellly breath did really nothing in the beginning, right, So this is where we want to commit, like we've been talking about, to the consistent practice. Before you know it, there will be change. You will be able to access that commerce space and it won't feel as unfamiliar, and you'll begin to feel safer, shifting from stress to a little less stress, a little less stress, and then someday you might even be able to comfortably embody peace. Here. I am somewhere near that end of the spectrum, though I will be the first to admit there are still moments where I know where to go to piss myself off and to upset myself, and it's really tempting, and some moments I choose that activation.

53:31 Though more often than not, not only do I gift myself with choice, I've gotten more and more comfortable with not with not following that thought, with not right stirring the pot in that way, with actually embodying the peace that I have now cultivated over time. Nicole, I love your work. Thank you so much for the work that you do and how generously you have shared with my listeners today. Obviously the book is available now, I think by the time this episode goes to where the book will be available. How else can people get in touch with you and your work? Of course, so each and every day, those of you who are not familiar with my Instagram account, the dot holistic dot Psychologists, I definitely can be found there along with the now millions of other self healers from around the world that are using these tools, that are sharing our own stories, my own included each and every day on Instagram. I can also be found on my new revamped website at your Holistic Psychologist dot com. So for anyone who is planning on purchasing the book or even not, the book is free. I mean these resources are free for anyone. I have a few free guided meditations that map on to book content, but of course anyone is welcome to use those.

54:48 And I also have. Some other free goodies such as a future self journal and intentional conscious journaling practice that I use to help me keep make and keep those small daily promises in my own healing journey that can also be found on the website and then drum roll for those that are interested in the YouTube format, I put out teaching videos and my YouTube is also getting a bit of a revamp, so in a bit of time I will be diving into season two and the YouTube channel is the Holistic Psychologist. So thank you Cass for your time, for your energy. It delights me to no end as I continue to connect with other practitioners like yourself who are walking this journey, who are embodying the holistic model, and who are putting this work out there.

55:33 Because I know it's not easy. I definitely know it's not easy sometimes even within our own field to be speaking some of these truths. So I just want to take. A moment and to honor you to share my gratitude for how you show up every day and for sharing your space with me today. Thank you. Nicole's book How To Do the Work is a manifesto for self healing and an essential god to creating a mob of vibe, authentic and joyful life. And who doesn't want that? As she said, you can follow her on Instagram. It is the dot Holistic Dot psychologist or her website Your Holisticpsychologist dot com and I'll put those details in the show notes. Of course, you can follow me cast Done, Underscore XO or find me at casdone dot com.

56:23 And as always, if you like the. Show, please do think about leaving us a rating and a review. It does help us to get heard by more listeners and I will catch you in the next episode of Crappy to Happy. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cast Dunn, produced by Davis Lensky, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener