686: Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist) - The Hidden Cost of Being Good at Everything, Self-Medicating at 13, Why Awareness Isn't Enough, Healing the Body Not Just the Mind, What a Real Boundary Actually Is, and How Vulnerability Makes Love Rea

Becoming. It will be out in a few months. In the meantime, I have sent it to

“some leaders that I really admire. One of them is four-star General Stanley”

McCrystal. I asked him what he thought and he sent me back this email. "Having led an environment where preparation, discipline, and trust determine outcomes I found the price of becoming deeply authentic." Ryan Hawk captures a truth familiar to those in uniform. Excellence is earned through consistent effort, accountability, and the willingness to stay uncomfortable long after

others stop. And so cool, I hope you will choose to pre-order my book The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningliter.com and see all types of pre-order bonuses. Or if you want, just go straight to Amazon and pre-order the price of Becoming. Thank you so much.

“Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. Presented by Yenside Global, I am your host, Ryan Hawk.”

Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningliter.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningliter.com. Now on to the night's featured leader, Dr. Nicole DePara is the creator of the holistic psychologist of platform with over 12 million followers and she's the author of three New York Times best-selling books including her newest Repairing the Inner Child. During our

conversation we discussed, why Nicole was self-medicating with alcohol and drugs at each 13 while getting straight-aids, excelling athletically and hiding it so well from her parents. Then the moment she realized traditional therapy was

not working and what she built instead, then why awareness alone will never

“create lasting change and what actually has to happen in the body first. And”

then she shares with a real boundary actually is and why most people confuse it with trying to control someone else. This is unlike any conversation I have ever had, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Nicole LePara. I always start thinking about you and maybe your younger days. You're this wildly energetic kind of bouncing off the walls kid, right? And

people said kind of you were just good at everything or you were good at things. So in a weird way, having to work hard or to give effort to something, actually or struggle for something, meant failure. And so this blew my mind reading about you and your story. Because I was brought up, you got to work hard to earn your spot as the quarterback on the football team and to earn the respect of your teammates.

Hard work and getting after it was just a core tenant, my family's life still is like in our lives. But this is different. I feel like from your life, things came easy. But if they didn't, then it was like something's wrong. Can you take me back to that time and what you've learned from that? Absolutely. And so as we all are in childhood, we're very connected, observant and absorative of the world around us.

And I saw very clearly very early on that. In a very traditional way, my family, you know, was of the mindset that success in life meant having financial security. And of course, the way to that was to excel academically and/or athletically. Because oftentimes, right, those things lead to the good college, to the good career, etc. So seeing that very clearly and experiencing an absence of connection quite largely in my home of no fault or ill

intention of my parents. I had two parents. My mother was in care of the home,

always present yet. Because of her own childhood trauma and stress that was happening

both outside of the home and the city that we lived and inside the home with health-related issues, she wasn't really able to be present to me except in those moments, right, where she was fostering the things that I was good at, which was very clear that I was successful academically and athletically from a very early age and seemingly both came easy to me. It's not to say that I didn't spend as I'm sure you did as well. A lot of time honing my skill

practicing all of my outside hours. I was training and working, though, I seemingly excelled easily. And so yes, the message that I got was in those moments, I'm worthy when I'm bringing home the A's when I'm winning the softball game when people are celebrating how good I am at those things, again, with the goal being security and adulthood, I'm seen. I'm good enough. I'm worthy.

good at and not pursuing those. So I did have this implicit learning while it wasn't spoken to me

that there are gifts and talents that I have and some things that I'm not good at. And I just

“kind of filtered life staying on the path of comfort, excelling the way that I knew how, but I think”

what's important for all of my work and the understanding that I want to give listeners is all of that was a beautiful adaptation. Of course, the path I picked of achievement, excelling, perfectionism, so to speak, happened to be a path that was quite celebrated in society. And in many ways, did map on to opportunities that I was then offered that we all have that part of us. I call it the inner child. It doesn't leave, no matter how old we are, how beyond our childhood,

how much we don't want to look back or maybe do it impacts us. For many of us, it's in reactions, it's in identities, it's in our way of being that at one time was our best attempt at safety security or connection andworthiness in our earliest environments. Okay, you've accomplished a lot. You're making a really positive dent in the world. You're helping millions and millions of people

“every single day. That's why I'll just say that. But it's true. So the question to me is, is some”

of that upbringing, though, and that I don't know, perfectionism and wanting to achieve, it's produced a lot of good in the world. Hasn't it? I mean, because of what you've accomplished and continued to accomplish every day, I'm thinking, well, I get it. This is tough, but so much good is come from it. So what do you think of that? Absolutely. And I think that that's an important takeaway that I want people to have is that a lot

of these adaptations are of benefit. I mean, they benefited us in childhood and many of them continue to benefit us. But I think what is really important and actually, if I'm honest, my journey began in a therapeutic office when I was a private clinician and I wasn't in my opinion, making impact. My clients who were very insightful, very wise, very even committed to relieving the suffering in whatever area brought them into my treatment room. And I felt, even though I had all these

accolades, I had the letters. After my name, I had the practice. I had the partner. I felt very empty and unfulfilled. And much like my clients, I felt stuck. I didn't have language for why I myself had a lot of the habits and patterns that weren't serving me. So sharing that because, as I began to understand why we're stuck, of course, I speak a lot about our body and how these habits are wired into us the only way that we've learned how to gain safety and

security in our nervous system and continue to repeat them even when they create this function. I had a lot of knowledge. And if I'm honest, I was very hesitant to, as I was watching the social media world evolve and people were beginning to share more publicly, there was a part of me, the inner child who only knew success in this very prescribed way that wasn't used to opening myself up for feedback, being seen in a public way. So it actually took the support of my partner,

who I'm still with on this journey, who is like Nicole, you have so much to say, you're really beginning as I worked holistically now with clients, transform my practice, transform my own life.

She was like, you're finally creating the change that you want to make, you have something to say.

“I think you should maybe bring this message online and share it more publicly. And if I'm honest,”

I resisted that because I felt concerned. I didn't know how other therapists were going to think of me. What the public was going to think of me sharing these kind of aspects of a new way of working. And so that resistance was there, though now, yes, I'm able to learn how to speak my truth of what I believe to be true and impactful ways to achieve in a new way. But I still have not only that concerned around like how I will speak and what people will think of what I am saying. But I also

have that overachiever who wants to blow past my limits. Say yes, when I'm exhausted and I mean no. So I think this is very kind of emblematic of the inner child that still lives within us. I was resistant to even sharing what I wanted, even though I did have the desire to help people and now I'm helping people. And I still have to watch those old patterns to help people at the cost of my own self. What was the beginnings of the holistic psychologist on Instagram? Yes. When was it the actual

beginning of it? What was it like at the beginning? Could you ever imagine it would explode into

what it has? Absolutely not. So at the beginning, I think it was around 2018, where I finally

allowed her to convince me, okay, I'll start sharing a little bit of my ideas and my journey as a human on social media. I would have had no idea how great and resounding the resonance would be.

And I had no idea that, you know, within the first year, people would be resonating,

joining from around the world, interested in hearing more and working with me in this new way. So but throughout the beginning, I mean, even learning how to speak on camera, put up content was such a big challenge for me. I don't care how many times she would say to me, I would say something over coffee.

“And she'd be like, wow, that's like really insightful. I think you should share that in a video later.”

Your followers want to see you and I say, okay, 20 minutes, half hour later, she'd pick up the phone, she'd be like, okay, say what you said to me earlier, and it was if my mind went blank, I had no idea what to say anymore, just putting a camera in front of me was near debilitating. So from the beginning, I've had to work through a lot of my own resistance to being seen, fear of criticism or being misunderstood. And I've been able to get more comfortable with

speaking publicly, understanding that once you do share something, you do open yourself up for interpretation and what keeps me going is the people from around the world who were gaining benefit or having a new awareness about why they're stuck and who are gaining the tools to

finally create new actions. What about how it's going now? How do you feel about that?

I mean, this is now become what I would describe as a purpose, a passion, you know, my why in life. There was a time again, back when I started that I was so in survival mode, still coming out of childhood trauma and exhaustion and burnout and performing forworthiness that I actually didn't think I had that. I would hear people, you know, leaders, people that were successful, talk about feeling purposeful and passionate and being driven by the inner kind of

energy to produce and I just didn't have that, but now it has become what motivates me every day. Though, of course, you know, the more reach there is, the more opinions and interpretation, challenge, but also opportunity. I'm so grateful that I have endless opportunity now to write books to do things in pursuit of sharing this passion, but I have to be aware that there's still a me with individual needs and an energy that runs out and I need to be sure that I'm grounded and

clear in my flow so that when I go contribute that I'm doing so from that inner place as opposed to because I was given the opportunity and I'm afraid to say no or because that's where I gain

worthiness. So I always am kind of trying to bridge that I still have those habits and yet I

still want to make an impact. And so it's a daily conversation of how to be in that middle ground, where I'm doing so because I want to give as opposed to gain something. How have you gotten better at your job? How have you gotten better as a psychologist, a holistic psychologist since you've started becoming a public figure? What specifically, if you're thinking, I'm actually way better at this. Maybe speaking to cameras seems like an obvious one. You're very

good, great communicator. That's partially why millions of people follow you, but when you think

“about, I've actually feel like I've gotten a lot better at this, this and this. What do you think?”

Speaking honestly, there was a time where I would always, right before I would go to answer a question, I would have the moment much like a therapist where I would kind of play, okay, how am I going to say this? How could this land? What could someone do or misinterpret from this? And right, even that short moment of pause takes me from flow, right? Would result in the beginning of me maybe watering down something or dancing around a point that I've wanted to make. And so

how I've gotten better is I've learned that there is no perfect way to say things that once you do release a piece of information, people are going to filter it through their own past experiences or simply not agree, not like what you're saying, not resonate. And so it took me doing it, which is kind of even back to where we start this conversation learning how to be in the discomfort of criticism, not being like, not being for everyone that has allowed me to be in what I would

call more of a flow state, where you ask a question, and I don't have to have that minute of a wait a minute. How will this land? I can just say it. And that has allowed me freedom. What has allowed me to create that not only is practice, but boundaries, right? Knowing who and when to take

“feedback from, because I think that's a very important part of being a human, being a leader,”

right, is hearing where our blind spots are, and we are very blind at to ourselves. So sometimes the feedback from a loved one who's close while it might be uncomfortable is helpful to hear. Other times, it's a helpful boundary, right, where you are not opening yourself up to the opinion of someone else who maybe has a different vantage point or are speaking from their own projection. So that's allowed me to create a safety in myself, a confidence in myself, which is

family, others responded, or how do they treat you? Again, since you've gone from someone who was not necessarily known worldwide to now somebody who is very well known. I mean, that's a big change, and you're saying, hey, I've grown, I'm gotten better, but I'm still the same to coal, or whatever, I don't know what you said. I don't want to put words in my mouth. But people treat you differently when you gain levels of fame. We've all kind of experienced this from different

perspectives. Yours is probably in a really big way. I'm just I'm just curious how if people treated you or how have you felt their treatment, since you've gained this level of worldwide fame.

So speaking from my kind of family of origin, they've always been, thankfully, you know, a

people that have celebrated me, you know, in the ways that I've been able to excel. There are my biggest cheerleaders, my dad and my sister who are still very much alive and a part of my family, and close, I did lose my mom about five years ago now. When I went online, so they were

“similarly celebrating to some extent my success. I think in the beginning there was a little bit of”

running a business, right, being an entrepreneur, my life completely changed. I was not just running a therapy practice nail. I'm running a 24/7 virtual membership. So I had to have new boundaries coming from a family who had had no boundaries, had an expectation. I come from an Italian family that first Sunday supper you were there and there was like a expectation that I'd be more

present than in the beginning I was able. So that was the first kind of set of boundaries, which

I do think to some extent was disappointing was hurtful, right? They took it personally, though they very much supported what I was doing. But I mean, I would be lying if I said there wasn't then the reality of what I was doing and sharing my business was built on sharing my life, right? So then there was that piece of, especially with my dad in particular, my mom a little less so because cognitively she was already starting to decline during the end of her life. But there was a

question and confusion. Like there was many conversations where my dad or my mom would come to me and

“be like, why do you have to use us as the example? Why do you have to share about our family? And so”

I would explain to them, well, I did because, hey, this is the only experience that I can speak from because it's the only one I've lived and be our family and our experience is so common. There's nothing to be shameful about it. I don't think you were ill-intented at all. I think you were two parents literally doing the best that they can. So there was those type of conversations that had happened in the beginning and now several years in, I mean, my family was just up in New York City when I

had my book event just a couple weeks ago. My dad, sat front row was crying, you know, with pride. So there's been a lot of evolution and acceptance of why I have to submit to some extent error. My family's dirty laundry. And again, I think that has just been such a gift. But they've

always been in support. But there's been a little, I think, lack of clarity of why certain things

had happened from my unavailability to the content in which I continue to share. But they now see and gain and I've seen my family evolve so much. My relationships with them. I've watched my sister, I'm so proud of her. I was actually just texting her before I signed on. The cycle she's been able to break with her own son are just continuously a motivation outside, of course, of the community that offers endless motivation for me. How did it make you feel to see your dad crying

in the front row? I mean, it just, it is my dad of my two parents very interestingly may be counter to the traditional model. My dad was always the more emotional one than my mother. My mother because she was so overwhelmed with her own childhood trauma that she was largely shut down

“to her emotion. So I remember the first time I started to see really emotion from my dad”

probably in my 20s into my 30s. And so for me seeing him cry though in understanding and in pride just that it overwhelms me and to be able to have those more real authentic emotional moments from with a family that has been largely shut down for the majority of our experience as a family again. It's just so validating and affirming for why I do this work that I feel closer to him. Right, in those moments where I feel that authentic emotion coming from him or my sister or

whoever. You write about when you were 13 straight days, but unraveling on the inside. You started self-medicating, but maybe your parents didn't see it. They couldn't understand or maybe they chose not to. I don't know. Can you go back to that moment? What was going on when you're 13 from the outside? It looks like when the cold's crushing it, but your parents didn't understand that inside you were not. Starting prior to 13, socially I was very what we would

call shy. I had very few friends, usually my friends were on the athletic team, so we related, you know, it started with like my soccer friends, my softball friends, and we would relate over playing sports together. Though I wasn't popular, I struggled even when we were out to eat a

what I wanted to drink and my mom would have to order for me. Like I very much was overwhelmed

“socially. And that translated it to I had very few friends socially. I was very shy. I knew the”

answering class. I would never raise my hand. And again, I only had a real handful of friends that

I connect it with through sports. I however had a very good friend who happened to be three years older than me that lived in my neighborhood who I connected with through sports. We would go outside and play with football together and that then translated into a more social type relationship. And because she was three years older than me, she started understandably experimenting with alcohol, smoking, pa, and then very quickly I got introduced to that. And what I discovered was when I

started drinking or smoking, I felt more comfortable. That anxiety that I lived with that translated into my shyness and inability to connect, I suddenly felt freer, more at ease, more able to relate around partying with my friend. So I did just that. And I happened to have a lot of freedom.

I didn't have curfews that were early. I was always out late to the same time. She was out

aloud when I would come home even. My parents were already in bed. So I would literally stumble through the living room on. I mean, it blows my mind to think about what I was putting into my body at that time from drinking and smoking to pills that I would buy off the street and I lived in a city. So all of this was accessible and available. And it helped me feel more comfortable. And I had the freedom to do that. And I did it hidden. And yet I would still wake up at 6 a.m. the next day,

go pitch a softball tournament, win it and seemingly be fine. And so I speak a lot. And I have a

“whole chapter in the book dedicated to what I believe addictions are. Whether or not I would call”

myself a dick to that that time. I know that I used it to cope with emptiness, disconnection,

loneliness, nervous system, dysregulation. Again, because it made me feel more comfortable, more relatable and more connected to my peers. What were your parents missing? Were they intentionally doing it? Were they just tired? Were they living in their own world? What was going on with them? When I was born, my mom was 42. My dad was 45. My sister was 15 years older than me. And I do have a brother who I'm much less close to. But he was 18 years older than me. And nearly out of the

home living his own life as an 18 year old would be. So I was largely unplanned. By that time, my mom was already struggling throughout my entire life. She had a lot of chronic illness, chronic pain. So she spent a lot of time laying resting in bed, which is why she would be in bed early when I got home late. I really leaned into. It's a different generation. You don't understand. I heard a lot from my brother and my sister. They had more strict parents. And that was the reality.

I'm like, it's the 90s. This is what people do. Where are you going to call out? Where? Just out. Right? And so they just kind of went along with it. And I think because it's not that they didn't care, they saw me succeeding, excelling. I was very secretive about what I was doing. I wasn't getting in trouble. My brother was when he was growing up. So by contrast on the surface, it seemed like I was doing well. And again, we were a family who didn't really talk about our emotions.

We weren't really connected to our emotions. So I don't think they had any indication. And I was very good at suppressing my emotions and coping in this way that I don't think they had any indication to know or to think. And if they did, maybe they didn't have the language to address what it was that they were noticing. Maybe I'll use me because it's easiest because I think others

“who listen relate to my story a bit. Maybe that's why they're listening. And let's see what happens here.”

Is that okay? Yes, please. Okay. So my parents are still my heroes. I just saw them last week in Florida when I was on spring break. And it was the best. Our home was, and I feel like it still is, even though we don't live together, a very high standards, very high expectation place. My parents both worked very hard demanding a lot of discipline and a lot of expectations that you're going to work hard, study hard, do well in sports, and be a good person, all those things. We didn't really

do much outside of sports and school. You know, some vacations here and there. But I look back on it and I'm super grateful. I still am. And there's still this way. I still think there's not judgment, but just this kind of we expect you guys on the middle or rather younger brother. We expect you guys to do good things and to have very high standards and to get after, and to work hard, and to be kind, and to put a positive dent in the world. That's our expectation. That wasn't ever said. That's just felt.

I feel like I'm super lucky and it's made me work really hard to try to keep making a positive dent in the world. And so I'm wondering as I go through your stuff, like am I missing something? Because I'm just truly grateful for all of that. And I still feel that pressure to this day to achieve and to work and to do good. So am I missing something? Because right now, like, I did I'm just full of gratitude that this pressure has helped turn not only me, but my brother's

into doing good things in the world. What do you think when I say all that? What's coming to mind is the modeling that my father provided, which was very hardworking. Before I was born, he would work well into the night long hours to support the family financially. When I was born, thankfully he had a much more of a contained job, though, worked very hard at work during the day.

Came home, caught me playing softball, trained with me, worked in the garden, was always doing

“something again with this, both direct, right, to exceed and succeed. You need to have the academics.”

My mom, when I would come home with the 96, she'd say, why not a hundred, right? And so that translated into drive and vision. So I don't think that that's a problem. For a lot of us, it's the energy that inspires action that translates into impact, where it can become a problem. And did for me a bit was where we have no limits to our working, where we exhaust ourselves and burn out, where we don't feel worthy in moments of inaction or of rest. And that is what I've been

working. And so I think the goal of all of this and what we're both speaking to is we're going to carry our childhood with us. Not all of it is going to be a quote unquote problem or something that we want to change, right? Even though this drive for me was born out of this connection and did give me a sense of worthiness. It's still a drive that I want to harness to produce the impact that I'm having and that I hope I continue to have. What I'm working now on though is choosing

choice, right? Not feeling like I have to be doing something, producing something, being interpreted

in a particular way to gain a sense of worthiness. I'm also working to not always have to be doing

something all of the time. Like I said earlier, I have a lot of opportunities available to me, but instead of just saying yes because they're available, really dropping in, saying do I have the energy to do this? Do I want to do this? Is this coming from that deeper point of inspiration as opposed to just because I struggle to say no or because I won't feel good enough or worthy unless I'm producing something. So again, I think a lot of us carry or we all carry adaptation

from childhood. It doesn't mean they're all bad. What we can begin to do though is harness the

“ability to choose as opposed to just feel driven because that's the only way that we gain worthiness,”

connection or whatever it is that that's allowing us to create. I feel you big time on the part of if I'm not producing work and doing a lot, basically all the time, I feel like a slug. I don't feel like I'm making a positive contribution to the world. I don't feel good, but I don't know if that's hurt me. Like maybe it will. But at this point, that desire to be consistent, that desire to be in the gym every morning, that desire to push myself physically and mentally. Again, I feel like it stems

from my upbringing. I still feel it from my parents who are very much a part of my life. My brothers are to my wife, same way, you know, very hard worker. I don't feel much negative there. I feel there. Others out there like this where it's led to a lot of good things and we haven't seen much

“or any of the downsides yet. I hope never, but I could be wrong. That's why I wanted to talk to you.”

I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, and perhaps it won't ever, right? But I think that there's something to be said and powerful in flexibility, right, in the moments where for whatever reason. Physical, you run out of energy. You get sick. You can't go to the gym and do what you want. For one day, for an extended period of time, or life happens. Something interferes with our ability

to produce. Those are always, I think, the markers of when we're in a healthy relationship.

So when I'm forced to stop, just to apply to this conversation or shift out of my habit, whatever the habit is, right, this one is producing doing. When I'm forced to stop or when I need to choose to stop, because I'm sick physically or emotionally or something else needs my attention in this time or this moment or this season, can I be flexible enough to do that

that I'm driving myself in that action, even when I ought to be not pausing for whatever reason.

And I think when we can become rigid, right, when it doesn't matter what's happening around us,

“we just have to do these things, because that's the only way we feel good, right, then I think”

there's something to be said about the helpfulness of developing flexibility or that ability to choose to say, okay, contextually speaking now for whatever reason, because I'm sick, because I'm exhausted, because I'm emotionally overwhelmed, because someone else needs me to do something else in this moment. Can I continue with my day or my week or my season and still feel okay without myself knowing that I can return to the habits that I know feel better, but can I tolerate

the discomfort when I'm not acting in that habitual way? Okay, I want to talk about agency and ownership.

So, there are people in my life, and I'm sure people in yours and everybody's lives, where I want to be careful of how I say this. They start going to therapy because of whatever reason doesn't matter, and the things you start hearing them say are kind of blaming other people in their life. A lot of times it's the parents, and to me, it feels like it could be wrong here, it feels like losing some agency and ownership over their life and blaming somebody else for them

making really, really poor choices in some cases, and continuing to make poor choices over an extended period of time, and then saying, well, it's because of my parents or it's because of these other people, and to me, I really struggle with that. I really struggle with those types of people who who do that. They make poor choices that harm others, and then blame other people. They don't take ownership. They're losing your agency. I don't know if I said that right, but when I, you hear that,

“what do you think? I think it's important to hold space for both, okay? Right,”

perhaps the reality that other people have contributed, whether it's in childhood or nail, to our discomfort, our suffering, our habits, our pain, because that's part of the journey is to acknowledge our self, the impact that others have on us, especially if it's early childhood, our parents impacting us by not meeting our needs to the best of their ability or well-intention

even because they didn't have the tools. That's how I always understand that. But if we don't do that,

then a lot of us just continue to suppress the way we feel about what happened, the unmet needs, and all of these habits we continue to repeat based on those unmet needs. So we are doing ourselves a disservice, though we can be very savvy at doing it because it feels better. We don't the feel, the grief, the pain, the anger, which are very natural feelings that arise when we discover or live into the reality that hey, despite the best of intentions, our family or loved ones

or even our partners aren't showing up in the way that we would like them or need them to. However, I think to develop maturity, we have to expand and be able and also to not just then stay stuck in that feeling and doing our self a disservice by just being like, Oh, they didn't, they didn't mean it, they hurt us and maybe stuck in the anger and the resentment, we have to make space for both. How we feel about what happens, so we're giving our feeling some space,

but also like you're wisely describing, step into then the path of agency. And I think sometimes we confuse even, I just want to kind of go perhaps on a little bit of a tangent around, sometimes we confuse what a boundary is. So we think that when we come to the awareness as someone's hurt us, they've caused our problems, that the best solution is to demand that they're different to give them a consequence and ultimate to be different. That though is still giving away our agency

or our control, it's saying that I will only feel a certain way unless you show up the way I need you to. That's very limiting. What a boundary really is is saying, right, you've hurt me, this has happened. I feel this way about it. You are maybe causing dysfunction or trauma of using my life right now and maybe I do see the role that your actions or inactions are contributing to how I feel yet in an empowered space and a true boundary is saying. And so I'm

going to take responsibility that I'm allowing it. It's still happening. I'm going to show up differently

“now to limit the impact of what you're doing, right? So that that's how we then move forward,”

right? We say, yes, the world has caused me harm. My parents maybe didn't meet my need and I feel this kind of way and maybe as a result now, I'm finding myself repeating some dysfunctional habits and patterns in my life, which I have found myself until recently doing that. But if I just blame you for abusing me neglecting me hurting me, then how am I moving forward to create safety and

and by saying, hey, I need to limit. I need to remove myself and that's how I then take the control back even if and when is some of us will wake up and be like, wow, there's a lot of dysfunction. You're actually hurting me and that's not okay anymore, but it's actually not you. It's me for not putting a stop to it sooner, for not removing myself before I've gone to this point.

“What do you think of Abigail Shriar's stuff? Her book, I think it's called Bad Therapy. I haven't”

talked to her. I don't think I'm familiar with it. What I've gathered from basically seeing clips

from podcast she's been on is the act of going to therapy and kind of always voicing this trauma

or traumatic events is actually causing more trauma. It's causing you to feel really bad. And so in a way, it's making you worse. I'm probably but that is that is the just of some of it. I think that giving words to what happened, having a safe place where we feel comfortable enough to share our story, past present future, whatever it is and have that in a safe relationship. I think a ton of research and terror, what therapy is the best right to do to actually create change. It's

actually not landed on a type of therapy at all. It's landed on the relationship, the safety, the space to give words to our story. Because for a lot of us, we've never had that. We haven't

“had safety. We didn't feel comfortable enough to share and the therapy and the talking aspect of it.”

Right. We're giving words, a liveness. We have someone hearing receiving, may hopefully not judging what it is that we're sharing it for a lot of us that can be a healing component. Though when we really understand where trauma lives, it doesn't live in logic and understanding while that's a part of our journey, it lives in our body. It lives in the habits and reactions that we've been kind of speaking to throughout. And so for some of us, right, and there

is now research on this that by just talking about things that hurt us, any time we write, we think a thought, we inspire an emotion. The more you think, upsetting thoughts, anxiety-provoking thoughts, often, of course, they're driven by anxiety in our body. The more we're going to stay stuck in that emotion. It's why the mind is so powerful that we can think something and then we feel as if we're living it in that moment. So of course, right, if we're going, we get after

week or however frequency it is and we're talking about all the things that are hurting us, then we are continuing to keep that alive in our body. And if we're doing that, because for a lot of us that's a piece of our journey is having that space once a week or however, if you can afford it and have the access to professionals to help in a supportive way, we might do that. But this is what kind of brought me into this holistic model. Then the question is, well, what's happening on all of

those hours outside of here? Right, do I have the tools to regulate, to create a new emotional response

“in real time? And so I think that's where therapy or any sort of coach or self-help enhancement”

journey becomes most impactful. As when we bridge that gap, when we understand that understanding insight, talking about things is part of it. So feeling differently, producing a new response, regulation where there was once dysregulation, that's where change actually happens. And those are the moments that we carry with us outside of those more contained therapy that context. You mentioned the holistic psychologist element right now. Very curious about that. This is a world that's foreign to me.

Have never even dabbled in it. Have never had conversations with anybody you're the first

publicly privately. So I feel way out of school. It was good to prepare for this though, to because I've learned quite a bit, but I still have miles and miles more. What's the holistic psychologist? It honors the gap between the mind and the body. For a very long time psychology, traditionally, his focus solely on the mind. So much so that most traditional clinical psychology programs, one of which I went to, though, mind with a little bit more expanded than the CBT

model, right? This idea that our brain is so powerful, which it is, to some extent, that if we think differently, the model is built on we think different thoughts. We produce different feelings and then ultimately different actions. And again, while I learned that model, I also learned a relational model. I dabbled a bit in psychoanalysis, but again, all very mind based modalities. I started my practice. I thought I was being very integrated by bridging all of these, by teaching a little bit of

mindfulness here and there because I really want to tell people change, yet I wasn't yet talking about

the body because it was never taught to me in school. I did not have any awareness of this new

research that was coming to the field about the nervous system and how much our body is playing

shared with you where I was like, I'm not really helping people and I don't really feel great

myself. What's going on here and being a lifelong learner as my dad always teases me to be. I went

online. I was like, let me start to research and read and explore what I'm missing and I was missing the body. So holistic psychology is kind of what I've adapted is the model of I think the way we need to shift the field into, which doesn't just overemphasize the mind. It understands the body our nervous system. Again, our earliest environments and how that actually neurobiologically created patterns wired into us all of which are changeable science now shows that it blows my mind

that there was a time in the field where we thought once our brain was developed that that was it that there was no changing. We now know that we maintain the ability to change or neuroplasticity

“throughout our lives. So that's what holistic psychology is means to me it's bridging that gap”

understanding the body's role. Understanding, of course, the hardware that we're currently

operating with but giving us new options, new choices so that we can create new habits and quite literally transformation from the body up. Okay. So I think of like going to close to Rika with you and you are like my yoga instructor. Is this way out of school or is that potentially like how this would work where we're having conversations but we're also stretching and doing put no as a body. I love that while I do love Costa Rika and I would love to get my way back there

I actually I speak more toward daily things that we could do. I am not immediately someone who has an active kind of consistent practice of anything. I don't have the thing I do with the gym every day. I don't have the yoga practice that I rely on. My model is more our body is the holder of the wisdom. So it's a model that's based in awareness where I understand that I spent

“and I still at times spend not much time in my body at all. I think my way I analyze my way”

through life. I worry about what other people want and need instead of dropping in and saying, what do I need? The way I used to work when I did individual work. Now I work in a community setting and in my membership self-healer circle. The way we talk about change is through daily practices of dropping into our body. Noticing how my muscles feel, how my breathing, how is my heart? All of these are markers of a body that is either relaxed or stressed. The more a body becomes stressed,

the more our nervous system is likely to send us into those old habits, patterns, overreactions, underreactions, identities that we've relied on. And so I speak more of more general lifestyle habits. Teaching people that you feel well and perform well, we need to observe what we're doing. What are our habits? Do we sleep well at night? Do we go to bed early enough that when we wake up? We're feeling rested. What are we putting in our body? We now have a lot of research into the

benefit of nutrition and also the stress that certain foods, chemical, sugar, produce in our body. And again, a body that is stressed and overwhelmed and can't come back into calm is a body that's likely to have racing thoughts, emotional issues, dysfunctional patterns or identities that don't serve us. So absolutely, you're not going to hear me talking about or even leading classes of that sort. I will most likely be sharing little tidbit back pocket pieces of practices that you

can use in real time because that's where habits happen in real time, something that we can maintain over time so that we can create new patterns. So we don't have to go away and do some retreat. This is daily practical, useful things. So you've said the phrase drop into my body a few times.

What does it mean to drop into my body? So it begins with first just even exploring out,

“people are listening, right? Where is your attention? Do you even feel your physical self?”

Whether you're on a walk, great. I mean as simple as this sounds, are you feeling your muscles, feeling your heels, impact the earth, or kind of where you're sitting, or you feeling embodied, or are you so lost and thought and ideas distracted that that could be the first choice you made without judging and being like, oh, I'm not connected to my body at all. What body? I'm just the Bible head taking a moment to refocus your attention. Again, those three points are great

anchors because they give us information as to how stressed our body is. If you drop in right now and like, oh my God, I'm a ball of tension. My jaw is clenched and my fist or clenched and my shoulders are up to my ears. Chances are your body is in a state of stress right now. Similarly, if you notice, I'm holding my breath, where I'm breathing so short and quick from my chest, those are markers that your body is under stress. That then impacts your heart rate, right? If feeling elevated,

beating out of your chest, all of that is giving you information that your body is under stress right now.

slow and deepen our breath, right? A long gating or exhale, just a little longer than our inhale.

“Right? If our movements are really quick, we can slow them down. If we're holding tension,”

we could practice releasing it. And now what we're giving us access to is we're regulating our body so that we can begin to show up differently in those moments. But for a lot of us, the journey begins by just noticing, whoa, I don't spend much time in my body, right? I don't know how I feel, I don't know when I'm hungry, I don't know when I'm full, I don't know when my body wants to eat. These are great moments in time where you can drop in, which is simply means shift focus,

and ask your body, see how it feels, see what your hungry force, see when you're full and complete it with eating, right? All of these are a big foundation then to having a better relationship with your body, because again, your body is directing so many of those reactive choices that you're making, that until you shift your body into that state of calmness, it's going to be really hard for you to maintain the choices that you're making. It's like a form of meditation.

“Yes, I appreciate you bringing this up because I do think meditation is often, I think a”

misunderstood concept where we think right meditation is sitting in silence cross leg and the goal is to make our mind as quiet as possible. While that's a form of more structured practice, I translate meditation's just simply be awareness, right? Life can be a meditative experience, and also it's important to release the expectation that our mind is quiet. Thoughts are very helpful, they're where we create things, we have insight, we have ideas, it's impossible to imagine

the goal is to completely have a blank quiet mind. Usually if our mind is blank and quiet, we're probably in a state of shutdown, which I spend a lot of time in myself. So the goal is to develop awareness, which is kind of a living practice of meditation, where we can choose what

thoughts we're holding onto because our mind is powerful. The more we're thinking of thought,

the more we're continuing a feeling in our body. But we can also choose the moments where our thoughts aren't helpful, where our body is giving us more information, and then we could tend to that information. How good are you at dropping into your body? I'm practicing still, I'm still a work in progress because my protective habit for so long has been to dissociate or to disconnect. I'm not surprising, right, that I pursued the field of clinical psychology, where I can live in my mind,

I can understand things from a distant vantage point. I still call it my spaceship that I go off on to, and I go to my spaceship, and this is because I've observed my patterns when what I'm feeling in my body is too uncomfortable. I don't want to be in there, right? The quickest path out is to distract myself with someone else, with the next achievement. So for me, I'm still working on tending to my daily habits that my body feels a safer place, but also knowing that it's

a choice for me to have those moments where I'm reconnecting. I'm still, once I'm in my body, I'm still learning how to be present with uncomfortable feelings. I struggle often to give language to what I'm feeling, especially when I'm in the moment of a feeling. It sometimes takes me time to gain clarity on what is just agitated overwhelm in one moment. It might be a couple minutes, hours, even days, but oh, wow, I'm feeling hurt by what it is that happened, but I can't still

yet do that in the moment because I'm still in the state of flooding, where it's too much, and I don't have the capacity to hold what I'm feeling and to, in real time, share it with someone else. So instead, I react and I then shamefully come back and say, hey, I'm sorry about that reaction. I was really stressed and this is what I really meant in that moment, but I'll admit it happens after the fact, once I'm calm because, again, my practice is to just become overwhelmed and

either disconnect or react from a feeling that I don't yet have clarity on. How is this work and you being a lifelong learner? As your dad said,

this is a selfish question because I really am striving to try to always be a better husband,

“better dad, a better friend. And I think this podcast has helped quite a bit, you know,”

and speaking with someone like you, oh, this is a great opportunity for me. So how is it made you a better life partner? How is it made you a better in your most loving relationships, the people who are most important to you? It's helping me make them more real, right, more authentic, more grounded in vulnerability, messiness, emotion as opposed to, right, kind of curated visions, who I think I need to be for you and just allowing someone to, while I'm still practicing

doing so, see me as I am, share a feeling. It's giving me the opportunity to allow in support.

with all my feelings alone, right, throughout the hall through drugs and all the things we talk about

perfection doing, I'm still learning to an invulnerable moment, go to someone who feels safe to me and say, hey, I'm, I'm struggling. This is what's going on. This is what I'm feeling. Of course, once I've clarity into, just let myself be seen and connected with. So even going back to my family and the evolution as we're all working to be more honest with ourselves and to share that with other people themselves and my romantic relationship with my partner who's still with

me on this journey, right, allowing her to see what's really happening and not just this protected okay version, who's just trudging on. And so it's allowed more intimacy and realness in my life.

“And I think that then translates to the work I do, where I'm then more comfortable with sharing,”

you know, vulnerably, honestly with other people in a way that the reason why I'm often sharing

is to give you all of my theories of why and where things come from. Of course, I'm, I know me, the most to share that. But I share it also because I think a lot of us have a fear that we're alone that I shouldn't tell anyone this because they're going to think I'm crazy. You're not so no one else is feeling or struggling with this in this way. And I think a lot of us are walking around, even perhaps with successful lives and families around us yet we have that little part that

doesn't want to share because we're afraid of judgment because we believe we're the only ones dealing with this. So when I share and I'm able to then gift that to other people just as my beautiful community is often sharing with me and helping me heal, we feel a little less alone

“in what we're struggling with. Yeah. I mean, I think about that. Was it the Harvard study that”

launched a two-note one that's gone for 90 years? I mean, when they're basically studying what

leads to a happy life. There's a lot of things that go into it. But at the end of the day, it's love full stop, right? Loving relationships. It's other people. The ones who live the happiest, longest, most fruitful, enjoyable lives were the ones are the ones who are surrounded by lovely people, right? That they love and that love them. It's such an over-simplification, but maybe that's the answer that I don't know. It easier said than done. But to me, it's like,

what am I optimizing for? Let's try to optimize for loving relationships where I love others and they love me and we support each other and we're there for each other. That seems to be a big key in all of this. I couldn't agree more, and I think to be clear what we're hoping to be loved around is not just the perfect parts of ourself, right? What a gift it is when we can show someone all of ourself, our messiness, the things that we hit and kept secret and still be loved, right? So for

me that overachiever is I show more parts of me and people don't abandon me, don't reject me. I don't reflect back my unworthiness, but they stay. I'm getting chills, right? How healing

“that is, and I think that's what love is. Not just being loved when we're doing something for”

someone else, so we're showing up is this perfect version where they're validating what they like, but when they stay, regardless, that's I think the love that most of us are striving for and what I hope to contribute by continuing to love myself enough to share even the messy, not as curated parts with other people. Cool, 11 years. It's 680 some of these things. You know, one of the commonalities among every single person, we are all a bunch of messy humans trying to figure it

out as we go. Isn't that why? And so funny too, because starting a business, this was one of the funniest things is there was a time very early on and still where my team even practically would come to myself and Lali who's built the business right on the side of me from the beginning and ask us, well, how do you do? It's like, I don't know, I'm trying to figure it out too. We're figuring this out together, so whether it's in business or personal life, I do think we project

on other people, this idea that they have the answers of what to do next, of how to solve this business problem, of how to be a perfect human, and I will tell you what the degrees behind me, I'm still figuring it out. Well, to me, it's one of the, it's one of the most inspiring things about this, because I'm meeting my heroes, these people are watch online and read their books, all this stuff. And they're brilliant, don't give me your home, but they're also still messy humans

trying to figure out as they go. Like all of them, whether I meet them in person, zoom like this, and to me what that says is, hey, it's possible. It's possible for the literally any of us to go build great loving relationships and to leave a positive debt in the world to help other people, to make a difference, and feel like fulfillment in that way, because to me, when I see that something I've done has helped somebody else. In whatever way, that's one of the greatest joys,

is so cool. Let's fast forward to one year from today, okay? This is called this champagne

“question. It doesn't matter if whatever you choose to drink, it could be sparkling cider, okay?”

Your popping bottles with the people you love just everywhere, your spraying it all over the place. What are we celebrating? What are you celebrating? So a year from now, what I'm celebrating is presents, you know, being this. Whatever is happening or not happening in my life, as cliche as it sounds, I'm celebrating the celebration of that moment. Being alive, feeling the gratitude, the joy, the celebration of not focusing necessarily on what was even produced to

give me in the opportunity to decide to pop bottles or celebrate however, but just being in life

in that moment. I think that is, for me, what I continue to strive to, is to, yes, all of the

stuff, the production, the things to celebrate are great. Of course, I too, like you, once you continue to leave a positive debt in this world, but my greatest celebration is each and every moment that I can be present to the life around me wherever I'm celebrating the taste of this champagne, the humans that are surrounding me in that moment. Even if it's not exactly the way I wanted to taste there be, or the person is in there, right, even allowing the disappointment of a celebration that

“doesn't exactly need our needs, the weather could be better and being with all of it. I think”

that is what I'm celebrating life. Yeah, I love it. Being deeply, fully, like, in the moment. Are you going to feel it when you're with others? I feel like this, when they have this sense that they are so kind of living in that moment. And again, that's inspiring to me to be more like that. And to try to be in more of those moments myself with the people, like my fully, fully present. That's awesome. The book is called Repairing the Inner Child to call

I so appreciate your work and willingness to put this stuff out there because you're certainly going to be judged. And I'm sure you get people who come at you, but I admire that you do this work and that you're trying to help people and that you're helping millions and millions literally every single day. It's so cool. It is so cool to see. So thank you for being here. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Absolutely. Thank you. I'm Ryan for having me. I'm

honored. Thank you all for listening. I'm truly so inspired by communities like this. And I too will look forward to future evolution, collaboration, presence, and just the joy of life. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are send me a note, Ryan at learningleadard.com. Let me know what you learned from this

great conversation with Dr. Nicole Lupera, the holistic psychologist. A few takeaways from my notes.

Drop into your body. I got to admit when I first heard this, I thought, is this a little woo woo,

but then the more I researched it and actually did it. It's real. Notice your breathing. Notice tension and your shoulders, your chest. That awareness, even if it's just for a few seconds. That's the beginning of the practice that Nicole described dropping into your body. It's all about presence, which leads to her champagne moment. Being present is the goal. Not the next milestone, not the next book or the next big achievement. Nicole said that she would celebrate a year from now,

simply by being present and grateful for the moment itself. That is the whole thing. And then your who is everything. The people closest to you are literally influencing your nervous system. And you are influencing theirs who you spend time with is everything that Harvard study on human

“happiness. 90 years of looking at people. What do they find? A happy life is all about love, full stop.”

It's all about the relationships you build and loving others. Once again, I want to say thank you. So much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leadership with Dr. Nicole LaPara. I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you rate it. Hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review

by doing all of that you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love in a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can we?