Mark Divine [00:00:29]:
I appreciate that. Have you always had grace, or has it been a. Have there been times in your life where you lacked it?

Nicole LePera [00:00:37]:
I think I’ve actually had grace. And also in connection with grace, compassion. To a fault at times, sometimes to my own disservice. Giving people grace, compassion, understanding. Even in instances where their behaviors, you know, were causing me to betray myself or a boundary was necessary. So, yes, I would say other end of the spectrum. Coincidence.

Mark Divine [00:00:59]:
In a sense, yes. Yeah. Well, welcome to the club. I’m extremely codependent myself. It’s kind of embarrassing to say because I’m like a hardcore badass Navy seal, and yet I’m a super codependent.

Nicole LePera [00:01:14]:
I think a lot of us have those patterns and function in a particular way or are perceived to function in a particular way in our closest relationships. I see.

Mark Divine [00:01:25]:
Yeah.

Nicole LePera [00:01:26]:
Often.

Mark Divine [00:01:26]:
I’m curious. I know you’re probably not an expert in codependence, but you are an expert in emotional development. So, like, in general, something like codependence is going to come from, or it’s going to be nurtured in a dysfunctional family environment, one with, let’s say, a lot of alcoholism or really, really poor boundaries, if any boundaries whatsoever. Narcissism, borderline personality, you know, growing up with a parent or parents or a surrogate who has those. But I’m curious, from your perspective, like, how. Like, given that, how does that translate to suddenly Mark being a codependent or Nicole being a codependent?

Nicole LePera [00:02:11]:
Nicole, actually, interestingly enough, I would have never had this language or applied this label to myself, though somewhere in my 30s, I very much saw this, that codependent pattern within my own relationships. And as I often do, I map these adaptations, as I call them, the way we show up in the world and, of course, in our relationships, back to our earliest environments. And in terms of the safety and security that all of us need, our body needs to feel safe and secure in our relationships. We are in a state of dependency in our Infancy, meaning we can’t physiologically maintain our own survival. Someone needs to care for us. And if and when we don’t have, whether it’s our physical needs met, if we’re neglected, if we’re abused, if we have those kind of overstepping of boundaries, and it isn’t even just in the physical world, in the emotional world, then out of a protective space, what happens is kind of the way I label codependency. It’s. It’s a kind of a hypervigilance that happens in our body where we become so attuned to the world around us and in this case the other people around us.

Nicole LePera [00:03:22]:
We learn their shifts in mood, we learn their behavioral habits, sometimes dysfunctional ones. Addiction as you brought up. And the idea is that if in childhood we didn’t have the safety and the security that we needed, sometimes that was the most adaptive thing to do. To become so attuned to the shifts and changes that might create an unsafe scenario. And we begin to then anticipate and sometimes even act in service of. That’s often what codependency is, to remove the threat before it even happens. But I’m describing this, of course, this is all happening, as I said in my case included, completely outside of our awareness. We don’t even notice we’re doing it.

Mark Divine [00:04:05]:
Yeah.

Nicole LePera [00:04:06]:
And that’s what I think makes it really difficult is we have all of this experience in that. Those pre verbal years, in my opinion, beginning in utero. And then of course all until the years where we acquire language, where we acquire the emotional maturity, developmental maturity, to zoom out and understand all of the nuanced factors that impact people’s choices. And when we don’t have that, that is often kind of why many of us are struggling in the way that we are. Those habits created when we couldn’t speak, when we couldn’t understand, still become the habits that we rely on outside of our conscious awareness.

Mark Divine [00:04:39]:
Yes. They become a trauma induced strategy which made sense at the time, sort of. Actually you can’t really say it made sense. You could say it worked because there was no sense making in that preverbal world what I’m curious about. Like, so where codependency really tripped me up and I’m working like to make sure this doesn’t happen again is I guess it was this sense that maybe I wasn’t good enough or I wasn’t smart enough, or I wasn’t competent enough and I needed someone else to help me solve my problem in business. Right. And so for some reason Narcissists can smell that line of thinking, like from 50 miles and they come running and they’re like, I am your savior, right? I am here to, you know, to basically, you know, fill that gap. And they tend to put me on a pedestal and say great things about me.

Mark Divine [00:05:39]:
Don’t worry about me. I got, you know, I’m taking care of everything here. And then they steal my business. It’s happened. I can’t even count more than I can count in this hand. And it’s painful, right? So how does this. I guess I maybe answered the question, right? It’s that feeling that. That sense of not being enough because of the.

Mark Divine [00:06:02]:
Your parents weren’t, you know, able to reflect that to you as a child, right?

Nicole LePera [00:06:08]:
I mean, what we’re talking about, right? The sense of self, right? How we even define and feel about ourself is so much more impacted by how others, directly and indirectly with things they said about us, how they made us feel, whether or not they were even present or not in those critical moments where we needed them to be. And then our mind ever trying to make sense of what’s happening around us and how we fit in, often we will land on some version of. Like you’re describing, right? I’m unworthy. I’m unlovable. It’s an empowered place in childhood to be to believe that we are playing a role even in the very logical reality that we’re not. Right? Our parents are repeating the same habits and patterns more often than not that they learned in their own early experiences. But we continue, right, to make sense of them. And it becomes empowering to say and understand the world, oh, okay, if there is something wrong with me, right? Without the maturity, like I said, zoom out and understand ancestral patterns and our own parents, you know, issues in terms of creating their own safety, then we have control to some extent or so we think.

Nicole LePera [00:07:16]:
None of this is logical. By adapting ourselves to those circumstances, if we believe we’re too much, too emotional, not tough enough, if we become more of what we imagine our parent wants from us, right? Then owning that idea that I’m broken at least gives us this idea of false control in childhood. But what then happens is we continue to repeat those patterns, believing that our relationships depend on it, our sense of self and confidence and worthiness depend on it. And that’s why no matter how who we pick in relationship, what we do, how much achievement or success we create in our life, I think that is why there is always at least that mismatch that I felt, because we do not ever feel that true sense of worthiness for just being who we are.

Mark Divine [00:08:08]:
Totally. What’s going through my mind as you were talking about that is because of that hole, that unfilled sense of worthiness, you’re looking as an adult now, you’re looking outside for external validation. And so you tend to find this is going to be like a bonk upside the head for a lot of listeners. But a lot of peak performers, if not all the peak performers that I work with kind of fit this mold where they’re trading performance for connection. And the root connection is the connection with themselves because there’s some sense of just being okayness, which is not there. So they’re always grasping for the next thing, next point on the board, the next reward, the next certificate, the next sales milestone, the next wealth milestone. And there’s no there there, of course, right. You know, for the studies and people who are on their deathbed, right.

Mark Divine [00:09:04]:
None of them say, I wish I had more money and I wish I had built that next business and I wish I had, you know, A, B and C in my garage. Tell us about your journey, Nicole. Like, I think it’s fascinating the work you’re doing and you’ve inspired so many people to do the work. And I love that because that’s endemic. Like you don’t have transformation without doing the work. Nobody can do it for you, right? So how did you kind of stumble upon or fall into or claw your way up to this place?

Nicole LePera [00:09:37]:
I mean, even just our conversation right now is so beautifully leading into. Because I was that person who was seeking endless achievements for me. It began in childhood through athletics and academics, a focus, you know, put on me, you know, an emphasis, I should say, by my very well intentioned parents who believed, right, that succeeding in that way academically and athletically would give me the financial security later in life. So I pushed myself to excel again, trying to fill and feel that validation inside. And I did so up until, you know, I received the highest degree in my field. I opened up the private practice. I was now living in my hometown of Philadelphia, if you will, close to my family. And what I started to feel is really unfulfilled, right? And here I am, right, carrying all of these degrees, being successful in this very traditional sense of the world, right, with people looking at me and imagining that I must have it all together.

Nicole LePera [00:10:39]:
I must feel really fulfilled and really great with this life I created. And the reality was I continue to feel emptier and emptier as I continued to, at the same Time deplete and exhaust myself trying to find the next thing to achieve. And it wasn’t for me, even in the sense of achievements like degrees and accolades, it was even trying to achieve within my relationships. And what that looked like for me was trying to be the perfect, the perfect partner, not the person who brings issues to the table. And so my shift into now, the way I understand, really, psychology and humanity and myself came from that really low space when seemingly I was supposed to feel all of these different ways and I didn’t. And what I came to see.

Mark Divine [00:11:29]:
Breakdown, Nicole, or did you just kind of like, what need to get yourself out of this kind of morass?

Nicole LePera [00:11:35]:
It led to a lot of fantasizing about all of the different ways I might get myself out of it, which usually included vanishing in the dark of night to leave the country. I mean, like extreme, right? Like now I’m not. I don’t even care about this practice, disappear, you know, go down a different path or career entirely. Right. I just spent decades trying to get a PhD, and now I’m going to go be a barista. Right. I was thinking all of these, maybe if I overhaul my life, right? In a different country, in a different set of friends, doing different work, then maybe I’ll feel different. So it was a lot more kind of like in my mind, where I was entertaining, but in my reality, I was feeling more and more withdrawn, more and more numb, more and more shut down as I continued to show up in the only way that I thought or I learned would give me value.

Nicole LePera [00:12:28]:
So diving into the rabbit hole of learning, which is the first thing I did, I wanted to understand why I was struggling, why I now had logged several years into a successful private practice where I had the opportunity.

Mark Divine [00:12:42]:
Psychologist.

Nicole LePera [00:12:43]:
I was a practicing clinician at this time.

Mark Divine [00:12:45]:
So I think that’s fascinating, right, because like most people who get to where you got find that they’ve chosen the wrong path, but you didn’t choose the wrong path. You were just not able to fully embody it.

Nicole LePera [00:12:58]:
Right, right, right.

Mark Divine [00:12:59]:
That’s fascinating.

Nicole LePera [00:13:00]:
And I wasn’t. And part of the, I think, puzzle for me was not only was it the way I was understanding myself was incomplete. The way I was working with my clients was incomplete. Meaning I was leaving the whole body, the whole nervous system, all of these lifestyle changes that I now profess near daily online, that wasn’t even a part of my dialogue, that wasn’t even a part of my awareness, that that was even an important part of a conversation for someone like me, Like a Clinical psychologist.

Mark Divine [00:13:30]:
Well, they don’t teach that.

Nicole LePera [00:13:31]:
They don’t. And that’s the reality. And in the programs. I’m hoping that things have shifted and changed though. At the time where I went to school a couple decades ago now, there was no conversation of nutrition, nervous system, really the physical body outside of just this idea that the nervous system is what connects our brain to our body. But there was no emphasis in terms of, well, what’s the body doing and how important are those messages that are going from our body to our brain. There was an overemphasis on the very powerful prefrontal brain, right. This idea, much of which of cognitive behavioral therapy is built on, which is change the way you think.

Nicole LePera [00:14:13]:
And we’ve all had this, I think, experience, right? If we think a more positive thought, we feel a little more positively than a negative one, and we might do something a little bit more positively, but without again, all of the information. And for many of us who have tried to think different thoughts, yet we can’t seem to feel differently or to do differently. The answer is usually in all of this habit that is created in our body and again, the very habitual way our body tends to process, perceive, and I would say respond, but really it’s react to the environment around us down into again, tying this all together into our core sense of who we think we are. So much of that is wired into how we’re showing up or how we’ve had to adapt in terms of showing up that without a awareness of and conversation about and then an integration of, oh well, what are these messages and can I be intentional through lifestyle choices to then shift the sensations or the signals that are going from my body to my brain. That’s when we really begin to shift and feel the different impact, right?

Mark Divine [00:15:18]:
Totally. Yeah. I mean, what you’re alluding to is that, I mean, our development is multidimensional, right? There’s cognitive aspect, there’s emotional aspects, there’s physical, physiological, and there’s all the hidden shadow aspects. Most of them trauma informed. And so in order to heal or to transform, insert word to get better, right. To form at your peak even, it requires a multidimensional kind of practice or approach, which is what you do with the work. It’s what I do with unbeatable mind. It’s like an integration program.

Mark Divine [00:15:55]:
There’s physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and spiritual kind of things that get bring it all together. Right. You know, it’s kind of like therapy, right? Just talk therapy is, is valuable. But if that’s your Only go to. You’re in for a long road of disappointment, in my opinion, because I’ve been down that road. Because you just keep on going back down memory lane and raking yourself over the coals of your past hurts. And without releasing that or understanding it truly at a deep, deep kind of physiological level. And like you mentioned, cognitive behavioral theory is very valid as a tool, right? These should be tools you pull out of your arrows, you put out of your.

Mark Divine [00:16:33]:
Pull out of your quiver. So I’m curious, do you have a meta framework for when you work with someone, or is it really personalizable? It might be both. Personalized based upon kind of like, oh, my gosh, this person has an extreme imbalance in their physical structure, like weight or health. So we got to get that regulated before we go deeper, I guess. There’s a question in there. What’s your model?

Nicole LePera [00:16:58]:
No, absolutely just a short version of the question. Well, I think what’s so fascinating, just going back to this idea too, that you said, get better. So even the possibility of getting better, for me, coming from a clinical system that didn’t identify all of these other factors like you and I are now that contribute to underlying imbalances, which I’ll share the framework very generally speaking, in a second. But there wasn’t even a real conversation about possibility to get better because for so long, right, we had this idea that certain things were just genetically determined, that there was no intervening, right? It was inevitable. So I’ll use myself for an example. My whole family, right? There’s anxiety kind of running through the lineages, through my. Through the ancestors, right? Lo and behold, as long as I can remember, right, I too, have anxiety. And the conversation that predominated the field for a long time was, oh, well, I must just have the chip, right? I have the deficit and the neurotransmitter, so I will always have anxiety.

Nicole LePera [00:18:01]:
So for me, I believe that to be true until again, I started to kind of see all of the circles of impact that shape the individual, which include right environment, lifestyle, the nervous systems that are parenting us, and their availability to give us the safety and support that we needed in those moments. And now we can understand why so many of us do see these similarities in our ancestors. But what shifted, and I think in the most empowered direction is, well, now there might be a possibility that what caused the similarity wasn’t this genetic, unchangeable aspect of our being. It was all of these other things that we can change. So the roadmap then looks like. And in this last book I, I kind of adapted and modified a very simplistic. I like to simplify all these concepts. I talk about what I call an authentic needs pyramid, because it doesn’t matter kind of who you are, what you look like.

Nicole LePera [00:18:56]:
In my opinion, we all share the same kind of tiered basic needs. And the bottom are our physical needs to physically survive. We all need, right, oxygen, we all need nutrients so that our cells can function. We all need moments of movement to discharge the energy in our body. And we also need moments of rest and restoration so that all of our cells and our debris can clear out. We can process our food and our brain. We all need those things up a level. We need to feel emotionally safe and support it.

Nicole LePera [00:19:29]:
We feel comfort when we are able to express our emotions and join together with other people, especially in moments of stress and upset. And then at the top. And this is why so few of us can feel when those needs on the base level are met emotionally, we’re feeling more safe and secure than not. Now we’re able to, I believe all of us have a creative aspect of our being, an imagination, right? This is where fulfillment, like we talked about, comes, when we’re able to kind of be ourself, express ourself, and kind of enter into that more expansive state that is emblematic of the human brain. So when I work now in a community, I have self healer circle, which is my international community, it follows that same format. It’s the same idea, like, let us become aware of what habits we’re repeating in terms of our physical care. And so using again, myself as an example, what I saw reflected in terms of what I learned, how I was cared for by my caregivers in childhood was I didn’t really tend to my. Or at least I did not prioritize my physical body at all.

Nicole LePera [00:20:40]:
And when I was eating, I was often eating foods that were stressing my body out, causing inflammation in my body. When I was sleeping, which I did very little of, I wasn’t actually feeling rested when I woke up in the morning. And the reality of it is I wasn’t really consistently moving and stretching my body, right? So these kind of assessment points, if we just look in those areas in terms of how am I caring for my physical being emotionally? Is there any space in my world for my emotions? Do I feel connected to how I feel? Do I feel safe and in control of sharing how I feel with other people? Right? And then we can start to individualize our own kind of plan of action based in terms of what current Habits that we want to create new, more aligned ones.

Mark Divine [00:21:30]:
Right. I love that. And it’s important to note that like your pyramid, which is like a simplified Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I love it. For emotional work that is a. There’s a bi directionality. Right. So meaning, like the more work you do at that kind of foundation, structural safety, physical health level, then the more it’s going to radiate out into your capacity to have more intimate relationships and also to be able to access kind of that deeper spiritual well, where you’re gonna understand, oh yeah, I am truly.

Mark Divine [00:22:07]:
Okay. And I can overcome the traumas and vice versa. Right. There’s a downward flow. Right. So if you have breakthroughs in trauma work, then suddenly you’re gonna have more energy. Right. And you’re gonna have more motivation to work out because you’re gonna feel better about yourself.

Mark Divine [00:22:22]:
So this, they’re all mutually supportive. And that’s back to the integrative nature of how we grow and develop. It’s so important. It’s so good to see people really getting on board. And even the medical profession is kind of inching that way. I mean, not big pharma, mainstream medicine, but you know, people that you and I talk to. A lot of integrative medicine coming online, a lot of practitioners are really embracing that total person approach to healing and health.

Nicole LePera [00:22:52]:
What I think is the most important shift, and this has been in my clinical field as well, locating emotions, as I would call at least as the bridge between the mind and body. Right. Emotions might be this elusive word for some of us. We’ve thrown it around and it took until the later kind of end of this last century in the field where there was meaning. Before that, clinical psychologists, experts in parenting wouldn’t have spoken of emotions. Right. The kind of 80s 90s world of at least, you know, here in the West. Cause I’m in the western world of cry it out.

Nicole LePera [00:23:30]:
Right? This idea that children can self soothe, be put into a room and they’ll get tougher and be able to. Right, again, this is all sentence traumatizing the kids. This is all a sentiment though, that reflects this lack of awareness of. No, no. Emotions are a physiological experience. They happen in our children. Infants, toddlers, if you experience them, can’t control themselves. Every gender, no matter how you identify, has emotions.

Nicole LePera [00:23:53]:
Right. And I cite my field because again, experts in the field weren’t talking with this language, weren’t, you know, it explains a lot.

Mark Divine [00:24:00]:
Sorry, but like my parents wouldn’t step foot in a therapist’s office or, you know, they would call it a shrink. And it’s because the whole idea of the shrink, that whole this, I don’t mean therapy, but the psychology profession, whether you’re prescribing drugs or not, had that idea of what you said earlier, that you are the way you are. So we’re just going to talk about it so you understand how you are and then be done with. Be okay with being broken. And so, man, I couldn’t imagine sitting on a couch day after week after week and having psychologists tell me, yeah, you’re fucked up. How do you feel about that? Or what do you think about that? They wouldn’t say how you feel. Clearly that model doesn’t work very well. I don’t think.

Nicole LePera [00:24:52]:
I think. And there’s even now some research that’s starting to indicate. And again, this isn’t to say that having a safe space, which for a lot of us is our therapist office or whatever, the coach that we’re seeing’s office, having maybe even just a good friend that we can share the stuff that maybe we don’t tell everyone with. Of course, that helps us, like you’re saying, know ourselves better, understand ourselves better. There’s value in that, though, especially when we’re talking about trauma. There is new research now that is actually showing a negative impact of constantly retelling without doing the somatic work. And this applies to, even if even outside of trauma, there’s research that’s good around ruminating, right? This idea of even thinking in our own mind about all that’s wrong in our world or, you know, when we ruminate in our internal mind or when we ruminate. And I used to be my relationships up until more recently, I thought were a depository for my recent stress, meaning I would be out to drinks or dinner with a friend and they say, how are you? And I would just off to the races, rolling about every stressful thing.

Nicole LePera [00:26:01]:
I thought it was going to make me feel better. I thought it was going to make me feel close. They asked, I’m sharing what’s wrong. And now they’re going to support me and validate me. And so any version of ruminating in our head, in our relationships, in a therapist office, new research is showing because we’ve all had this experience, the longer we think about our problem, right, before long, we’re going to now feel badly, right, about our problem. So the same thing applies. So I just bring that up. And that’s what was starting to make me feel very disempowered in the client work.

Nicole LePera [00:26:31]:
That I was doing in the past because I didn’t feel like any of the tools, I didn’t feel like I had tools to really offer and any of the tools that we were offering in session weren’t seeming to translate outside of session. And again, that’s because we weren’t using the language in the nervous system. I wasn’t able to yet help the clients I was working with understand the habits that were continuing to create these patterns that no amount of logic or even desperately wanting better or different were able to change until I really began to work on both levels. But again, I do think that, and I am seeing the therapy field and coaching field, like you said, really begin to expand. So I’m very hopeful for clinical offices to begin to work more holistically for those that are seeking that type of treatment.

Mark Divine [00:27:25]:
I think it’s probably important to point out here that for healing to occur, you don’t even actually have to invoke or even remember the traumatizing incident. We know this from the work with vets where it’s often not safe. So like with emdr, you know that in that field that you’re very familiar with like that you don’t need to rake yourself over the coals of the past memory. It’s not necessary because you’re absolutely right. And I’m glad to hear there’s research coming out to say, well, you know, that’s not exactly helpful to do it over and over because whatever you focus on persists. Right? It’s like they’re saying that which you resist persists. Keep coming back to something you don’t like in your mind because you’re resisting it is actually magnifying it, adding energy to it. So I think it’s really skillful.

Mark Divine [00:28:16]:
If it needs to be remembered, then go back and remember it and then release the energy somatically and make peace with it as quickly as possible. And better yet, find the silver lining. This is what I try to achieve. You know, every. Every incident, even our traumas, have something to teach us. So transform that memory into something positive. That’s not your first step though. It takes a while to get there.

Mark Divine [00:28:44]:
Yes, it comes after forgiveness. Right.

Nicole LePera [00:28:46]:
I wanted to speak to that really quickly too because something I started to share early in my journey that I know resonates with a lot of people. That for me used to be a point of concern. That which was. I had a hard time recalling my past.

Mark Divine [00:29:00]:
Same here.

Nicole LePera [00:29:01]:
I learned it was brought to my attention, I should say with very well meaning friends and about high School when, you know, we start to talk about childhood. And I didn’t really have much to share. I didn’t really know then it would translate into us having spent time together. And I wouldn’t really remember being at that place or at that thing. And so for a while, for decades even, I secretively thought something was wrong with my ability with my brain and what I’d come to learn because this goes this for those of you listening who maybe similarly to me and you, it sounds like Mark can’t recall. What I learned was that the inability to recall. Right. Is usually impacted by our earliest experiences, meaning when our brain is developing, especially our hippocampus.

Nicole LePera [00:29:45]:
Again, simplistically, part of our brain that has to do with our memory. All of our brain is very sensitive to cortisol, the stress hormone, though in particular our hippocampuses. So the earlier. And again, I’m talking about in uterus. So if you remember, had an idea of what was happening in the person who carried you’s life, right. How much stress were they under? The more our brain was awash in cortisol, the more that our hippocampus and our ability to recall can be impacted. So then when we, you know, the common question then is, well, how can I remember if I can’t? Or how can I heal if I can’t recall? Right. The reason is, again, because of this impact of the cortisol on the brain, though, to speak to your beautiful point, right, we don’t have to remember because chances are we’re reenacting those habits that were created in that early environment right now.

Nicole LePera [00:30:38]:
Right? And then we can just begin right here right now to create the change that we want. So I just like to add that part in because I know a lot of us, it sounds like, do have that difficulty in recalling that again, is usually a function of stress.

Mark Divine [00:30:52]:
Are the trauma our key defining moment, traumatizing events? Right. So I scan back, and they’re always the same. You know, I have a memory that precedes when I should have a memory because I’m in a high. I’m in a high chair, and it’s my birthday party and people are singing Happy Birthday and cake is coming over and it gets put down in a little tray and I just go launch that sucker across the floor. I was clearly really pissed. So I like that. I don’t remember anything else between when I popped out of my mom’s womb and about maybe five, except for that one thing. So something traumatic happened that day on my birthday.

Mark Divine [00:31:41]:
Anyways, this is because it’s in my head and I’m working on it, like being vulnerable and telling this part of the story because I had some fascinating things happen in my upbringing that shaped who I am. But my 12th. 12th Christmas, now this is a little bit later, so it’s post verbal, you know, but I’m still 12. Anywhere between, you know, 7 and 12 is, like, very, you know, fertile ground for trauma to happen. It’s just. You just haven’t developed that psychological stability yet or any kind of emotional awareness. So I come down at Christmas, I’m all excited, you know, Santa came last night, and I run over to my stocking, and it’s full of coal. I know, right? You just feel that.

Mark Divine [00:32:25]:
Like a movie. Like, oh, my God, who would do that? Right? So when I look back, there’s a defining, traumatizing moment. Right. A tissue. I’m just kidding. So when you, like, maybe not everyone has those. It sounds like you had a challenging. But more often than not, like, I don’t know about you, but my clients peak performers, and they say, yeah, I had a great childhood.

Mark Divine [00:32:54]:
And then, you know, you work with them for a year or two, and all of a sudden they start talking about shit that happened in their great childhood that was very traumatizing. And I identified with that because I married a therapist and I was 30 years old, and I told her I had a perfect family and a perfect upbringing because it wasn’t safe to think of any other. Any other possibility. Right. Anyway, so if you’re listening to this, you might be like, yeah, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Mark and Nicole. Or you might be like, oh, maybe I should take another look. Right?

Nicole LePera [00:33:33]:
I mean, denial goes so deep. A lot of times we are protecting. Just like in childhood, right? It was unsafe to think my caregiver is unreliable, is consistent, is inconsistent, is abusive. Right. The reality for a lot of us is neglectful. So instead, right. We give ourselves that false sense of control because that’s too scary. That actually is too risky in childhood.

Mark Divine [00:33:55]:
Yeah.

Nicole LePera [00:33:56]:
Such a betrayal feels like a betrayal. I mean, that’s big. I mean, I can’t. A lot of us got direct and indirect messages in terms of family and culture and a lot of cultures. Right. Things stay behind closed doors, right? All of this messages in terms of where it’s even appropriate.

Mark Divine [00:34:12]:
I wouldn’t talk about any of this stuff until the last few years. I still hesitate because I’m like, gosh, I hope my parents don’t listen to this podcast. But hey, it is reality, right? It was my lived experience.

Nicole LePera [00:34:26]:
And I think what’s difficult, too, in adulthood was we’re coming to awareness of this reality. It’s so natural to think about whatever experience that we’re recalling as our adult self, right? It’s easy to say, oh, you know, you didn’t like your cake at your birthday, what was the big deal? Or you got cold. We’re able to minimize, in a way that if we remember or recall and imagine the experience before we had all this information now to be able to put it into perspective, if you will, Right? And if we just go back to being 3, 5, 7, 12, right, when all you were wanting was whatever else was in that stock, right? Now we can understand maybe the adult looking at the magnitude of the emotion that is stored and locked, the meaning that we made sense of it. Oh, well, I got cold because I’m bad. Santa Claus hated me, whatever, right? And that’s all locked, right? In this unspoken world of our nonverbal beliefs and habits and patterns that we’re continuing to validate and strengthen, not even being aware of any of it. And then we just assume, right, however old we are, that this is just who we are, that change is impossible for all of the different reasons. I can’t tell you how many times my father, who, bless him, but is very much of a different generation, he’s gonna be 87 years old. I can’t tell you how many times he said some version of, well, this is just the way I am, right? You know, like, with this idea that changes, things are locked in.

Nicole LePera [00:35:59]:
And yes, habits, the more we repeat them, the harder they are to change. But going back to that empowerment that we were both kind of sharing about earlier, that you is grounded in your work and mine, change is possible, even when it’s hard. And to speak to your kind of beautiful analogy, that is often the pain and suffering that we grew and adapt it through and maybe are changing habits around now, for a lot of us, is our greatest resilience. For some of us, for me, this is how and why I now do what I do, right? Because now I speak to my own self. You know what I mean? Older versions of me every day.

Mark Divine [00:36:33]:
That’s right. I love that. I’m really glad you said that because I came to the same thing, and I’m really grateful, right? So this is huge. I’m actually really grateful for the traumas. Like, I was a badass Navy SEAL because of them, right. When I went into Navy SEAL training, you couldn’t hurt me. You know, even Santa Claus hated me. Instructors hated me.

Mark Divine [00:36:54]:
They got nothing on my experience. Right. I was pretty bent. So they shape you. The point is, you just don’t want the shadow, the negative aspects, the stuff that doesn’t work to keep tarnishing relationships or torpedoing your true happiness. So don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just clean up the water. Right.

Mark Divine [00:37:17]:
And now I know we gotta go soon here, but we have a few more minutes. I’d love to talk about somatic work. Right. Because it’s such an important part of what you do, what works for you and your clients, because it’s a broad field.

Nicole LePera [00:37:33]:
Yeah. So I like to. Whenever I’m talking about anything body or somatic, I kind of talk about two sets, if you will, of practices. And the first set are the lifestyle, the consistent, the habits. As I said, not surprisingly, maybe by now in this conversation, they really map onto our basic. Right. Those foundational physical needs.

Mark Divine [00:37:55]:
Right?

Nicole LePera [00:37:55]:
Right. Because somatically, our nervous system lives in our body. Right. And to be regulated, our body has to feel safe. Meaning we have to most sufficiently at least be getting our needs met nutritionally, the need for movement, the need for rest and making sure that we’re, you know, fully oxygenate it.

Mark Divine [00:38:13]:
Right.

Nicole LePera [00:38:14]:
And so those are the consistent practices, becoming aware of the current habits that we have in those areas and then building healthier habits in. And the second kind of category, if you will, of resources are the more what I call, like in the moment, right. When we feel our body beginning to shift into a stressed state. Right. We can intentionally, through practices, help our body to be in that stress state and to calm down quicker. Quicker, as quick as possible. And so again, in our body carries cues, our breath changes, our musculature tension changes, and our heart rate shifts as we become more stressed. So the more aware I am of my body throughout the day, and this is kind of like the bridge between the consistent practice and these when you need it, practices.

Nicole LePera [00:39:10]:
Because if I’m not aware of my stress level as it’s kind of inching up to that 10 where I’m going to react, however it is that I want to avoid reacting if I’m not paying attention to my body and the muscle tension and the fact that I’m beginning to clench my jaw and my heart’s starting to race, I’m not going to have that opportunity to help my body calm down before I get to what I call the point of no return, where that reaction is going to take over. And then I kind of tune Back in, often shamefully on the other side of it. So when I consistently become aware though of my body and as it’s changing throughout the day, as I’m starting to notice, my stress is increasing for whatever reason. Now in those moments, I can deploy a little more successfully. The very common things that many of us have heard, maybe tried hasn’t worked because we wait too long. Right. The deep belly breathing. Right, right.

Nicole LePera [00:40:00]:
The slowing of our movements, the grounding or anchoring practices where we’re really just focusing our attention on being solidly connected right on the earth or to the chair beneath us.

Mark Divine [00:40:10]:
Right.

Nicole LePera [00:40:11]:
Movement practices, we can begin to shake our arms and let some of that energy out, helping our energy, our body’s energy, calm down, back to calm. So many different options. But the consistent practices give us the baseline, so does the consistent awareness of our body and our stress level so that we can then be a active participant in those moments where we really need it. Because when we’re calm and grounded right now, we can begin to make some choices that are more in alignment with whatever future or relationship that we want to create that exist outside of those old habits that we had to at one time rely on to survive.

Mark Divine [00:40:49]:
Totally. That’s cool. Yeah, it’s interesting. So I love what you’re saying is you have the daily kind of like foundational practice. For me, it’s yoga and breath work every day, every single day, 20 minutes of yoga. My wife and I, and we do box breathing and sometimes different, but that’s like non negotiable. And because of that. Right.

Mark Divine [00:41:12]:
And that’s been going on for a long time, we have this very kind of like foundational stability in the body mind system so that you can feel pretty quickly when you’re starting to get off out of blank. And that’s when you drop in the kind of the spot practice. And what I teach my clients is also to practice the spot practices. So we call them spot drills, you know, so like literally every time you have a meeting or something, deep work, like, you know, you’re supposed to take a little time afterwards to like process, assimilate, downregulate, and nobody does. Right. You know, they book, you know, hour to hour to hour. So I say, okay, book your meetings for 40 or 45 or 50 minutes and then take that extra 5 to 10 minutes and relax and do a spot drill, deep diaphragmatic breathing, walk around the, you know, the building, go express gratitude to someone. Just sit and be present, lay on the ground.

Mark Divine [00:42:06]:
You know, there’s as you know, there’s hundreds of these things that literally bring you right back to yourself. And if you do that four or five times during the day, it’s a game changer. It’s a game changer.

Nicole LePera [00:42:17]:
And then that becomes, right, a new habit.

Mark Divine [00:42:19]:
That becomes a new habit. Yeah. And to steal something from my Zajin teacher, he used to talk about in meditation, right? To develop that witnessing capacity and to maintain there. But when you notice that you’ve lost your. You’ve been distracted and you started to ride a thought where now you merge with a thought to catch it at the head. He goes, catch the snake at the head. Because if you catch that thought at the tail, you’ve already been whipped around, you know what I mean? Maybe bitten a few times. So the awareness practice, the daily awareness practice, it allows you to catch it at the head and just say, no, we’re not going to let this, this stress, this thought, this trigger take over me.

Nicole LePera [00:43:07]:
But I think so important about that that I just want to speak to very quickly catch it at the head, right? Not stop the thought.

Mark Divine [00:43:15]:
That’s right.

Nicole LePera [00:43:15]:
Don’t let it happen. Right?

Mark Divine [00:43:17]:
Because you’re going to feed it, you’re going to make that snake stronger or.

Nicole LePera [00:43:20]:
To have even the expectation that it stop. Because so many of us get so thrown, right? We know a thought’s not helpful. We just want it not to happen again, right? Why would we think thoughts that cause us suffering?

Mark Divine [00:43:32]:
And then you fight yourself for not being able to.

Nicole LePera [00:43:34]:
We shame ourselves. Why am I having terrible thoughts? What’s wrong with me as a person? So I always like to. My PSA is always thoughts will happen. They will always happen. There are neurons firing again. Certain thoughts have become habitual. The way that we’ve kind of perceived this similar situation, it doesn’t map onto the objective reality. However, we can’t just say, oh, thoughts, let me just turn that off.

Nicole LePera [00:43:59]:
I’m done with you. So I love that suggestion because it’s not giving us that unrealistic expectation, that difficult, upsetting, dark, even thoughts won’t happen. They will. But that’s where the empowered space happens.

Mark Divine [00:44:14]:
You just don’t believe them or you remove the attention. I’ve read before the distinction between thoughts and thinking and awareness or witness and witnessing awareness are really similar. So thoughts happen like you said, and it just happened. And you could have probably completely different perspectives on how thoughts happen. The neuroscientist is going to say, neurons, things fire, and then a thought happens and the yogi is going to say, we are all consciousness. And so Thoughts are consciousness and you’re just experiencing it. It’s non personal. Don’t take it personally.

Mark Divine [00:44:50]:
Right. I think they’re both probably accurate somehow. But then it’s the thinking that gets us in trouble. So we take that thought like you said, and we think, oh, that’s my thought. And oh, I don’t like that thought. That thought sucks. What am I having that thought for?

Nicole LePera [00:45:03]:
And now you’re like, what’s wrong with me?

Mark Divine [00:45:05]:
Oh my God, that’s horrible thought, huh? I gotta stop having that thought. Which then brings more of those thoughts. And so then you’re off to the races, right? You’re not even catching the snake. The snake is in charge. So that’s thinking and then witnessing from the field of awareness, which takes practice. You can observe the thoughts even arising and saying, oh, that’s an interesting thought. And it’s just like a cloud passing by in the sky. You just observe it.

Mark Divine [00:45:31]:
You don’t try to engage with it, you don’t judge it. You’re kind of curious about it. Maybe it’s something that’s interesting and you want to come back to later, but just let it go. So that awareness is like the sunshine that’s above the clouds. Thoughts are the clouds. And then thinking is when you turn that cloud into a thunderstorm.

Nicole LePera [00:45:50]:
I see tornado. Yes.

Mark Divine [00:45:53]:
And it wreaks destruction. That’s awesome. What a fun conversation. So you’re writing your next book? When’s it due? Have a deadline or just like.

Nicole LePera [00:46:04]:
No deadlines. Not yet. It will probably not come out until spring. 2026.

Mark Divine [00:46:11]:
26, yeah. Give myself enough time. I like that.

Nicole LePera [00:46:14]:
Give myself enough time. So as I was sharing beforehand, I can not have the pressure of the deadline, the performance.

Mark Divine [00:46:20]:
Publishing.

Nicole LePera [00:46:21]:
No, I’m with macmillan, Flatiron macmillan. My same editor that I’ve now worked with the previous three projects. I’ve had the great opportunity to continue along.

Mark Divine [00:46:33]:
So I’m very excited that she didn’t give you a deadline in 2025.

Nicole LePera [00:46:36]:
Not here yet. It might be coming. So right now, ask me when I get the deadline, how I feel. But now I just feel, like I said, luxuriating in creative process without too much pressure of how it’ll perform, how it’ll do. Other people will think kind of where that achievement driven part of my brain.

Mark Divine [00:46:53]:
You’ve got such a vibrant community. I mean, they’re all going to want the book and you know, so that you got a head start there already. How can people engage with your work? Like how can they get started today?

Nicole LePera [00:47:07]:
Getting started today. I just want to actually celebrate engaging and listening to this conversation. For me, it was listening to much information in podcast form that kind of got me started on this journey. Of course, one of the priorities kind of with now my whole team at Holistic Psychologist is to make sure that this information, these conversations and really the community is free, accessible for all. So at this point, we’ve now grown beyond the Instagram account where it all began some five, six years ago now, to any social media platform where we’re talking especially a lot of emphasis has been on the somatic work recently putting out videos, how to’s resources. So however it is that listeners like to consume content, I urge you, if you’re interested in what we talked about today, to come and join the community on your favorite platform again where we’re having these conversations and there’s just so many beautiful people from around the world sharing their own journeys, which I think is the gift of healing on these media platforms and community. However it is that you interact with other people now, it gives us one of those moments, much like even just listening to our conversation here with you and I of hearing someone else’s experience, which I do think can help relieve some of the shame that most of us feel when we secretively believe that we’re the only ones right, struggling in this way. So I like to always just kind of shout out the community aspect of all of the different platforms that the Holistic Psychologists now exist because for me, I’ve gained so much value in my own healing and comfort in being able to share my journey and hear back from others.

Nicole LePera [00:48:43]:
Any of all the books now on the holisticpsychologist.com there’s a whole website with free resources, an email list you can sign up to keep in connection in contact and of course all of the three books exist on there with information.

Mark Divine [00:48:56]:
On that as wellpsychologist.com your books, how to do the work that was your seminal work, how to meet yourself and how to be the love you seek. Yes, all great stuff. Of course those are available and that’d be a good place to start too, probably. And when it comes to, I’m sure the website, but if they’re just looking on social media, is it how to do the work or how would they find you?

Nicole LePera [00:49:19]:
Your name, the Holistic Psychologist. Instagram, the Holistic Psych. All platforms are some version of the Holistic Psychologist.

Mark Divine [00:49:28]:
Awesome. Well, once again, thanks so much for today. I appreciate you very much, Nicole, and especially since it took two tries for us to do this and you’re right. This is a much better discussion.

Nicole LePera [00:49:41]:
Well, thank you again for having me back, Mark. Thank you for sharing so much of your own journey with me as you did. And of course, thank you to your beautiful community who’s out there listening.

Mark Divine [00:49:49]:
Yeah, I appreciate that. Take care and stay in touch. Oh, yeah, awesome.