3 Surprising Reasons Why You Have No Childhood Memories ft. Dr. Nicole LePera | Mel Robbins Podcast

1. 0:00 – 5:18

   Intro

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera0:00

      (ticking sound) As I looked around, I kept almost telling myself, "Well, what is wrong with you, Nicole? Why aren't you, you know, feeling good about yourself? Why aren't you feeling fulfilled? Why aren't you feeling even connected to this life that you created?" And for me, I landed on the answer being the childhoods that most of us have grown up in were keeping us disconnected from ourselves, from our life, and from our relationships.

   2. MRMel Robbins0:26

      If somebody is going, "That's me," what is something, Dr. Nicole, that you want to tell them right now about what this means if you're experiencing this disconnection from what your life is like today, and what you're feeling inside? (instrumental music) Dr. Nicole, thank you for joining me.

   3. NLDr. Nicole LePera0:49

      Thank you so much for having me, Mel.

   4. MRMel Robbins0:51

      Um, I want to start with, um, a particular post that you put on social media that went crazy viral, and it really struck a nerve for me, and y- you posted this thing where you said, "At 32 years old, I realized I was a child in an adult body," and this just hit deep for so many people. What did you mean?

   5. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:21

      What I... Thank you, um, for, for calling out that post. Um, I think, you know, for a lot of us that, that can be really challenging, um, to hear that about ourselves, and for me, if I'm speaking honestly, it was very challenging to come to that awareness, and what I meant was mainly around my emotions and the way that I hadn't learned, um, of course, in early childhood, to, to tolerate, to navigate, to be able to process my emotions, and in many ways, and I use this language, I think this is the, the part that becomes difficult is, in a lot of ways, I was very emotionally immature in the way that I handled the frustrations, the difficulties, and the stresses of life. Because the reality for me, as I think is the case, which is, I think, why it resonates force with so many of us, is that so few of us, for many different reasons, which I'm sure we'll dive into, many of which today, um, we didn't have those safe environments. We didn't have those emotionally attuned caregivers who themselves learned how to navigate their own emotions. So, I mean, needless to say, parenting is a, is a large, large task in and of itself, and, you know, when we don't have that safety, and when we don't have someone modeling, mirroring, attuning to us emotionally, what we do then appear is like a child in an adult body.

   6. MRMel Robbins2:37

      I want to take a step back, because for those of you who have not, uh, read Dr. Nicole's New York Times number one best-selling book, which is a game changer, How to Do the Work, um, I... Or you don't follow her online like millions and millions and millions of people do, can you tell everybody what your life looked like at the age of 32? Because, you know, when you talk about emotional immaturity, it's not like you were running down the street naked, taking a baseball bat to the side of a wall, like kind of rambling gobbledygook. You were high functionally- high functioning and successful. So will you just give everybody, like what does life for Dr. Nicole at 32 look like when you have this realization that, "Holy shit, I can't process my emotions maturely"?

   7. NLDr. Nicole LePera3:29

      Yeah. And, and I'll be the first to say, I wasn't able to even admit that or even have that language, um, for what was going on at the time. What I did know was that I had finally arrived, or so I thought, to the end of all of this, you know, achievement-based to-do list. Um, to speak to your point, I, I wasn't, you know, kind of dysfunctional in the very traditional sense. I had... In a lot of ways, I had this successful, you know, life, or at least appearance of life around me. Um, I was in a partnership, a committed partnership. I had a successful practice after achieving my PhD. Um, I was surrounded by, you know, a network of supportive individuals. I was living in the city that I chose to live in. Everything seemingly on the outside, right, was reflecting this idea that I should feel good, or at least better than I was. So I... You know, I think as a lot of us do, my first feeling was a really low, uh, disempowered lack of fulfillment and shame. Um, because again, as I looked around, I kept almost telling myself, "Well, what is wrong with you, Nicole? Why aren't you, you know, feeling good about yourself? Why aren't you feeling fulfilled? Why aren't you feeling even connected to this life that you created?" So not having the awareness of, of why I was struggling right alongside with, at that point, the clients that I had been working with week after week, month after month, um, I kept i- wondering, you know, feeling as a disempowered then clinician in the room, "What is wrong? Why are so many of us stuck, those of us who even have access to supportive individuals like myself in a therapeutic environment? Why is the report I'm getting week after week, not that I'm getting better, but that I'm getting more and more frustrated, more and more shameful, more and more stuck in these patterns?" And for me, it really began with exploring, you know, what is keeping so many

2. 5:18 – 11:33

   Why so many of us feel stuck, according to Dr. Nicole LaPera

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera5:18

      of us stuck. Um, and for me, I landed on the answer being all of the conditioning, oftentimes very stress-based, very trauma-based conditioning that, you know, was emblematic of the childhoods that most of us have grown up in, that we're creating habits and patterns that no matter how much insight, how much awareness that we had, were keeping us disconnected from ourselves, from our life, and from our relationships.

   2. MRMel Robbins5:45

      So as you are talking and somebody's listening intently, going, "Wait a minute. Is there a different way to experience life?" (laughs) Uh, you know, I... 'Cause adulthood, it's so familiar sounding that you check all the boxes. Ivy League degree, you know, you're a practicing psychologist. You are, uh, successful on the outside, you're surrounded by all these people, and you're having this internal crisis and disconnect where you're going, "Why am I not happy?"What, what is wrong with me? What more could there be? How can I not figure this out? I am sure most everybody listening can relate to this, and so we're gonna get into what you did. But if somebody is going, "That's me, that's me right now," what is something, Dr. Nicole, that you want to tell them right now about what this means if you're experiencing this disconnection from what your life is like today and what you're feeling inside?

   3. NLDr. Nicole LePera6:53

      You know, I... Speaking from the perspective of, of having been that person, I mean, as I, you know, was entering my 30s, I convinced myself, because I too saw similar, you know, complaints, I heard similar complaints, and I almost gaslit myself in a lot of ways with this idea like you're sharing, Mal, of this, this must be just what adulthood is. Um, this might just be the circumstances of the, you know, environment's very unnatural, I was living in a city myself, that many of us are living. And it took me, you know, becoming conscious again of the very real impact of these habits and patterns to create just that little bit of space. So, what I want to offer to anyone who's resonating and has that embedded belief that this is just what life is about, or maybe, you know, a, a more problematic belief, I think, for ourselves is, maybe this is just what my life is meant to be about. Maybe there's something inherently wrong with me, you know, that is translating to this lack of fulfillment, this overwhelming stress or whatever it might be for you. And so, very much speaking from that person as well, I thought that something was just, you know, off about me. Um, I want to share, you know, the hope of creating that space of really... And you'll often hear me break down as far as I see the process of creating change into two major steps, and the first step I will always note is becoming conscious. And when we become conscious of how habitual, how patterned we are as individuals, then some of us can gift us with that little bit of space that then allows us to take that next step, which is beginning to make new choices outside of those old ingrained habits to then be able to experience ourself differently. And I'm really being intentional with that, because again, I think the best, you know, the best shifting of beliefs is when we ourselves begin to create change, begin to experience life differently. Many of us, I'm sure, have listened to motivational speakers who have said, "Oh, you can do this. You know, come on this side of, of life, of change," and it really isn't. And again, speaking from my own experience of this, we don't believe it until we do it.

   4. MRMel Robbins8:57

      Mm.

   5. NLDr. Nicole LePera8:57

      But when we be- do become conscious, or as we begin to become conscious, we can gift ourself with that space. Of course, does not happen overnight, but over time, we can ma- begin to then make new choices, relieving ourself of that shame, that belief that this is just what life is all about and/or this is what my life is all about.

   6. MRMel Robbins9:16

      Well, this is one of the reasons why I love you so much, not only because you've made a huge difference in my life, and I'm gonna try to take a highlighter and call out a couple of those things that you have said that were complete paradigm shifters for me and helped me achieve level up moments in my own healing. And so, I want to, um, just s- un- I wanna make sure e- everybody heard something, which is, even the awareness that you feel stuck, even the awareness that something is off, even the (laughs) awareness that this isn't working is great news, because if I'm hearing you correctly, being frustrated or feeling discombobulated in your body about your life, that is the consciousness that you're talking about?

   7. NLDr. Nicole LePera10:08

      Yes, 100%. I mean, anything that we can attune to feeling, even the lack of, because I know for a lot of us, we feel numb. Um, for me, that was very par- much part of my journey, um, is feeling apathetic, not actually feeling much of anything. Though, to speak to your, you know, very beautiful celebration of that awareness, the moment we start to say, "Okay, you know, I don't feel anything," or, "I feel so depressed," or whatever it is that I do feel when I am able to see or witness, that's what consciousness means to- for me, and honestly acknowledge that that's the case for my circumstances, then we are actually beginning the process of creating change.

   8. MRMel Robbins10:48

      You know, this is going on right now in real time in my life, because, uh, we were just having dinner last night for my husband's birthday, and our daughter, um, has asked my husband, "When do you feel most alive? What experiences make you feel most alive?" And after Chris answered, I turned to her and I said, "I've heard you say that word 'alive' a number of times. Where is that coming from?" And she said, "Well, it's because I don't feel that alive in my life right now." And I think when you have those insights, y- you're right to go, you know, I was celebratory 'cause I'm trying to highlight the fact that most of us react to that insight that, "Holy shit, I d- I don't feel

3. 11:33 – 14:01

   What those feelings of being on “autopilot” really mean.

   1. MRMel Robbins11:33

      excited by my life. I don't feel like myself. I don't feel alive." It's scary when you have that moment of consciousness.

   2. NLDr. Nicole LePera11:43

      It's in- incredibly scary, you know, feeling, um, as many of us do when we're on that blind autopilot, especially if our autopilot is driven by a state of nervous system disconnection. I often connect many of the conversations, many of the habits and patterns that we're beginning to talk about now back to our physiological body, um, and there actually is a state of shutdown that many of us, I found myself living in, that created... And it wasn't to say, like you were- we were going back to the beginning, right, I was still marching through life, you know, checking endless boxes of to-do lists. It wasn't that I was apathetic sitting on a couch, though for some of us, that's how it presents. We don't feel motivated. We procrastinate. We actually can't get up and do much of anything, though some of us are still able to continue to literally just live life going through the motions and...... our emotions are what makes us a human, so feeling very much, I talk about my spaceship that I was living on, the spaceship of disconnection that again, began for me in childhood, does create this feeling, this embodied existence of living like a robot. So when we rob ourself of our emotional experience of life, we're robbing ourself, in my opinion, of life itself. But again, as often is the case, there are reasons embedded in our mind and our body that have created that experience even of that distance, that disconnect, that apathy, that lack of motivation, that procrastination, whatever it is, that isn't a reflection of who you really are, what is meant for you in life, but again, is an adaptive coping mechanism usually around your earliest environments or circumstances.

   3. MRMel Robbins13:18

      Wow. I want to go back to this moment when you're 32 years old, because to your point, you were a practicing psychologist seeing patients in a committed partnership, living in your dream s- uh, city, marching through life, yet emotionally shut down. And you used the words that you were emotionally immature. Could you unpack and define what emotional immaturity is, because when you say that word, I think tantrum, but you also started to talk about shutting down. So what does emotional immaturity mean and how do we spot it in ourselves?

   4. NLDr. Nicole LePera13:57

      Yeah, so the simple way that I would describe emotional immaturity

4. 14:01 – 24:45

   The definition of Emotional Immaturity and what it really means.

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera14:01

      is the inability to be with and process, navigate, regulate our emotions. And again, I'm breaking that into two intentional components, um, because so many of us, that example of being so shut down to my emotions is an example, it doesn't mean, let me s- sorry. That doesn't mean that my emotions weren't there, it means that, again, in- in lack- in lacking a supportive attuned caregiver in childhood, the only way that I was able to keep myself safe from that overwhelming feeling that emotions create in our childhood experiences because we can't, we don't know how to tend or to regulate our emotions, created a circumstance where leaving my body, disconnecting my emotional awareness was the way that I could create safety. So, for a lot of us, it can look like that shutdown, that disconnection, but again, it doesn't mean our emotions aren't there. So, being able to be aware of the reality that we're having emotions, they are actually how we register our environment around us. They give us important information or feedback in terms of how safe is this experience? They give us an indication of what direction we need to go in or if we're having, you know, sadness, they give us an indication of we're experiencing a loss of some sort. There's value. There's information in our emotions. So for some of us it can look like an inability to be with them to the extent that we suppress them. We keep them so outside of our conscious awareness, that we aren't or we're- we're somewhat aware of them but we don't allow ourself to express them, or for some of us, it's so outside of our conscious awareness that they're repressed beneath the surface. Doesn't mean they're not there. Now, to speak to your point about tantruming, for others, it might mean that we are aware of our emotions and we become them. We explosively react, yelling, screaming. Again, while it might be causing those actions or those reactions, I should say, might be causing a self-harm because some of us turn that emotional energy inward and we do beha- or engage in behaviors that actually create harm within ourselves, or we say and do things that hurt other people, and again, in my opinion, all of that is coming from that lack of safety. So the inability to process, deal with, remain responsive which means note that, "Okay, I'm having an emotion. I have a bit of space to acknowledge the emotion that I'm having, to remain in choice, to decide what I'm doing next." So we can have a spectrum of emotionally immature behaviors and again, they all oftentimes date back to what did we learn in childhood? Mm.

   2. MRMel Robbins16:36

      Who was attuned to us? Was there safety? Were we given the language? Were we given... Did we have someone who was able to attune and connect with us and bring us from those overwhelming feelings back into a calmer, more balanced state? And when the answer is no, even as we age in developmental years, we still retain those older habits because they're grounded and they're driven by our nervous system's best attempt at creating safety and we just continue to replicate that even if we are decades beyond those earliest environments.

   3. NLDr. Nicole LePera17:08

      I get this visual when I listen to you and so let me see if I can describe it because when I read that quote, let me grab it again. That at 32 years old, I realized I was a child in an adult body, and you were talking about like emotionally immature child in an adult body. One of the biggest realizations for me in terms of your work is that I get this visual where I see myself at like the age of eight or nine and my internal emotional development stopped growing at that age. But my body (laughs) kept going and I got bigger and taller and you know, and I kept aging and so now, you know, the- the- the big healing work for me really started around the age of 47 and it'll never end, so I'm kind of seven years into this. But I feel like the work of healing is a lot about allowing and doing the work to let the emotional part of you mature into more of an adult. Does that make sense? Oh, what an... Actually I had a visual of, um, I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of like, of a child and usually it's a child in a suit where it's like a child wearing their father's, you know, suit and the- the arms are hanging down and that was the visual that immediately popped into mind when you were describing that and-You know, again, I wanna honor, um, you, you know, Mel, sharing this, you know, and all of us who are able to, you know, come and allow that to be the case. Because so many of us, we shame ourself then. We feel like because we are whatever decade that we are living, you know, we feel like we should be doing things differently. And again, back to creating change, we truly have to start where it is that we're at right now. There's nothing shameful about not having had the tools, or the safety, or the resources, you know, in our earliest environments, and including the reality that many of that is passed on from generations that even have come before us. We now understand, um, the science of epigenetics, that those, you know, who grew up, you know, from lineages where there was stress and trauma are impacted down to the way our cellular- our cells function, our DNA functions, I should say, from those early, early environments. So what we're really talking about, again, is decades of, of life, of time, of individuals, of circumstances on this Earth even, in general, that we're carrying the impact of. So, that's one of the main reasons why I'm always talking about the physiology of our mind and our body and how all these patterns are transmitted, passed on through generations, in hopes of relieving that shame. Because again, until we see where things are... And when I was sharing, I didn't have the language, and I probably would've fought you tooth and nail in the beginning, called me emotionally immature. "What do you mean? I'm a psychologist. I'm self-aware and I'm emotionally connected, and you're all the problem, people in my life who aren't seeing that or who aren't giving me the feeling that I'm desperately searching for." I would be lying, again, if I said that I, I welcomed this realization, because I didn't. Um, and for a lot of us, again, that creates tension within ourselves as we begin to see more clearly, more consciously where we're starting from in terms of our emotional age. And it can cause a lot of tension and conflict as these patterns and this awareness maybe is gifted to us by loved ones, people who are a little less subjective than we are to ourselves, and might be gently pointing out these moments of reactivity that, you know, are causing harm in the relationship. And again, having the gift of a- having had a partner at that time who very gently would try to bring to my awareness, in a very loving, compassionate way, what she was starting to see and experience with our relationship, I fought it. I denied it. I blamed her for being not compassionate and not understanding me. So again, back to that celeb- celebration point. I'd really wanna hammer that in. As difficult as it is to see ourself clearly and the emotional, you know, um, age, essentially, that we're operating in, if we can gift ourself with that compassionate awareness that all of this is have been impacted, again, by circumstances that were largely out of our control, then we can create that opportunity to create change. Because the gift of our human brain and body is that it is neuroplastic. It can change throughout our lifetime. So whenever the now is that you begin to see the reality of how old you are emotionally, or whatever it is, the habit and pattern that might be causing impact in your life, that is the age where you can begin to string together those new choices.

   4. MRMel Robbins21:53

      So, I'm gonna try to extrapolate this for people that are brand new to the idea of healing, of trauma, of nervous system dysregulation, by asking you a question. Do you believe that the majority of breakdowns or mental health issues that we face as adults go back to the issue of stress, trauma, hyper-vigilance that you experienced during childhood?

   5. NLDr. Nicole LePera22:26

      I... Absolutely. Um, and that also is to include, however, the structural brain neurological changes. This is where we can, I think, as a field, um, get caught in a little bit of the chicken or the egg, because again, because stress does imprint on us biologically, genetically. A lot of us do then see, are born with even, structural changes, right, in our brain, imbalances in neurotransmitters. Again, the field is still, the psychology field that is, and the medical field if I'm being perfectly honest, is still learning, is still evolving, is still growing. And we... It, it took until, you know, within the past decade for us to realize that one of the, the number one things I'm sure maybe some listeners have heard of neurotransmitters, right? This idea that when you're diagnosed with a mental illness, whatever it might be, your neurotransmitters are off, your hor- a hormone in your body that impacts our mood. While that is a- absolutely part of the story for a very long time, we located the neurotransmitter production and maintenance, right, in our brain. And now we understand that it isn't just our brain that creates and produces and uses neurotransmitters. It is our gut, right? So now, we have another whole part of the body that is impacted by decisions that we're making, food we're eating, you know, pollutants that are in, toxins that are in the food that we're eating, habits around eating the food that, again, were passed through generations. So to, to simply answer your question, we can't localize it to just one exact factor, in my opinion, which is why I'm such a proponent, and I've shifted the way that I work and think and practice and teach into a more holistic model, because it's all of it. And the reality of it is, there are structural changes. There are imbalances in our nervous system. There are disreg- there's dysregulation in our nervous system, and imbalances in our neurotransmitter, I should say, that are creating then the symptoms that are, you know, resulting in diagnoses. And my hope is to take the whole picture into account and to give people the opportunity to explore the deeper underlying causes, because that's the area where we can begin to intervene by making new choices, by creating a different internal environment for ourselves, by creating a different external environment for us to live into, can then help us resolve some of those longstanding symptoms.

5. 24:45 – 30:29

   Mel’s personal story around emotional immaturity.

   1. MRMel Robbins24:45

      So, I'm gonna, um...... give you a personal example, okay? Because I think it will help people start to process where we're going to go with this conversation by thinking about this example, and I will be the, I will be the emotionally immature parent in the example, okay? So, we have a daughter who has just, uh, started to talk openly about the fact that she feels very stuck in life. In her words, that she does not feel alive, that there are very few experiences happening in her day-to-day life where she feels truly alive. And the other thing, and this is sort of a, a little joke, is that we say, you know, "Uh, we love you because you don't take yourself that seriously." She's really, really funny. "But you take everything else so seriously." So she is the typical hyper-vigilant, on top of everything, stressed out, got to get everything right. And when I apply your work to this situation, knowing that she's talking to a therapist, I say, that as her mother, when she was born, I was, uh, I had severe post-partum depression, I had an incredibly traumatic birth and I was, in your words, emotionally immature, which means I personally, as a new mom and just as a human being at the age of 29 or 30, I could not handle my emotions. I screamed, I vented, I, you know, was very, uh, unpredictable. And on top of it, for the first eight weeks of her life, because the post-partum depression was so severe, Dr. Nicole, and I was so heavily medicated because it was a dangerous situation psychologically and physically for me, I couldn't take care of her. And she has, now that she's an adult and in therapy, um, and she just did, you know, some really interesting guided psychothe- psychedelic therapies, um, has had now a memory of that period of her life as an infant and really being in distress wanting me to come, and just remembering my husband coming and one of our close friends that would sit with me while my husband was at work while I was very sick. And she also has had this sort of experience in therapy of realizing that I really wanted to be there. But that core experience very much cemented a kind of experience of the world for her, and I, of course, was just passing down the lineage of stressed-out, volatile, intense, you know, not that warm kind of behavior that I grew up around. When I look all the way through my lineage of, you know, immigrant, working in coal mines, domestic servants, farmers, like, work, work, hard work. And I look at her, and as, you know, she's talking about a job, and she's talking about doing this, and I'm thinking, "Actually, this is a- about you healing." (laughs) The... I hate to say it this way, so please correct me, but I feel like the damage I fucking did to you because I didn't know any better.

   2. NLDr. Nicole LePera28:27

      Yeah, I want to, um, commend, um, a couple things here, Mel. Um, first, your, your honesty in, you know, sharing these experiences and also the environment that you've since created, it sounds like, to the extent that your daughter is able to, right, begin to share these realities, these conscious awarenesses that she's having, because that is a gift. To be able to communicate honestly with those closest to us, especially those that might have been a participant in whatever create- you know, the circumstances that we lived in our past, in our earliest life, um, that i- that is such a gift. Because few, um, few families, I think, have at any time, and I know my family in particular, now we're, we're just recently starting to be able to share things with these, with each other in honesty, share what our different realities, I have t- two other siblings, are, and what, and allow that to be the case. So that is absolutely something to celebrate. And the reality of it is, you know, when we're not, when we don't have the, the resources to take care of ourselves, and when we're stuck in these, this dysregulation that we're talking about in our nervous system, we're stuck in a s- a survival mode in and of itself of our own. And so my heart, um, I actually felt myself welling up in emotion hearing you share that story, for not only your daughter, for you as well. Um, like you were sharing the awareness that she had of you wanting, right, to be present, and I think post-partum depression is one of those rarely talked about experiences that is so... I think a lot of times it's highlighted on how it is for the, the child of that disconnection, though how painful it is for the parent, who in their heart, you know, wants to be. And I think this is the case with all of us as, with all parents, is there's a lot of well-meaning, well-intentioned individuals-

   3. MRMel Robbins30:10

      Mm-hmm.

   4. NLDr. Nicole LePera30:10

      ... that are of two minds within themselves, if they're even aware of it or not, of wanting to do, to show up in whatever way and attune it, connect it in a loving way, oftentimes wanting to reverse patterns that they know didn't serve them from their own childhood, yet not being able to. Because the reality, and I use the term survival mode to

6. 30:29 – 39:09

   The reality of survival mode and the emotional impact it has generationally.

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera30:29

      really highlight, the reality that when we're in survival mode, and this is all just driven by our nervous system, so it's not anything logical, our survival is our priority. Which means that a child...... a loved one, a partner, right, isn't, isn't where our attention and our resources need to be allocated at that moment. It's quite literally in us getting through the next few moments of life. And this might sound dire, which is why, again, I'm just offering that this is all driven by our ability to survive, by our evolution as a human. So, this is, again, where we are of two minds, where we might desperately want to show up, to connect, to be attuned to our child, and our body might not be prioritizing that child at all. It might be prioritizing us and our survival, and us making it through the next moment, however difficult that moment is. And so, again, I just wanna, you know, thank you for your honesty in, in shining the light on a topic as this, because I've spoken and worked with, um, in my past practice, a lot of women who were so shameful about the experience of having, you know, that deep-rooted depression. Even of, this is another controversial, I think, thing to admit, of maybe being of two minds about how it is to actually be a mother, right? There might be a very well-intentioned part that does want to show up and does want to be, uh, in care of a child, and the reality of needing to be in care of someone else for 24 hours a day is very difficult. It's very challenging, and there might be then conflicts in and of itself. So, again, I want to commend you-

   2. MRMel Robbins32:02

      Hmm.

   3. NLDr. Nicole LePera32:02

      ... um, for your honesty, and I want to commend the, the environment that's being created in your home where these things can be talked about. Because I think the more we're able to, again, be non-judgmentally honest with ourself and with other people to relieve ourself, like you're even sharing. When I look back in time, I see the same patterns, just like I experienced with my mom. When I look back at her family experience, it's cold. It's disconnection. She literally had a father who came home from work. He was the sup- financial support of the household, put up his newspaper, and quite literally ignored the children. So, it's not surprising that the mother then emotionally that I, you know, was born into didn't have the tools to emotionally connect. No matter how much she wanted to do different and knew that that was a painful experience for herself, she was locked in her own survival mode and was just simply unable to.

   4. MRMel Robbins32:54

      Yeah, I agree. And I, i- i- and- and in sharing the story, it actually is somewhat liberating for me, because I don't want to pass down that generational cycle or trauma of being in survival mode and being... having a, a conflicted relationship with giving and receiving love. And what I can so profoundly see is that since I'm catching this in myself at 47, and I'm still working on it. My kids probably, I'd say at least six or seven times a week, go, "Watch your tone, mom. Watch your..." Tone of voice for me is when my emotional immaturity kicks in, when my inability to tolerate something. You know Mel Robbins is now her eight-year-old self, 'cause her tone of voice goes nasty, just like I heard in my household the tone of voice in the adults around me go nasty when I was eight years old. And so, I want to make it very clear as a takeaway for people that if you are resonating with this idea of, you know, being in breakdown or feeling stuck or feeling disconnected in your adult life, first of all, we all go through it. If not a lot, a couple times, right? Couple big breakdowns everyone goes through. So, it's normal, but it's not... It's, it's, it's good news because you're awakening, that your current way of living on autopilot or being shut down, or in the words of my daughter, not feeling alive, that's not how you're wired or meant to live. And so, this moment of consciousness is an opportunity. And I will also highlight that through my own example, the first place I want you to look is I want you to look at Dr. Nicole's work, because what she's saying is the first place to look is in your childhood and how you have gotten to a point as an adult where your ability to tolerate discomfort emotionally is no longer serving the kind of life you want to live. And I'm willing to say, I, through experiences I did not mean to create for my daughter, I taught her hyper-vigilance. Like, she had to become the adult. I wasn't even able to be the ad- like, present. And I feel terrible about that. Do I wish I could go back and wave a magic wand? Absolutely. And I know for both of us, there's this huge opening present for both of our healing, not to mention our ability to have a mature, loving relationship on our own terms, versus being in a relationship that is driven by the patterns of our lineage and what we were taught when we were children. Does that make sense?

   5. NLDr. Nicole LePera35:59

      Oh, 100%. I'm shaking my head very ravenously over here, 'cause, you know, I also... I think it's important for me to state as well is I still have moments where, for me, um, my reactivity comes out as passive-aggressive, snarky, you know, underhanded comments where I'm not able to directly, um, say it is how I feel to another person. Again, because without that attunement in childhood, without that safety, I learned the act of suppressing it, of going away on my spaceship and not ever saying what was really wrong. I also have a habit of disconnecting from my loved ones, my relationships, of literally going and walling myself off in my bedroom and then holding them responsible for not coming in and not being connected and not supporting me when I need it. And I like to use this visual of it's as if I have my hand held out in front of me, and I'm demanding, sometimes even with daggers on the end of it, and then demanding someone come and give me a hug. And again, all of this for me, you said something really beautiful that I think is important to touch on. All of this goes back to, for me, the inability to be emotionally connected, to give and receive love in my childhood. And as counterintuitive as that sounds, especially for all of us in relationship-Many of us, few of us, I should say, in adulthood, actually have had that lived experience of giving and receiving love for being who we are, for just sharing how it is for us, what we think, what we feel with another individual. So while we might, and this was so much, you know, of my life for so long, all I desperately wanted was to be connected. I would leave partners because you weren't able to connect with me. I didn't feel close to you. And it took until, you know, the awakening that began in my, in my 30s, you know, my 30s, my early 30s, 'cause it was several years of time before I was able to see myself as holding those daggers out, see all of the ways I was disconnected from my own authentic emotions, not sharing them with other people. So how am I gonna be deeply and authentically known to someone else? I never gave anyone the opportunity, because for me, it felt so scary, so vulnerable, so threatening that having those daggers out and blaming you for not coming closer was that safe zone. It was just a replication of that early ex- experience, again, that was created in my household with all of my family members, but namely around my own mom who wasn't equipped, didn't understand, probably had a deep-rooted desire, like I was sharing earlier, to be emotionally connected, but didn't know how herself.

   6. MRMel Robbins38:26

      Yeah. I mean, we only can do what we've been trained to do until we wake the hell up and heal ourselves and teach ourselves to do something different. Can you give, uh, everybody the signs of an emotionally immature parent? 'Cause I also think there's this tendency when you first start to realize that your childhood is the source of a lot of the things that are not working in your adult life, but we then go quickly into defending our parents. So we don't wanna, we don't wanna look at it, but could you just validate for people? What does it mean when your parent

7. 39:09 – 46:35

   What’s an emotionally immature parent and how do you know if you had one?

   1. MRMel Robbins39:09

      is emotionally immature and how, what are the signs and behaviors that, as a psychologist, you can say, "Yeah, no. This is not acceptable. This is emotional immaturity." I would love to hear that list from you.

   2. NLDr. Nicole LePera39:23

      Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot of things. So that kind of unpredictability, um, you know, having the explosive parent, you know, oftentimes an unpredictable where we're always waiting for the next shoe to drop. Um, having on the other side of that di- that disconnected parent who's never really either physically present or emotionally present. Um, it can look like being made for different circumstances, different reasons to parent ourselves or to show up as our sibling's parent or our parent's parent, a parentification. Um, it can look like a lacking of boundaries where oftentimes for very well-intentioned anxiety-based reasons, we have a hypervigilant, a helicopter type of parent always micromanaging, always, you know, tending or, or worrying, over-worrying, overstepping our bounda- boundaries, telling us what to think, feel, do, um, with our lives. It can look like that. It can look like a parent, again, who has so many boundaries that they're, they show that emotional disconnection that I was sharing earlier.

   3. MRMel Robbins40:21

      How does having a parent who can't handle their own emotions, they're either absent or they're all up in your face or they're inappropriate or abusive or aba- like, how does that impact you as a child?

   4. NLDr. Nicole LePera40:35

      When we don't feel safe in our environment, again, because of external circumstances, resources that we lack, our family lacks, um, or we don't feel emotionally safe to just share ourselves, share our thoughts, share our ideas, share our feelings, that creates an overwhelming emotional experience in o- in us. And without that attunement or that safe, grounded human, again, more often than not, this isn't the one-off, you know, where a parent was screaming and yelling one time when emotions got, you know, ran high. This is when this has become a c- consistent pattern, it creates overwhelming stress in our child body with a lack of support or a lack of resources that creates a sh- or that shifts us, um, physiologically, our nervous system into that survival mode. We will, we are very adaptive creatures. Our body will deal with it in one way or another, um, by, you know, fighting the situation, by becoming overreactive ourself as a child. This looks like tantruming, yelling, unable to actually soothe ourself. It looks like being distracted. Um, a flee, a flight-type response where a child is always unable to ha- pay attention, distracted, um, doing a million different things at once. It creates a shutdown experience. If the, um, stress is too much, too consistent and I don't have that support, you'll do what I did, and this is exactly the, where I ended. The last stop on my journey was I just began to check out entirely. And I'm just describing very simply, um, all of the different nervous system cycled responses that we go into when the stress or there is lack of safety in our environment and we don't have an attuned caregiver to help literally our bodies come back into that regulation or come back into that safe experience.

   5. MRMel Robbins42:24

      Wow. 'Cause now I'm visualizing my poor daughter (laughs) , you know, waking up in the morning like I used to wake up as a little kid wondering, "Which mom am I gonna get today? Good mood, bad mood. Loving, not loving. Mad at dad, okay with the world." And it sets you in this mode of being, as you say, hypervigilant, which is something going on in your nervous system. And I think for a lot of people that hear this the first time, Dr. Nicole, it's easy to kind of go like, "Well, isn't everybody's childhood like that? What human being on the planet isn't like that? Like, I'm so used to that, isn't that what life is like?" And you talked about hope earlier. What could it be like if you were to lean into this idea, this proven documented idea?... that so much of the problems that you face in your adult life have to do with these stress responses that got locked in during childhood, that you now have an opportunity to heal?

   6. NLDr. Nicole LePera43:32

      Yeah. I wanted to-

   7. MRMel Robbins43:32

      What could life be like?

   8. NLDr. Nicole LePera43:34

      I wanted to say two things quickly too that I think contribute. Um, you know, some of, you know... First and foremost, it's the reality that when we're children, we don't really have exposure to other experiences of life, right? It isn't until we be, you know, have peers and we start to go over other people's houses maybe, and depending again how similar or different they look, we don't even... We're like, I like to use the analogy, like horses with blinders on, right? We don't have the experience to say, "Oh, okay, well, this is what it looks like, like in my house, and it doesn't look like necessarily that everywhere else." So in that very developmentally immature, you know, way of making sense of the world, we'll assume, we'll generalize. We will make statements that, "Oh, this is what it is for everyone."

   9. MRMel Robbins44:14

      Mm.

   10. NLDr. Nicole LePera44:14

       That then gets complicated by the many of us who, for very different reasons, were told explicitly or indirectly not to talk about how things were, right? So we, we either maybe shame ourself for acknowledging the reality and we don't even... We suppress it. We don't allow ourself to say, "You know what? This is how it was in my childhood." That was very much part of my journey. The story that I heard, um, about this present mother, you know, from my siblings didn't match up with my lived experience. And because, as a child, we will always defer to the adults around us, especially when we need them to care for us, I suppressed the reality that, you know what? My mom wasn't super present. Outside from celebrating me academically and at softball, my mom spent a lot of time dealing with her chronic pain. That wasn't the story though that I heard in my family, so I suppressed my version of reality until I entered my 30s when I started to say, "Wait a minute. This, this h- is how it was for me." It might have been different for you in your childhoods, because my siblings are 15 and 18 years older than me. They also might be locked in a past narrative, right, unable to come to their own c- conscious, honest awareness of how it was. And then again, compound it, coming from a very heavily influenced Italian family where family is first and we are tight-lipped. We don't tell, you know, the neighbors. We don't mention what happens inside these four walls to anyone else. Now we do get locked in a narrative that might not match up with what our lived experience is. So to answer your question, the more we become conscious, honest, and allow ourself to then feel. I've left that out of this whole process.

   11. MRMel Robbins45:49

       (laughs)

   12. NLDr. Nicole LePera45:49

       Feeling, right, about how it is that our experience was for us, allowing us to say, "You know what? I didn't get some needs met and I'm sad and I'm in grief and I'm angry and I'm a million different things wrapped up into one." Allowing us to have that space now to tend to how we feel about the experiences that maybe we have suppressed for so long for whatever reason it is will then allow us to begin to change them. Because chances are, if we're really honest and we see ourselves in day-to-day life, we'll see a remnant of those habits, if not living directly in, within those habits. And again, I just wanna share that, because a byproduct for many of us, I used to think I was... Solely there was something wrong with my brain, the neurology

8. 46:35 – 47:36

   Childhood amnesia – What the heck is that?

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera46:35

      in my brain. Because I came to realize quite early on when it was a joke, um, with my friends in high school, of how little memories I have.

   2. MRMel Robbins46:43

      I have none.

   3. NLDr. Nicole LePera46:43

      I would go out and do things. I would go out, right-

   4. MRMel Robbins46:45

      Let, let's talk about that.

   5. NLDr. Nicole LePera46:45

      ... I would do things with them and I would have no memories. With time with them, I wouldn't be able to even share how my, my early, you know, Christmases looked. And I started to entertain, Mel, this i- this, this concern for a very long time that I must have something wrong in my brain, my memory area. I actually submitted myself for a study, um, that I thought I was, I was suffering from something called selective autobiographical memory disorder. I remember it 'cause I thought, "Oh, okay, that's what's wrong with me." I have this, you know, very rare neurological issue that created this, you know, experience of I don't remember my childhood. None of that was talked about in my family. It turns out none of us do, um, and the reason for that is, um, when... A couple reasons. When we're not fully present, when we don't have that attuned safe space to be present to what we think, how we feel, how to navigate or regulate our emotions going from overwhelmingly stressed back into safety and we begin to check

9. 47:36 – 48:53

   Here are 3 reasons why you don’t have many childhood memories.

   1. NLDr. Nicole LePera47:36

      out, like I did, we're not consciously present enough to encode the memory itself, the recall, the kind of, um, movie screen of what happened. I'm hesitant to use the word memory, 'cause the memory does live within our mind and our body. But we're not able to draw it up, call it to mind, describe it to someone else. And then another re- um, aspect of this that impacts memory is stress. When cortisol goes up, which is the major hormone that deals with or that is released within our bodies when we're stressed out, the more consistently, the higher levels of cortisol racing through our mind and body, especially in childhood when our brain is still developing... Because we now know that our brain is actually still developing well into our 20s. That high level of cortisol actually impacts a part of our brain that is responsible or plays a role in memory, which is our hippocampus. So now we're not present. Our hippocampus and the functioning of our hippocampus, one of the memory systems, is impacted. Now we have this experience of I don't remember. And it took me beginning to share, um, that I don't have memories, you know, walking through the shame of it all, that I'm actually hearing overwhelmingly how few of us really truly, again, remember those early things. So I just wanted to go down that path quickly, because

10. 48:53 – 53:35

    Do you need to remember your past trauma to recognize it in yourself?

    1. NLDr. Nicole LePera48:53

       a question I commonly get then is, "Well, well then how do I heal? Don't I have to go back and," right? "Tuck myself in and replay that terrible memory and know what happens?" And the answer is no, because chances are, again, you're living. You're, you're a living memory of that. You'll see it in these moments of emotional immature reactivity or these moments of shutdown, or even just in your general habits of relating to another human. Because all of that is so imprinted, again, in those earliest experiences that for the many of us, the many of you listening who, you know, don't have memories, I hope to relieve maybe some of the shame, maybe some of the worries of something neurologically wrong with you that I once had, and also give you the place to start, which is right here right now by becoming conscious to how it is you're showing up now. Because again, that often is a remnant of that memory in and of itself living in your mind, in your body, and often in your relationships creating the world around you.

    2. MRMel Robbins49:47

       Um...One of the things that you and I first connected over is the fact that we both have almost no memories from childhood. And I, like you, used to think there was something terribly wrong with me, that I was going to have early on-stage Alzheimer's, that there was something off, it's menopause, it's this, it's that, it's my anx- And I- I- I have so many experiences, like talking to my best friend from childhood, Jody Brick, and she'll be like, "Remember that time..." And it's not little shit, Dr. Nicole. It's like, "Remember that time you came to visit me at Central Michigan University?" I'm like, "No." She's like, "Yeah, you came for the weekend." I'm like, "I don't remember that." And so learning that (laughs) it's not only just me and it's not something wrong with my brain, that this is a function of the childhood shit that is in my nervous system and how I was coping and processing all this stuff that impacted my ability to make memories, and that that's okay, and I actually think it's way more common than you think.

    3. NLDr. Nicole LePera51:01

       Yeah, absolutely. And, and I'll speak to the point of how recent it is for me. Even in the early years of my relationship with my partner, Lolly, I mean, she has... Talk about the opposite, she has an elephant memory. This girl can remember, like, what I was wearing and, like, wild. And she... There's many things and moments where she's like, "Do you remember when we, you know, went to this place, did this thing?" And up until, you know, very recently, my answer has been, "No. I don't remember, you know, being there with you, going, meeting this person," really. Um, "Can you..." And I'll have to be like, "Can you say more about, like, what happened?" And maybe, um, I can recollect given other details, you know, given what she said, but sometimes when I was in, you know, a place that we might have revisited, I'll get a feeling of familiarity. She'll be like, "Oh, yeah, you don't remember when we were here last time? We did this, this person was here." I might not have that recall, but my body feels somewhat familiar to what she's describing, what she's saying, the environment that we're in. And again, I just want to share that, you know, it didn't miraculously for me go away the second I realized I- I didn't remember, because when I first met Lolly, I was very disconnected. I was very dissociated. I was there in person, right? Having interactions in all of these different places, but my attention, my awareness, myself was so, so far away that, again, I- I still didn't retain those- those recall-based memories and moments. So, I just want to share that again, because I think some of us might still have many moments. We might have something last week that we're hearing from a loved one that we did or didn't do or, you know, a place that we were at, and we might not have the ability to recall that. And again, that might be, maybe for someone listening, an indicator of how, you know, lacking presence, of how there might have been something that feels unsafe. You might generally never feel safe. Your nervous system might still be so dysregulated that you're still on that spaceship. So your answer is honest, but god, no, you don't yet remember that thing, though I will share that as I become conscious, and for me it's a daily commitment, it's a daily intention, um, because I do have that habit to check out, to desos- dissociate, especially as stress goes up, it doesn't immediately just... My nervous system doesn't just get on board. I have to teach myself how to stay grounded, how to stay connected, how to tolerate more and more stress so that I don't just check out and I can begin to remember and retain the life that I'm living.

    4. MRMel Robbins53:23

       So you used the word dysregulated nervous system. Can you give us all just the bo- basic kind of what do we need to know

11. 53:35 – 54:55

    What you need to know about healing and processing emotion.

    1. MRMel Robbins53:35

       about healing and about breaking generational cycles when it comes to our nervous system? Because we've already unpacked that most of us have an adult physical body, yet we are locked in a childho- We're locked at a- at a child a- like a child's age in terms of our ability to process emotion, and that is 100% based on what you experienced as a kid in your household and your response to those experiences, whether it was to tantrum or you talked about kind of shutting down or fawning or it was to, you know... What was the other one? I've- We've got- We- There are three, right, that you- that you can do? Are you like fight or flight?

    2. NLDr. Nicole LePera54:20

       To explode outward-

    3. MRMel Robbins54:21

       Yes.

    4. NLDr. Nicole LePera54:22

       ... to- to fight, to check out, to flee or distance, distract ourself from the situation, to fawn, to always be hypervigilant, tending to the circumstance around us, and there's a fourth, to shut down entirely, like me on my spaceship far, far away.

    5. MRMel Robbins54:34

       Gotcha. So as a kid, you learned to do one of those things based on your parents' inability to cope with their emotion. It's how you protected yourself, but now here you are, you're 30, 40, 50, 70, 20, whatever, and you're like, "This shit's not working, and I- I got to get a- a hold of this." And you talk

12. 54:55 – 1:11:55

    What do psychologists mean by “dysregulated nervous system?”

    1. MRMel Robbins54:55

       so much about the nervous system. Can you tell everybody now that we're awake and conscious, that I want to go back and I want to figure out how to heal, what role does the nervous system play in this and what does a dysregulated nervous system mean?

    2. NLDr. Nicole LePera55:11

       Yeah, so just, you know, going back to all of those different ways that we were just exploring, um, and overviewing, we tend to our emotions as an indicator of dysregulation because our body's ability... Emotions live in our body. They're physiological shifts, changes, changes in energy, changes in hormones lo- governed by our nervous system, so our ability to- to deal with, to re- right be with, like we were talking about earlier, and tend to and regulate our emotions is completely impacted by our nervous system and so is everything else in terms of how we're going about the world, and I think this is...... you know, a little- uh, kind of the bigger picture of nervous system, that it extends beyond even how much stress or how much ability do I have to tolerate, to regulate, to stay responsive within stress or my emotional- upsetting emotional experiences. Our emotion di-... Our, our nervous system dictates how we're navigating the world around us, how connected we do feel. It begins with, and, um, I was very intentional in s- separating the new workbook, How To Meet Your Self, into three different sections. And assuming that most people that w- know my work or will be attracted to the workbook, um, the self that I'm referencing in the title is your authentic self, that deeper being, um, that houses what makes you uniquely u- you, Mel, and me uniquely me. It houses our purpose, our passion, our interest, our curiosities, our ability to play, to be joyful. All of that stuff that many of us, I'm sure many of you listening feel so disconnected from. So maybe I'm mean, but I very intentionally, I did not start the book with how to meet your authentic self. It's broken up into three s- different sections.

    3. NANarrator56:48

       Why?

    4. NLDr. Nicole LePera56:48

       And the first, and the first section is how to meet your body, how to reconnect with your body. Because if you're in that survival mode, if your body is just trying to make it into the next moment, or so it thinks, oftentimes, again, based in past experiences, based in past perceptions, if you're not able to navigate these emotional moments and you're bringing up stories from your past and filtering your present moment through them in terms of your whole mental or emotional habit based world, then you're not gonna be able to have that safe space to reconnect, to ask those deeper questions. You're gonna be locked in survival mode. So your whole way of being, in terms of how connected do you feel to the world you created around me, it's no surprise that as I entered my 30s, my answer was, "Not at all." There was a time where I would read about people. I have a very, um, vivid memory of reading one of my few. I was reading a book by Dr. Wayne Dyer, and he was a psychologist trained, clinical trained psychologist like myself. And he was sharing more of a kind of his personal evolution from being a clinical psychologist and reconnecting with his passion and his purpose and really changing kind of the way he worked, becoming an author, beginning to speak. Um, and I read the book at the same time that my partner at the ti- Wally read the book. And she was so, you know, oh my God, so inspired, you know, and would talk about her passion and things that interest her. She's such a curious individual just in generally. And I read the book and I was like, "That's a nice story." I, I think that maybe that purpose gene, that passion thing, it skipped me. Here's another (laughs) right along with time- right along the lines with that neurological, you know, memory issue. I was like, "I don't feel passionate," even though, again, I was marching.

    5. NANarrator58:30

       Right.

    6. NLDr. Nicole LePera58:30

       I, for as long as I, for as long as you would have heard me talking about what I want to be when I grow up, I was going to be a psychologist. Though it didn't come from what I was hearing passion, purpose, right, interest, curiosity felt like. Um, and again, all of that is because if we don't feel safe in our body, if we can't witness our emotions, be with them, remain responsive, take the value in them and allow ourself to return back to safety, if we're, in other words, in survival mode, we're not gonna have the ability to relax into, to explore things that we're interested in and curious about. We're not gonna be able to identify or even connect with what our passion and our purpose might be, let alone make choices that are in alignment, live into that passion and that purpose. So our nervous system, going back kind of full circle, really governs all of that. We're not gonna be a- feel authentically connected. What is one of the first things I say when we began this conversation? I was in relationships. I had a very active social life for as long as I can remember. I didn't feel connected though to the people around me. It was that kind of idea of being a load in a crowded room. I mean, if that didn't really describe my whole existence, because again, the reality of it was, I wasn't authentically connected to myself. I wasn't authentically being me. I was always suppressing what my truth was in fear of upsetting someone else and hoping to people please or show up as they needed me, and I was operating in a version of survival mode. So the workbook, again, will take you through, um, the journey of first reconnecting with that very unique individual body of yours that does share some universal components around our nervous system, beginning to explore and identify whether your nervous system is reacting to threats, whether or not they're present or not in your environment. Then we, you know, can evolve, peel back the onion, if you will, and begin to explore, right, the ego, this cr- story, all of these creations, narratives that we began to repeat from childhood that are continuing to often color these moments of reactivity. It's not necessarily what happens that upsets us. It's the sense that we're making of it. It's the meaning that we've assigned to the actions or the non-actions in our life that create those explosive moments or those moments where you're like me, "Come close but don't come too close 'cause I'm gonna dagger you," or whatever it is. And until, again, we learn how to create enough space to be responsive, to understand that our emotions are what make us alive, and to learn how to then regulate and navigate them, we're not gonna have a chance at reconnecting with our authentic self and at discovering those deeper, deeper aspects of our being. So our nervous system really runs our whole ship, um-

    7. NANarrator1:01:10

       It's everything.

    8. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:01:11

       ... from the moment we're born, from the moment... Actually, if I want to go back further, the moment we begin our development.And for me, I- I believe that in a mother who was dis- distracted, disconnected, who was dealing with very serious health-related issues, and my older sister at the time, who had her own- own health anxiety of her father dropping dead when she was er- in her earl- early 20s of a heart attack, of seeing a very catastrophic car accident coming home from honeymoon with my dad when they were driving home from Florida. My mom was so nervous that actually a story that was gifted to me at her funeral, um, just a year and a half ago. My aunt was sharing, she got up to speak, and it was a very sweet story, and she was sharing the story of my mom- my au- when my mom discovered she was pregnant with me. And how it began was my mom started to have symptoms, morning sickness symptoms. She was 42 years old at the time, and it was 15 years after she had her last kid. I was definitely not a planned, um, product. They- they were done, um, so they thought of having children. So when my mom started to have stomach illness symptoms as consistently as, you know, morning sickness would attribute to, she began to entertain the idea, secretively first before she shared it with this aunt of mine, that she had stomach cancer, which is right in alignment, right?

    9. MRMel Robbins1:02:21

       (laughs)

    10. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:02:21

        We have a health-based anxiety-

    11. MRMel Robbins1:02:23

        Yep.

    12. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:02:23

        ... a lot of health-based fear, because my sister, you know, has her own health issues. My mom has chronic health issues. Of course that's the meaning she made out of these symptoms, and she shared it with this particular aunt who urged her to go to a doctor, to go see, you know, if it is indeed stomach cancer, so she could begin treatment for that. And that's when she was gifted with the information that it wasn't stomach cancer at all. It was me developing inside of her. And the reason I'm sharing that is, in a- our first environment is that uterus, that, you know, that body of the- the human who- who had us, you know, who birthed us. So ultimately, for me, what I now know, and it's not surprising, that, uh, a very commonly shared story of my family is when I was born, and I was born, you know, healthy, and, you know, thankfully everything was okay. I was actually born with a little, um, sore on my thumb, and I sucked my thumb up until I was, you know, much older. And there, the joke then was is, "You were sucking your thumb in- in your mom's belly. You know, you were sucking your thumb in utero." And I couldn't agree more. I probably was, because the amount of cortisol and stress that that environment, you know, was for me, with my mom unable, I mean, she thought she was possibly dying of stomach cancer. How fearful she must have been of no fault of her own. In my opinion, my earliest environment felt unsafe. So I was soothing myself as a little developing fetus, trying to regulate what was, for me, this overwhelming stressful environment. So, in my opinion, um, the environments that we're talking about that can contribute to our nervous system dysregulation begin when we begin our development.

    13. MRMel Robbins1:04:04

        And that's where generational trauma comes in. Because, you know, I- I relate to what you were just talking about, Dr. Nicole, because I can, you know, when you look back with compassion and understanding, I go, "My God, my mom was 18." Unexpected, surprise, here comes Mel. Drops out of college. Gets married. Like, all these things she didn't expect, far away from her family. I can only imagine how much cortisol and fear and anxiety and upset was coursing through her veins. I think about how alone she and dad were, not near family, and just how hard it must have been. And so, and I also see how that fashioned a hypervigilant, very anxious, overachieving, uh, you know, person in me. And I want to just, to land this, for anybody listening where this is brand new, you've never even considered these concepts. When Dr. Nicole talks about the nervous system, I want you... And then, she talks about slowing down, and, you know, working through, for example, the first part of the book, which is going to force you to slow down, and it's gonna force you to get out of the autopilot of your life and truly go inward and consider your lived experience in your body. The visual that I think about is your nervous system as sort of like the engine of a car, and it's like, for me, revving all the time. And so, my lived experience for a long time, my version of autopilot, was feeling like I was a car that was at, you know, like that was just the engine was revved all the time, but I wasn't going anywhere. And that I had this sense of always, like, trying, trying, trying, trying, trying, trying, trying, but no relief of feeling like it was enough. And what happens and what Dr. Nicole is saying is available to you, that you are your best healer, that you can pull over. Like, the view that you are driving past because you're on autopilot or you're checked out or you're flooring it and you're addicted to being busy and achieving and outrunning the sadness and whatever it is that you're trying to outrun. You are missing this extraordinary view, because your nervous system is just revving. And healing is the process of slowing it down and pulling over and doing the inner work, and again, you know, How to Meet Your Self, this latest incredible transformative work of yours, the whole first third of the book is dedicated to exercises to help you do that. And so, that's the first thing that I wanted to say, that what we're talking about when we talk about nervous system regulation is imagine a life where, when you go to the grocery store and somebody else walks in front of you and grabs the last can of tomato sauce that you had gone to the store to buy, you don't lose your shit.... you literally are able to tolerate that and not lose your shit. Or you get an email from work, and your boss is curt with you, and it doesn't trigger a spiral of thinking that has been around since childhood where you, uh, "That's it. I'm so unworthy. I'm so stupid." The- the beat-down. And so when we talk about healing, and we talk about regulating your nervous system, what she's actually saying is that you can liberate yourself from the experience of day-to-day life where you deliver the childhood beat-down you've been doing subconsciously forever. And the small, daily irritating, disappointing crap that happens in life doesn't send you into an emotional tsunami or send you to bury yourself in alcohol, that that is what's on the other side of this. Am I correct, Dr. Nicole?

    14. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:08:15

        100%. And it begins, um, just using a personal l- my- my entire childhood lived experience up until my 30s and I became aware, it begins with becoming aware, becoming conscious of yourself and your current experience and, in particular, of your body. And what I wanted to share was I'm- I'm a self-proclaimed hippie at heart, I like to say, because all I've ever wanted is peace, rest, a moment to just be, and the freedom that I imagined that came with that. Yet what I was so largely unaware of until I began to turn that spotlight of attention down to my body is I never could rest. Um, my family used to joke with me that I used to say, "I'm bored. I'm bored. Run a mile a minute." I was doing, doing, always on the go, which very much mimicked always going to that next hurdle, checking that next box. To simplify it, I couldn't relax. No matter how much my mind wanted that moment of relaxation when I didn't have anything on my schedule, for instance, or, and I was just sitting there, right? Here was my day, my Sunday. It's time to relax. My body, because our body is talking to our brain in communication every moment of every day, my body was so tense. My nervous system was so dysregulated. This is where no amount of, in my opinion, positive thinking, me looking around saying, "Well, Nicole, nothing to worry about here, just relax. You have nothing on your schedule. There's nothing to do. Why can't you just feel at peace?" And the reason was because all of the signals that my body was sending my mind was at peace, relaxed, there is something unsafe. There's a threat, because there was tension in my muscles. My ner- Like you're saying, that buzz really resonated with me, Mel. Like, my body was abuzz with how much I can't just sit in relaxation, and I just wanted to share this because there's so many of us, I've come to realize, who we can't relax, because no matter how much we want that moment of peace and we're desperately seeking it, our body is sending our mind that that's the unsafest thing to do. We have to keep going. Our mind does then begin to race with the things to worry about, begins to scan our environment with the thing that is off, begins to agitate. If there was someone near me when my body was feeling agitated, and if it was a partner, before long, I was probably nitpicking. I was probably creating now an interpersonal conflict because my body was so agitated that it was only a matter of time before my mind was agitated and before my environment was agitated. So, the conscious awareness, again, beginning in the body, beginning in these different states of nervous system dysregulation often will give the answers to why many of you listening might not be able to feel peace, to feel restful. And again, back to the hope, I assure you, rest and peace is part of what we... It... That too is wired, you know, as a possibility in our neurological human existence. Many of us just have to teach our body how to return to that space, and it's not until we are peacefully, safely connected, learn how to regulate our body if it is dysregulated that we can then feel those moments of peace, that we can then, in the space of that peace, be who we are, safely share authentically who we are with someone else, and ultimately create those relationships that we all desperately want and need.

    15. MRMel Robbins1:11:30

        Incredible. I want to talk about this buzzing experience, because for people that have never been to a therapist, never even occurred to them that maybe some of the things they experienced in childhood could be a form of trauma. Like, 'cause you hear the word trauma and you think, uh, people that have had tours of duty or been victims of violent crime

13. 1:11:55 – 1:20:56

    Is trauma only for those who’ve lived through a big, horrific event?

    1. MRMel Robbins1:11:55

       or who have experienced a horrible accident or witnessed something catastrophic. And what we now know is that that's not true, that there are all kinds of small experiences that you may have dismissed or not remember that do cause your nervous system to go, "Zzz. Ooh. Oh, Mom's mad. Oh, somebody's not talking to me. Oh, what? Dad's not coming home again tonight? Oh, she's drunk? Oh, what do you mean I have to be the man of the house? I needed a hug." Like all these little, like, things that- that just flip the switch inside you as the little you, that made you flip into what you refer to as hypervigilance. Now, I refer to this as that buzzing, that sort of like, "Zzz." And what I noticed in my childhood is that if I was achieving, everybody was happy. But if I wasn't doing something worthy of bragging about, then it was duck and cover. "Who's upset? Is everybody okay?" Like, just... And so that's that buzzing, that sort of hypervigilance, and when... Can you talk about why it's important to notice if that's part of how you experience adult life and what it is?

    2. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:13:16

       Absolutely. I want to, you know, go back too to that-... you know, kind of expand it, expanding, the need to expand, um, the idea of what trauma is. 'Cause for a very long time, I, I didn't know why, you know, as I, I was always beginning to become aware of the similarity in, in patterns and coping mechanisms that I was seeing in myself and kind of the clients that I was working with who did have those big T, those big events. Um, again, this was another moment where I entertained this belief that maybe there's something wrong with me. I even, you know, scoured the very few memories, the recalls that I had, you know, to try and imagine, could something really bad have happened? Because why am I coping? Why am I dealing? Why am I struggling in that same way? So, you know, trauma, the- again, trauma really maps onto how supported are we when overwhelming, upsetting things happen? How safe are we consistently, generally? 'Cause the reality in our childhood is, we are completely dependent on someone, at least one person, showing up to meet our needs. We can't continue to survive on our own. And the reality of it is, and sometimes this, you know, factors in generationally, the reality of it is, children have needs that are beyond just being kept physically alive. I mean, I didn't even know there was a brand of parenting, in the not so distant past, of-

    3. MRMel Robbins1:14:31

       (laughs)

    4. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:14:31

       ... this idea that children are like a plant, right? Just, just feed them. Um, and again, some of this is colored by trauma.

    5. MRMel Robbins1:14:37

       And then resentful, being resentful, if you need more, right?

    6. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:14:40

       E- yeah, exactly, ex- or this idea of even being indebted, right? You know, what I give to you, even though I've made the choice to, to create you, to have you. And again, some of this, I wanna be sensitive, because it is colored by lacking of resources in our childhood. I mean, I know my parents at the age that they are, my dad was born in '37, right after, right, the Great Depression, where it was a feat for parents to have even enough to put food on their table. So again, I'm extending, you know, the opportunity to be compassionate, um, and to understand all of the different reasons why you might have had a parent who really did believe you were just a plant to be kept alive in the room, and that's not the reality. We need that emotional safety. We need that space to explore ourselves. We need a curious, safe human to create that space. And when we don't have that, when they're not physically present, when they're not emotionally present, when they're emotionally unstable or erratic, one of the ways that we cope, because we are incredibly adaptive, is we, we, we begin that buzz. We become hypervigilant to the external world, because if I become so attuned to a change in mood, to a change in facial expression, to whether or not my, my parent, if I learn the patterns of what upsets mom or dad, what creates this situation where they're not present to us, what creates a situation where they are able to give me the little bit of attention or connection that they are unable largely in other moments? And for me, very similar to you, it was when I was keeping the peace, not causing an issue, not putting any more stress on the already overwhelming stressed table of the family, and when I was achieving, when I was bringing something for my mom, for my dad to be proud of. And for me, that happened very early on academically and athletically. Those were the moments where I would be celebrated. At my softball games, I played softball, um, well up through college, were the moments where my mom was actually present, physically present, celebrating me, talking to me about my performance in the game. So, being hyperattuned to that, I very early on saw that pattern. Okay, everyone's really stressed out. If I don't bring any stress to the table, which means if I don't share what happened at school, if I don't bring the thing that I'm worried about, understanding that my mom, that was only gonna upset her. Um, I have a moment that I remember very early on when my mom actually found a planner of mine, um, a high school planner. And I would write, it was my school planner, but I would write-

    7. MRMel Robbins1:17:08

       Yeah.

    8. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:17:08

       ... little notations of the things that I was doing, things I shouldn't have been doing on the weekends that-

    9. MRMel Robbins1:17:12

       (laughs)

    10. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:17:12

        ... was involving drinking and the cops, you know, a run-in with the cops here and there. And I had enough in there that my mom was able to somewhat make sense of, and she allegedly went in. My mom wasn't someone who, though some of us have parents who always are looking at our planners, always are coming into our bedroom, aren't giving us any, you know, safe space for ourselves and our own self-expression, they're violating or overstepping those boundaries. My mom typically wasn't like that. So, I was a bit surprised when, one afternoon, I'm sitting in my bedroom and she comes slamming through my door with my planner in hand, and allegedly, she was looking to see when ... she would haven't had no idea that I was writing what I was writing in there, when my next basketball practice was, 'cause I also played basketball in high school. Long story short, she, she saw enough to throw the planner at my head, to collapse down onto my bed and yell, "I'm having a heart attack. Jesus, God, take me now." And I was so scared, because we already have enough health-related, you know, anxiety in my family. I would literally lie asleep at night, worried about a lo- my mom, my dad dying. I knew they were older, you know, given typical parents of kids my age. So, that already scared me. I lived in a city. My car was stolen. I would always hear sirens. I knew bad things happened. So, I was always afraid that something bad was gonna happen. So now, my mom, in reaction to her own upset, unable to regulate and be with her own emotions about what she saw in my planner, literally collapsed into a heap, scaring the shit out of me, if I'm perfectly being honest, and further validating this idea that unless I, you know, am perfect, if I don't bring any more stress to this table, I could actually result in, you know, my mom being harmed, dying, something bad happening. So, I just use that as one example. I'm i- I am imagining there's many other things that I can't even recall, where the implicit message, the feeling in the home was...Don't stress anyone out, don't worry anyone more than we're already worried as a family, and continue to make them feel good, make them feel proud, get the connection that was available in those moments of connection. And for me, that meant squashing, right, everything that I thought and that I felt, and becoming so hyper attuned, so hyper aware, seeing those patterns. Um, another thing I think it's very common that it looks like is what social anxiety is, when we're always-

    11. MRMel Robbins1:19:34

        Yeah.

    12. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:19:34

        ... you know, attuned to people around us, we are literally seeing shifts and changes in their mood. "Are you upset? Is everything okay?" We might begin to micromanage, very unable to tolerate the possibility that something could be going on. And again, for a lot of us, that dates back maybe into our early childhood where that kept us safe, being attuned to when Dad had a bad day-

    13. MRMel Robbins1:19:57

        Right.

    14. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:19:57

        ... so you could get the heck out of the way and go hide in your room, right-

    15. MRMel Robbins1:20:00

        Yeah.

    16. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:20:00

        ... was what kept you safe. Then we continued to repeat that, again, all as our best attempt at keeping us safe into adulthood, because we haven't learned how to be safe, how to regulate our emotions, because we didn't have that experience in our childhood.

    17. MRMel Robbins1:20:15

        Well, I'm gonna, um, in just a minute, go through different types of parents and how that can have an impact on you and how that shows up in adulthood, so that anybody listening might be able to start to go, "Oh, oh, that was my experience. Oh, oh, this is something I can heal. Wow." But before we do that, you have this quote that I love, and I'm gonna share it, and then I'm gonna give an example of something that happened just before you and I started this interview that I think might help people understand this quote, okay? So you say, "Childhood trauma

14. 1:20:56 – 1:26:34

    Why childhood trauma does not come back as a feeling but it comes back with a reaction.

    1. MRMel Robbins1:20:56

       doesn't come back as a feeling, it comes back as a reaction." And I just experienced what you're talking about in this quote, and so I want to share it with everybody, and then we can kind of unpack it. So, I was so excited to talk to you, because I admire you so much and I am so excited to share your wisdom and both how you do the work and How to Meet Your Self, these remarkable, uh, gifts to the world that you have published with my audience. (laughs) And as we were doing the tech check to get everything hooked up, I know you know where this is going, we were having trouble because there was an echo happening and I could start to... This is what hypervigilance is, everybody. So I'm in therapy, have been for years. I understand trauma. I'm working on healing my trauma.

    2. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:21:54

       (laughs)

    3. MRMel Robbins1:21:54

       I'm, like, very fluent in this.

    4. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:21:57

       Yes.

    5. MRMel Robbins1:21:57

       And as I c- as this is happening, and all that's happening, everyone, is that Dr. Nicole can hear an echo in her ear. It's just a small tech thing going on.

    6. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:22:07

       (laughs)

    7. MRMel Robbins1:22:07

       That's it. I can feel at a cellular level Jessie on our team starting to get nervous. I can feel the fluttering around, and I immediately, everybody, flip the switch in my nervous system. The buzz kicks on, right? So I have this reaction, not like a feeling something's off, but now I am in my body reacting, and what my experience in, in that moment is a trauma response, because I am in a situation where I'm feeling like Dr. Nicole is about to be upset with me, because she is sitting there waiting for this to start, and there's an echo, and we don't have it figured out, and now I'm also worried about Jessie, because I can feel that she's nervous. And so I, in a nanosecond, everybody, because of patterns in childhood, flipped into that hypervigilance "Uh-oh" mode, and the opportunity that will change your life that Dr. Nicole is teaching millions of people to do, is to be aware when that happens, and instead of letting it hijack you, use the tools of breath and awareness and calming of self to quiet the mind and come back into the body and settle yourself, take in the view of what's actually happening. And so, I s- I just wanted to offer that because, you know, I think that it's a, it's an ongoing process, but it's very liberating when you realize that that experience that Mel Robbins just had as a 54-year-old woman is the exact same reaction that I would experience as an eight-year-old child.

    8. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:24:04

       I want to share, so I love that you, um, are bringing this up and are sharing of your experience, 'cause I can maybe offer (laughs) for other listeners another version of what could happen-

    9. MRMel Robbins1:24:13

       (laughs)

    10. NLDr. Nicole LePera1:24:13

        ... 'cause I too had one. So I didn't sleep well. I haven't been sleeping well the past couple nights. Um, I was sick several weeks ago, so actually, you're one of the, I think you're the first podcast that I've done in several weeks, um, me, little overachiever, am I gonna be the perfect presenter? I woke up this morning, and if I'm perfectly honest, esteeming you, respecting you so much, wanting to show up for your audience. There was a little voice in my head that was thinking, "Oh, God, I, how am I gonna be today? What am I..." You know, I have a running joke, um, with Lolly, my, my partner, who in the beginning of all of this, when people would ask to speak to me, um, even though, you know, I, I had all of the information, I was putting it out, you know, daily and on Instagram and all of the things, the second I had the opportunity to, like, share it with someone on a podcast, I would look at her in sheer panic and go, "Well, what will I say?"And she would go, "Well, Nicole." (laughs) "You'll say- you'll share what you know." And again, for me, that illustrates this idea that unless I'm perfect, unless I'm, you know, on my- on my game, saying the words, you know, as concisely as I need to, I'm not good enough. So, if I'm being honest, as this morning was approaching and I was feeling tired, and I was worried that I wasn't going to be good enough, and the tech issues started happening, there was a little voice in my head that, like, I've learned when things get difficult, when I'm unsure of myself, I like- I wanna run away. I mean, there was a time before I entered my, you know, awareness stage of my dark night of the soul, I actually, you know, entertained leaving the practice that wasn't fulfilling me. Um, I had all of these ideas of, "I'm just gonna run away to a foreign country."

Episode duration: 1:56:41