Ep. 66: How To Do the Work with Dr. Nicole LePera

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When the holistic psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera decided that traditional therapy wasn’t working for her, or her clients, she began exploring the mind-body connection, and the responsibility of what she calls “self healers” to exert effort every day toward bringing about a desired life transformation. Dr. LePera eventually used social media to create a community of motivated #selfhealers, and wrote a book, the recent New York Times bestseller, How To Do the Work. Here, Dr. LePera is in conversation with Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, Dr. Jack Muskat.

LINKS

Dr. Nicole LePera is on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube

Her website is www.yourholisticpsychologist.com

Dr. LePera’s book is How To Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self. Buy it at Indigo and Amazon

Video: A guided exercise from Dr. LePera, the Three Most Important Tools for Self Healing

Article: Nicole LePera, 'the ‘Holistic Pscyhologist,’ Is Radically Changing the Business of Mental Health

Medcan provides mental health-promoting services for clients featuring appointments with a team of psychologists led by Clinical Director, Mental Health, Dr. Jack Muskat. Learn more, or contact the team at 416.350.5959 or mentalwellbeing@medcan.com

INSIGHTS

Mind matters. The power of positive thinking is real. In her book, Dr. LePera shares the story of one man who received a terminal cancer diagnosis, and was told he only had three months left to live. He was, understandably, quite distraught over the revelation and, sure enough, he died a few months later. But when an autopsy was conducted, it was discovered that he had been misdiagnosed. He didn’t have cancer. The implication? The mind can create self-fulfilling prophecies. Dr. LePera knows this is an extreme example, and there are many other factors at play, of course. But, in her opinion, this devastating story makes something very clear: “It’s important to acknowledge that the mind is an incredibly powerful tool for healing,” she says. If you continuously give into overwhelmingly negative thoughts, you risk getting stuck in certain cycles. [02:15]

Key concepts. Dr. LePera calls herself a “holistic psychologist,” but what does that mean? For her, it’s a two-part definition. “One [is about] acknowledging that we’re not just a mind, and that our body is somehow separate. We’re an integrated being,” she explains, adding that those two elements are always in communication with each other. The second part? It’s about taking that interconnectedness and looking at how it can affect our overall health. “Holistic means honouring the whole being — mind, body and soul — and understanding that many of the symptoms we experience are likely coming from an imbalance in one of those deeper areas of being.” [05:45]

New perspectives. In her book, Dr. LePera details how to use self-healing to improve your life. As the title suggests, it’s all about “doing the work.” The first step is to “honour the change that comes when we begin to actualize new choices,” she says. It’s not just enough to think differently — you have to commit to a daily action that will eventually create change. “A lot of us are very [habitual] in how we feel about ourselves and the role we play in our relationships. We have to learn how to shift out of that autopilot,” Dr. LePera says. “[It’s a] choice to create consciousness. We need to actually learn how to bear witness and make those new choices in real time.” [06:55]

Learn to let go. Knowing how to do the work is one thing. Actually doing it is completely different. It can be especially challenging when our subconscious is inherently illogical — we are creatures of habit and crave the safety of familiarity. When we make a change, it’s natural for us to resist it, and before we know it, we’re reverting back to the old habits we were trying to fix. But that feeling of discomfort is necessary, according to Dr. LaPera. It’s the signal that we’re doing the work. “Expect resistance and know that it’s coming from our subconscious as its best attempt to keep us safe,” Dr. LePera says. “We can thank it in that moment, but still choose to show up and make those new choices that will inherently create more unfamiliar experiences and resistances, yet now [we] can empower [ourselves] because we know what it is.” [10:00]

Support system. Much of Dr. LePera’s work may be focused on self-healing and doing your own work, but that doesn’t mean it’s an entirely solitary exercise. Having a strong, supportive community surrounding you is still important — wherever you can find it. “We heal in community,” she says. “For some of us, the best communities, or the safest communities, that we can find right now exist online. They maybe aren’t in our neighbourhoods or in our immediate communities, so going online and finding that safety is incredibly important.” [12:40]

Upside down. It’s not a surprise that COVID-19 has interrupted all our patterns and disrupted our lives. This can cause us to feel unsafe, which is further complicated by any other challenges, insecurities or grief that we’ve had to face during the pandemic. In situations like this, we have to “learn how to cultivate safety” by being present and conscious. She recommends engaging in a sensory activity, like focusing on your breathing or lighting your favourite candle to hone in on the present moment. [18:55]

Accept this. No matter how much you may want to try, you cannot change another person. “When we feel like we want to change a relationship, or a relationship isn’t working for us, we think, ‘Okay, if this person would do [this] differently, I would feel differently,’” Dr. LePera explains. But you can only empower yourself to make changes. Everyone else has to do the work for themselves. If necessary, you can create boundaries or separations in relationships to change their function in your life. [25:25]

How To Do the Work with Dr. Nicole LePera web transcript:

Christopher Shulgan: This is episode 66 of Eat Move Think, and I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. This week, we're talking to Dr. Nicole LePera. Known on social media as "the holistic psychologist," Dr. LePera believes that, for some people, traditional therapy isn't effective. The idea that all of our problems can be solved in a one-hour session, once a week, that's unrealistic, she feels, particularly when you return home and fall back into the same pitfalls. Dr. LePera believes that those seeking to change need to work on themselves every day, and she created an online community intended to help its members do just that.

Christopher Shulgan: That community has exploded. Dr. LePera has 3.7-million followers on Instagram alone. Now she's put her sought-after advice in a new book, How To Do the Work, which landed her on the New York Times' and Amazon Canada's bestseller lists.

Christopher Shulgan: Only you have the power to "do the work" and change your life for the better, Dr. LePera says. But what does that mean? And how do you know when the work is actually working? She sits down with guest host Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan's Clinical Director of Mental Health, to answer all those questions. Here's their conversation.

Jack Muskat: I just want to start with diving right into it and saying that you talk a lot about how Western culture really separates the mind and body, and which in many ways in which you repeatedly referred to has been inadequate in meeting the needs that people are actually experiencing. You have anecdotes about a lot of different patients. And one of the anecdotes you spoke about is a story of the man who was told he had three months to live. And I think that it's a very emblematic intro to what you're trying to get across. So why don't you share with our audience, what that story is about, what it means for you and what lessons you want us to derive from it?

Nicole LePera: Absolutely. So the story that I was sharing in the book comes in the chapter where I highlight the power of thought or of belief. And I think coming, you know, from a field where CBT is really the gold standard, I think it's really important to understand that the mind plays a very powerful role in our wellness or lack thereof. So in this particular chapter, I share a few vignettes. And one of the most powerful ones is a gentleman who received a diagnosis, a terminal one, had around three months to live. Obviously was very distraught over that, and ended up passing away. And ultimately, when they did the scan to determine the cause of death, the diagnosis that he had been given was inaccurate. So of course, that's an extreme example, and there's, you know, a big spectrum in between. Though, I think it is important to acknowledge how the mind is an incredibly powerful tool for healing and/or for keeping us stuck in the cycles of sickness that so many of us find ourselves stuck in.

Jack Muskat: Well, you talked about CBT, and I think everyone nowadays knows what CBT is, but it is cognitive behavioural therapy. It's called the gold standard, perhaps because it's the one that's been researched the most. I think that there's a strong CBT component that runs through your work. How did it affect you personally? Because I think you can really share with us how it was a very dramatic epiphany for you in your own life, moving forward as a therapist and as a person.

Nicole LePera: So disempowered, I think is the first word that comes to mind. Really disempowered in my own life to create change around, for me, my near constant experience of anxiety. As long as I can remember, I was a very fearful child, and I carried that patterning with me into my adult life, despite being on the other side of the couch, having been on medication, trying all the tools in the field to create change. I also felt incredibly disempowered as I opened up my private practice, and I began to log hour after hour with many different clients, seeing that same disempowerment in themselves.

Nicole LePera: So my journey really began when I sought to understand well, why is that? How can we have a field that, you know, is promoting all of the—and I didn't just stop at learning CBT. I was in a psychoanalytic program for several years. I learned interpersonal therapy, schema therapy. I mean, the list really goes on. I learned all of the tools, yet I still found myself unable to translate those tools and to teach how to bridge. So for me, it was really beginning to understand, well, why is this the case? And I found my answer, again, that living in the subconscious and thought not being enough, because a lot of us are dysregulated in our bodies and our emotional systems, and no amount of thought or thinking differently can actually create change. At that point, we do need to work holistically and teach the body a new way of being.

Jack Muskat: Right. And I think I want to move to that disconnect because, as you know and I know in our treatment dealing with people, everyone knows what they need to do. They come in with the solution, and yet they can't do it. And even with anxiety, what we end up doing, and what we're doing here at Medcan is of course we're treating symptoms. You still have to be treated, you still have to stem the problem. But then what's next? How do you deal with the prevention? How do you deal with the understanding of moving forward? And you found that, in dealing with anxiety, that we're spending too much time treating the anxiety, not understanding that anxiety is really a signal, it's an effect, it's not a cause.

Nicole LePera: I appreciate this question, because I think this really builds on what my definition of "holistic" means. And it's a two-part definition. One, acknowledging that we're not just a mind, and our body isn't somehow separate. That, in my opinion, we're an integrated being. We have a mind, a body, and my definition of holistic honours that integration that, yes, our mind is communicating with the other aspects of our self, though those other aspects of ourselves are communicating also with our mind. And there's an interconnectedness, that—second part of my definition—oftentimes, it's in balance in one or all of those areas in our mind, how we're caring for it or not, that's causing the symptoms that we're calling anxiety or depression or the cycles that so many of us are spinning in. So holistic means honouring the whole being: mind, body and soul, and also understanding that many of the symptoms we're experiencing do come from somewhere, and they are likely coming from an imbalance in one of those deeper areas of being.

Jack Muskat: Right. So why don't you take us there? You wrote the book, How To Do the Work, so tell us a little bit about the work that we need to do to heal ourselves and create ourselves, because we're all feeling the stress, but we don't have the tools or the understanding. So where would you like us to start?

Nicole LePera: Well, I think the first point to acknowledge is even encapsulated in the title, How To Do the Work. It's really honouring that change comes when we begin to actualize new choices, right? There has to be a daily action. We have to do something now differently, right? So doing the work, I think really encapsulates that it is a daily action. It's not enough just to think differently, we have to actually go about creating the change. A lot of us are very habited in how we feel about ourselves, the stories we tell, the roles we play in our relationships. We have to learn how to shift out of that. We're dropped into autopilot, and we're very reactive, we're very disempowered, because those older habits are calling all of our shots. So to create a choice, we need to create consciousness, we need to actually learn how to bear witness and make those new choices in real time.

Jack Muskat: So how is consciousness different from awareness? Because what we have now is everyone sees Dr. Google, everyone is now a psychologist. So in the old days people came in, they didn't know what was bothering them. Now they come in with their diagnoses, and they're all aware of what's going on, but that's not the same as consciousness, is it? You're talking about something very different.

Nicole LePera: Yes. And I appreciate you acknowledging that distinction, because I do see and get asked a lot, "Well, what is the goal? To always just analyze my life away? Always find the next thing to heal? Always be doing something?" That's actually not the goal at all, what you're referencing in terms of, you know, awareness, self-awareness, over-self-awareness, that's an action of our thinking mind. In my opinion, that's another version of a distraction that so many of us engage in. Consciousness is being dropped into our body. Having our senses available to us, being a receptive recipient of whatever is in front of us: the person, the environment, the relationship, the action, that's a pure state of being that actually doesn't involve the thinking mind at all. It's not about living the life through our mind's eye. Most of us are a pro at doing that. Consciousness is living the life almost through our body as a receiver of the world around us.

Jack Muskat: And I'd even like to take it a step further. I think that, because we don't talk about—given our secular world and given our inability to find ways of talking about the soul or the spirit or who we are. I always ask my clients or patients, "So who's talking? Who's in your head? Where's the real you?" And that's a question that many people have—including myself some days. Who am I today? What is my real being? Because the more I'm aligned with who I really am at the level that you're describing it, our true self that we can drop into our bodies, the happier I am, the more flow I have, the more ability I have to feel that. And I think that we all experience it when we're doing something that we're fully involved in. But I think that my patients as well as myself, that our biggest fear is fear. Do I really want to go through that? And yet they have to go through it. And you went through it. And when I saw the title, How To Do the Work, I'm going to push back a little, I'm going to say, people don't want to do the work. We live in a society where everybody wants a quick fix. Short attention span, inability to pay attention. So you're putting it out there how to do the work, but how do you get people to actually do the work?

Nicole LePera: On top of everything that you're acknowledging, there's also the reality that, when it comes down to it in terms of our evolutionary structure, we actually desire the familiar, we desire to stay in those habits, those patterns. So our subconscious isn't logical. It's based primarily on the principle of familiarity. If I've been down this road, more or less—talk about fear—I can anticipate what comes next. I know how I cope with that or how I can get through that. So I'm more or less safer. And safety is one of our nervous system's primary concerns. So the familiar is perceived to be safer than the unfamiliar.

Nicole LePera: So anytime any of us desire to create change, set an intention to do something differently, and then begin to show up in this different way, what happens from our subconscious mind is we get what I call some degree of resistance. For some of us that lives in our mental world, where, you know, we have endless other things we could be doing, or maybe we criticize the intention. Why even bother? You're not worth taking the time for yourself in this way. For others of us, it drops into our body, where we just begin to feel discomfort, agitation that we aren't comfortable with dealing with. Or maybe we just don't feel like who we usually feel like. We just don't feel like ourselves. And before we know it, if we pay too much attention and if we begin to believe that that resistance is a signal that we're going down the wrong path, or that, you know what, this isn't meant for me, before we know it, we're right back into those familiar ruts. So we have to arm ourselves. And the reason why I talk about this is change, universally, isn't desired for us as humans. So expecting that resistance and knowing that it's coming from our subconscious as its best attempt at keeping us safe, we can thank it in that moment, and still choose to show up as we've been speaking about, and make those new choices that will inherently create more unfamiliar experiences, more resistance, yet now I can empower myself because I know what it is to walk through that in a new way.

Jack Muskat: Well, you're not a traditional psychologist. You have an Instagram account. You've gone out there. You basically have said, "I'm going to take the risk of sharing what I know with a community that really respects it and responds to it." Can you tell us how that works, how the self-healing works? There's almost a skepticism amongst more traditional therapists that, you know, you can't do it alone, that it's not the kind of thing that you should—you know, adults only, only under professional use. But obviously, it's resonating, and I think that it's really important, because we're not going to be able to deal with every single individual. And if people can feel empowered, what are some of the things that you're hearing from your community that both encourages you, and which you could share with our audience that has been very useful in terms of their support for you, and also your understanding of what their needs are?

Nicole LePera: Yeah. So very interestingly enough, when I have heard that criticism from some in the field, this idea that I'm out here professing, you know, person on island do it alone, that's actually quite the opposite of how I believe we heal. One of my major intentions—actually, it was twofold. I was on my healing journey, I was coming to all these awarenesses, I began to utilize these holistic tools and create incredible change in my own life. And I became inspired to do two things, mainly. The first was to begin to share this new truth. By that point, I'd become very aware that I had a habit of not speaking my truth, of only saying the things that I think other people wanted to hear. So for me, it was an exercise in healing. Hey, I'm going to begin to share my story with no anticipation of how many listeners there would be, because that was important to me, because for me, like I said, that was an action in healing.

Nicole LePera: The second intention was to find community. I had become aware that a lot of the relationships I was operating in weren't really authentic, weren't safe, and didn't fully allow me to be who I was. And by that point, I was beginning to experiment more and more being who I was. So I wanted to find the community, because by that point I knew we are intrapersonal creatures, and we need others to heal. So based from those two intentions, I took to social media, because I saw that as an access point. It was an equalized place, it is a free platform where this message can travel to whomever it is that would resonate with it.

Nicole LePera: And for me, accessibility is incredibly important, because I know these conversations aren't being had, I know some of these tools aren't fully being transmitted. And a lot of the community is international, where they might not have access to these practitioners. So we heal in community. For some of us, the best communities or the safest communities that we can find right now do exist online. They maybe aren't in our neighbourhoods or in our immediate communities. So going online and finding the safety in others is incredibly important, which is why I created the hashtag #SelfHealers so we can begin to find each other. Now I would be lying if I said I had any expectation that it would be this degree of a community from around the world that was hungry for healing. And it quickly became evident that that's what this is.

Nicole LePera: And I very intentionally—the final chapter in my book is about interdependence, right? Because it's not enough just to have relationships around us—most of us do. The question really is how are we relating to those people? Are we fully self-expressing? Do we feel safe to do that? And are we holding space for their—the person on the other end's—full self-expression? Or are we doing as most of us do, operating with masks, playing roles, suppressing our needs out of fear, and doing the same to others? Not necessarily being a safe person to be around. So in my opinion, healing, community, is what's incredibly important, that we each have to find our way to embrace our authenticity, so that when we're showing up with other people, we're showing up as we are.

Jack Muskat: So how do we differentiate between those of us who can take what you're saying, work with it, and still come out with the community, with the interdependence, with the skills, with the tools, and those that need a little more help and need the support of psychologists and therapists? Because, without getting into diagnostic categories, they get in their own way in major ways. And it's a real question when we're out of our depth and we can't just do it online. Ironically, your community, I think, has grown during this pandemic in a way where we can't see each other, so thankfully, we can do it online. But you're seeing a lot all the time. If you could give us some tips on what we can do by ourselves, what we need support in.

Nicole LePera: Just to clarify, many, many within the community are in external supports of all different natures: medical, psychological, emotional, healing communities. So there's a lot that are doing both. Self-healing really just is what are the daily things that I'm doing to continue the work that many of us are doing in these sanctioned rooms, or in these supportive communities, or relationships or environment? It's honouring that there's a lot of life that we're living day in and day out, even when we're outside of the room. So the simple answer is, from within, right? If you feel inspired to go and find those external supports, that if you are privileged enough to have access to them, absolutely incorporate that, make that a part of your journey. Something I do know—the reason why I'm saying it comes from within as well, is something that I do know, we cannot change another person. We cannot point a finger and make someone enter into a therapeutic relationship of any kind if they don't want to. So it's really, again, honouring who you are and where you are, and acknowledging even if it's difficult in those moments, if you are someone who wants to and needs to gain extra support, absolutely make that part of your own healing journey.

Jack Muskat: On a more practical level, I mean, it's been an interesting year and more where we're all suffering from the pandemic. We're suffering from the inability to make sense of things. You're dealing with it with your listeners and with your followers. What are the kinds of things you can be telling us that we can do to remove that kind of what I would call shock and stress, and almost what you're talking about, the immobilization that we get when we wake up each morning with dread not knowing what's going to happen?

Nicole LePera: We're all struggling with COVID, I think, to definitely differing degrees. At the minimum, as I often say, what COVID has provided each of us as humans is what I call a pattern interrupt. That removal, right? Where my old normal, my autopilot can't continue. I'm not driving to that same office, I'm not going about. Life looks different. So at the minimum, we're all in some version of that unfamiliar space. And then, of course, that gets further complicated by those of us that are carrying deep, wounded traumas, right? Or perhaps now we're finding ourselves home, in proximity with relationships that are challenging.

Nicole LePera: All of this is kind of evolving or revolving around a concept of safety. Most of us living in COVID on some level no longer feel safe. Either, again, because we're out of our familiar patterns, that just feel unsafe based on the preference of us as humans to stay in that familiar, and then obviously complicated further for those of us that are suffering losses, or that are having insecurities crash down around us. So safety, so cultivating safety, embodying safety, learning how to create safety. Whether again, that's in our thoughts, spending a little less time, unhooking our attention from all the thoughts that create stress, refocusing it, perhaps on our breathing body, on the sensory experience around us. I have a very beautifully-smelling candle, really honing in on the present moment, learning how to cultivate safety by being here in my body. How can I be more present in my physical body? Can I use my breath? Can I use my senses? And can I maybe begin to harness my breath to create safety within even in the instances where it's not outside of myself?

Jack Muskat: How do you know when you're getting results? I don't mean you personally, but doing the work. So I'm doing the work. How do I know that I'm really doing the work?

Nicole LePera: Oftentimes, we know we're doing the work when life gets a little bit uncomfortable at first, when we meet areas of ourself or ways of being, and have all of the feelings surrounding it that some of us might have been distracted from or protected from. Jokes aside, we know we're doing the work when we're just more conscious, when I'm more present, when I find myself more connected to my body, more aware of what its signal is, and then more able to make choices. When we begin to actualize choice, we are usually indicating that we are moving toward change, because the opposite of choice is typically where we're stuck in disempowerment, reactivity. I don't really feel like I have a say. The world happens around me, and I feel a victim to it in some very real way because I don't have choice. I do the same thing I always do, and I can't break that habit. So oftentimes in empowering choice, we are met with discomfort. And those are usually markers that we're walking toward the unfamiliar space of the new future that we're creating.

Jack Muskat: How do you get people to break what I call the self-soothing through alcohol, substance abuse, addictions?

Nicole LePera: Yeah, so I mean, I can identify with being that person. Little did I know what I'd started doing when I was in early childhood was dissociating from that point of overwhelm, not having the attuned caregiver to help my nervous system regulate. I was in a near constant state of overwhelm. So I checked out. I call it my spaceship. As soon as—I think I was 13 years old, I was quite young, I started drinking, I started smoking pot. And that, for me, became my externally-induced spaceship. I knew when I drank this or when I smoked this, I could be separate from myself. And for me, that was much more preferable than being in my body with all of those overwhelming feelings and all of that stress that at that point, I didn't know what else to do with.

Nicole LePera: So the way to break those habits is to, again, become consciously aware of the self, to understand what it is for each of us that triggers that desire to disconnect. What is the feeling that I don't think I can tolerate? What is the stress that's happening? And furthermore, how can I now create a new choice in those moments? A new choice that will again be uncomfortable, a) because it's new; and b) because chances are, we were soothing, we were distracting from something that was quite difficult, for some of us intensely difficult. So now we have to widen our window of tolerance. We have to learn how to deal with a little more stress each and every time without relying on that external thing to disconnect. So it becomes now a resilience-building exercise that begins in awareness. So right before I go to check out and grab that drink, in that moment, I want to expand and understand that, okay, there's some discomfort happening, it's making me want to check out. Can I either sit in this discomfort, or can I do something new or different with this discomfort, as opposed to just going into that numbing space?

Jack Muskat: Right. And what you're saying is incredibly important, because I think it cuts across so many different areas. In the weight loss work that we do, very often people are eating so much and so quickly, they don't feel full. But if they wait 20 minutes, just 20 minutes, they'll not feel hungry anymore. And what you're saying I think is so important Nicole, because you're saying yes, you're going to feel that not just discomfort, that almost unbearable pain. I need to reach for that joint, I need to reach for that drink. But if I just wait another few minutes, or a little bit, I will then be able to move away from that and have some control over myself instead of it controlling me, thereby having some empowerment, thereby feeling better, and not living like that anymore. Is that sort of a good way of summarizing it?

Nicole LePera: Absolutely. You know, learning to do something different, learning to actually create the choice. That empowerment piece is incredibly important. And then learning to make those choices in the moment that better serve us, that maybe better connect us with people. It's a really sad space, because from that depth of pain, we are trying our best to get some need met and we're not able to. And unfortunately, that causes not only problematic consequences for us, but also for the relationships around us.

Jack Muskat: How do you get rid of toxic people? Because when you're in that pain and you're trying to empower yourself, if you are responsible for people that are trying to sabotage you, or in which you have a dysfunctional relationship, that impairs your ability to move forward, what advice can you give those of us who know that we need to make changes, whether it's with a partner, with a parent, even with a child, that is impairing our ability to be the best we can be?

Nicole LePera: A very difficult reality for most of us to consume, which is that we can't change another person. A lot of times when we feel like we want to change a relationship or a relationship isn't working for us, we think, "Okay. Well, if this person—whoever that is—would do differently, then I would feel differently about this relationship."

Jack Muskat: Right.

Nicole LePera: So the first suggestion is to empower yourself to change, because you can't actually make someone else change. We are the only person that we have full control over. And the most empowering thing we can do to create new space and/or safety in our relationships is by setting boundaries, by identifying whether or not you have boundaries in your life. So what is a boundary? A limit, a separation, a space where I can honour and acknowledge my physical, emotional and spiritual needs, so I can self-express to another human, holding the same space for them. And when I don't feel like I have that safety or that point of separation, chances are I need a boundary to put in place. Boundaries are for us, and their main goal is to cultivate safety. Here's that word again.

Nicole LePera: And many of us, as we engage in the healing journey and become witness to our relationships, and many of the habits and patterns that we've carried from childhood that we're now replicating in these relationships, we come to the awareness that we do want to create change, that we do need to do things a bit differently. So we want to focus on ourselves, and we want to identify where we can begin to place some new limits. For some of us, that means being a little less available to that relationship, or beginning to show up differently. Or maybe even just focusing on our needs, and asking myself first, am I available for this person in this moment, right here, right now, regardless of whether or not they need me. Do I have the resources to show up? So boundary work is one of the most impactful parts of the journey of healing, not only in our relationship with our self, but our relationship with our self as we reflect it out into our relationship with other people.

Jack Muskat: People feel guilty. "Oh, how can you do that? You're gonna hurt your father's feelings. He really means well."

Nicole LePera: Yeah.

Jack Muskat: You know, you hear those scripts all the time. I mean, we have to break through it. What are a couple of pointers you could share with us that will help us have the courage or the power actually to stand up to that?

Nicole LePera: I've lived this experience. I share often about my evolving relationships with my family, that at one point I chose to cut off contact with because there was a lot of the co-dependency, the lack of those boundaries, the constant drive for me to filter everything through my family. What do they need? How can I show up for them? So when I began to create that space, set those boundaries that I was just describing, I did hear a lot of different feedback that often was around me being selfish. How could you do that? Family doesn't do that to each other. So we might not be able to prevent hearing that feedback. Though, what my offering of advice is, is I do know what defeats relationships or what usually ends in relationships ending, which is resentment. The more I continue to forsake my own needs or to avoid them entirely in service of this relationship, the more likely I am to become resentful—not of me, of them. And resentment can be one of the fastest killers of a relationship, or make it just highly intolerable for both parties. So I say that to say boundaries are going to be difficult. You might get all different versions of feedback from those around you as you begin to show up differently, to violate the expectations that they now accumulated of you over time. The walking through that discomfort, still showing up differently in service of yourself, keeping yourself safe, so that you can be safe for them, translates to a much more sustainable relationship into a future that works for both parties.

Jack Muskat: I think that's great advice. You're an example of someone who's done the work, and can be a role model for the rest of us. We're very lucky and grateful that you were able to join us, and I wish you every further success. Thanks. Take care.

Nicole LePera: Of course. Thank you so much, Dr. Muskat. I'm so honoured to have spent time with you and your community. Thank you.

Christopher Shulgan: That was guest host and Medcan's Clinical Director of Mental Health, Dr. Jack Muskat in conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera, who is on Instagram @the.holistic.psychologist. She's also the author of How To Do the Work.

Christopher Shulgan: I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Find show notes, links and full episode transcripts at EatMoveThinkpodcast.com.

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. The senior producer is Russell Gragg. Editorial and social media support is from Chantel Guertin, Emily Mannella and Patricia Karounos.

Christopher Shulgan: Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @Shauncfrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with another episode examining the latest in health and wellness.


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