Dr. Nicole LePera

To do some relearning in the areas where we haven't developed the security that we always needed.

I think that things come to the surface when our attention shifts.

So the more time, space, the more familiar we are with life and patterns and the more attention kind of goes into – becomes available.

Let me word it that way.

the more than we are so quickly able to pay attention to the things that we've been distracted from, or even that we've been very, even physiologically protected against allowing to come to the surface.

So I think for physiological changes that happen as we age, I think lifestyle and life circumstance changes that happens as we age, that attention to some extent is freed up

That will then allow us sometimes, you know, even despite wanting that to be the case to then be met with stuff from long ago, stuff that we think we were already beyond.

And it can be very challenging, I think, especially when it happens in our later years.

Because, you know, we have this idea that, oh, I thought we got over that.

It feels like we're backtracking, backsliding.

We can even then begin to shame ourself because of the reemergence.

And so I can even make a case that this happens in any healing journey.

The more we become present and less protected, counterintuitively, the more we feel uncomfortable, which is what often then sends us right back into using those old protective mechanisms and not looking at it at all.

We're reliving them.

For others, it looks like a kind of distracted reaction where we're leaving a hard conversation that we know we need to have.

We're running from relationship, relationship or job to job.

And for others, it looks like an under reaction where we're not removing ourself from something that's unsafe, whether it's a relational dynamic or a physical experience or, you know, we're shut down.

And so in those moments.

It's so important.

I always want us to understand it's coming from a physiological place.