Dr. Nicole LePera

And of course, the way to that was to excel academically and or athletically, because oftentimes

Those things lead to the good college, to the good career, et cetera.

So seeing that very clearly and experiencing an absence of connection, quite largely in my home, of no fault or ill intention of my parents.

I had two parents.

My mother was in care of the home, always present, yet because of her own childhood trauma and stress that was happening both outside of the home in the city that we lived and inside the home with health-related issues,

She wasn't really able to be present to me except in those moments, right, where she was fostering the things that I was good at, which it was very clear that I was successful academically and athletically from a very early age, and seemingly both came easy to me.

It's not to say that I didn't spend, as I'm sure you did as well, a lot of time honing my skill, practicing all of my outside hours.

I was training and working, though I seemingly excelled easily.

And so yes, the message that I got was, in those moments, I'm worthy.

When I'm bringing home the A's, when I'm winning the softball game, when people are celebrating how good I am at those things, again, with the goal being security in adulthood, I'm seen.

I'm good enough.

I'm worthy.

And I got very adaptive as we all do at very quickly identifying the things that I wasn't immediately good at and not pursuing those.

So I did have this implicit learning while it wasn't spoken to me that there are gifts and talents that I have and some things that I'm not good at.

And I just kind of filtered life, staying on the path of comfort, excelling the way that I knew how.

But I think what's important for all of my work and the understanding that I want to give listeners is

All of that was a beautiful adaptation.

Of course, the path I picked of achievement, excelling, perfectionism, so to speak, happened to be a path that was quite celebrated in society and in many ways did map on to opportunities that I was then offered

Though we all have that part of us, I call it the inner child, it doesn't leave no matter how old we are, how beyond our childhood, how much we don't want to look back or maybe do, it impacts us.

For many of us, it's in reactions, it's in identities, it's in our way of being that at one time was our best attempt at safety, security, or connection and worthiness in our earliest environments.