Dr. Nicole LePera

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.

And what is happening is we're becoming emotionally flooded because those are the confusing moments, right, where we have all the no and we know that these habits and we don't want to be saying or doing these things or we want to stay connected because this person is important to us.

Yet our body goes into a stress driven autopilot, so to speak.

Where we tune in somewhere down the line, right?

Sometimes hours later, sometimes days later, right?

And it's like, oh, gosh.

And we carry then shame based on the reactions that we've had.

So my hope is always to not only give, right, the why in those moments.