Dr. Nicole LePera

I'm still a work in progress because my protective habit for so long has been to dissociate or to disconnect.

Not surprising, right, that I pursued the field of clinical psychology where I can live in my mind.

I can understand things from a distant vantage point.

I still call it my spaceship.

that I go off onto.

And I go to my spaceship, and this is because I've observed my patterns, when what I'm feeling in my body is too uncomfortable.

I don't want to be in there, right?

The quickest path out is to distract myself with someone else, with the next achievement.

So for me, I'm still working on tending to my daily habits so that my body feels a safer place.

but also knowing that it's a choice for me to have those moments where I'm reconnecting.

Once I'm in my body, I'm still learning how to be present with uncomfortable feelings.

I struggle often to give language to what I'm feeling, especially when I'm in the moment of a feeling.

It sometimes takes me time to gain clarity on

What is just agitated overwhelm in one moment.

It might be a couple minutes, hours, even days like, oh, wow, I'm feeling hurt by what it is that happened.

But I can't still yet do that in the moment because I'm still in a state of flooding where it's too much and I don't have the capacity to hold what I'm feeling and to in real time share it with someone else.

So instead I react and I then shamefully come back and say, hey, I'm sorry about that reaction.

I was really stressed and this is what I really meant in that moment.

But I'll admit it happens after the fact once I'm calm, because again, my practice is to just become overwhelmed and either disconnect or react from a feeling that I don't yet have clarity on.

it's helping me make them more real, right?