Nicole LePera

We can't put things into words, though our body is being conditioned.

It's learning.

It's absorbing those direct messages and those indirect messages.

And then if and when she would say something, if I was having an emotion that she felt, you know, was too overwhelming and dysregulating or sharing my own perspective, I would get told to stop mouthing off.

Right.

So this idea that what I was saying.

Again, it wasn't necessarily direct what she was saying, but the message was the way you're being, as indicated by my look or by your self-expression of an emotion being defined as mouthing off, the more consistently – and again, I want to be clear.

We're talking about consistent moments.

Yes.

Not one look, one time.

This was so consistently the dynamic, the weather in my home that I learned that mom –

And her emotions are to be managed.

So if that means stopping my behavior, not sharing my perspective or opinion or emotional experience, in childhood when we need those connections for our physical and emotional survival, we'll listen to those messages before we'll listen to ourself.

So looking at a picture, and again, for the many that might be listening who don't have access to pictures to be able to see themselves, we can also do this exercise by calling to mind ourself as a child, a moment in childhood, a childhood room, something we like to do.

And when we're doing that, what is happening for us is kind of bypassing the logical, story-driven, possibly critical part of our brain.

And we're more connecting with the emotional sense of ourself in childhood.

It's so much harder to criticize when you see your little face or you're envisioning yourself small in a room tucked in a corner and you see your posture and your body language.

And so

We're activating, again, that empathetic, compassionate center on the right side of our brain, which helps us connect with everything that we're talking about, all of these stored emotions.

And so by looking at a picture, calling to mind ourself, we can not only connect with how it felt to live in that childhood body, but we can begin to explore some questions like, what is it that I wanted or needed to happen in that moment?