Nicole LePera

What would have been helpful?

Would it have been just a moment of someone saying, hey, you're sad and I totally get it?

might it have been more nurturance more support maybe we needed someone to advocate for us to put up a boundary around something that was happening around us that was making us feel unsafe so that moment of awareness and again it's not we're not worried about the story so for all of you listening out there who don't have the story as i do not as well we're looking about we're interested in the feelings right what's coming up in my body as i'm looking at myself i actually wore i don't have it on today but

Through the three years of writing this book, I had a locket and I had a little picture of myself.

So every moment where, because we meet our inner child, not only in these kind of reactive moments that I think a lot of us carry a lot of shame around, but sometimes we've created a whole identity.

And so not having the attunement I needed, not feeling enough just to be how I was, mouthing off or not, sharing my opinion or not, I learned how to

perform, to achieve, to be a perfectionist.

Nowhere is that more evident than when I'm writing a book and I labor over every word, every chapter.

I try to make it perfect so that everyone reading it will gain benefit and not misunderstand anything I'm trying to say.

It's not only, again, these moments of reactivity where we're exploding outward or shutting down and disconnecting.

For some of us, it's our way of being because that's become safe and protective for us.

So for me, opening the locket, reminding my inner child that I am enough as I am.

So the same thing happens, again, if we want to pull out a photograph.

A lot of people I know will put it as the background on their phone.

It's just a daily reminder that we're carrying that being.

In the sensations, reactions, even sometimes in the identities that we've constructed, all to maintain those safe and secure connections or whatever version of that was available in our childhood.

And when we're talking about familiar, as always, I want to connect it to the importance of familiar in our body.

Our body, even if familiar, is dysfunctional, results in burnout or whatever kind of familiar has become for us or confusion.

I don't know who I am.

It to our nervous system is the safest path because it's predictable.