Bialik’s Breakdown: w/ Holistic Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera (Transcript)

Why would we want to seemingly blame our parents? I think that’s another common interpretation — “Oh, you’re telling me that they’re bad people” — when in reality I think a lot of us have the awareness that our parents really truly did the best they could.

And regardless of how we feel about our past experience or even how much access we have to what happened in our past — because you’ll hear me often talk about how a lot of my childhood is blank, I could not retell the story, so to speak — the reality is we’re enacting that past in these moments, especially within our connections, within our relationships.

So regardless of the difficulty, something I also want to emphasize here is that gaining understanding for what made us the way that we are doesn’t necessarily mean that we are removing the impact or we’re making the impact okay. We can still pull back and say, “I understand the circumstances, the environments, maybe even the parenting that my parents experienced themselves that contributed to their lack of ability to be a consistent, stable caregiver and give me the attunement that I needed. And still, I am impacted in the following ways.”

So we have to hold space, understand that it will be uncomfortable, but we’re not blaming and we’re not actually being stuck in our past. This is our opportunity to finally move forward in a new way.

Insight Alone Isn’t Enough

JONATHAN COHEN: Insight isn’t enough. And I can speak from my own experience. I feel really comfortable at the level of the mind, understanding all the dynamics. And I’m like, “That makes sense to me. I see that pattern. Okay, great, I got it.” But that’s different than actually going and facing those parts that were hurt in a way that we can’t intellectualize, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And for a lot of us — I’m much like you — insight is a really smart protection strategy. When we’re living in our mind, when we’re analyzing — I mean, I trained to become a clinical psychologist. I was so comfortable up here because everything that was living in my body was so overwhelming.

But when we’re talking about the inner child, in my opinion, when we’re talking about creating change in any area, we’re not just talking about the mind. Yes, the mind is incredibly powerful. We all know that when we imagine a scenario and we are reliving it in felt experience, it’s the felt experience that retrains our nervous system. And now we know scientifically through neuroplasticity that we can create that change, but it’s not going to be from the top down.

I think even as my field for so long emphasized cognitive behavioral therapy — this idea that you change your thoughts, you change the way you experience the world — the case we’re now making in the field is that those messages go both ways. We have to change the way our nervous system is processing events and our daily experiences so that we can become more responsive and not rely on the old instinctual, gut-driven habits that feel like they’re just who we are.

Multiple Timelines: Versions of Ourselves Driving the Bus

JONATHAN COHEN: A lot of our conversations talk about psi phenomenon, metaphysical, trying to understand the structure and form of the universe. And I think there is a very particular angle to that in this conversation that may help people move away from, “Oh, I have to go revisit my childhood,” which can feel like a drag.

The way that I think about it is that there are multiple timelines playing out simultaneously, and you’re not actually in this timeline fully. There are versions of ourselves that are actually driving the bus, and they are going to poke their head out and take control in any moment, and it will impact your ability to get where you want to go in this timeline if you don’t look at that stuff.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: 100%. And those, again, are the moments where we’re literally pulled back in time. I will be the first to admit I have a lot of moments where I’m acting seemingly out of character, where my responses are a bit more immature. I’m screaming, I’m yelling something that I could be communicating much more calmly and groundedly, or I’m shutting down completely. And just like my mom did to me, I’m giving the silent treatment. I’m not talking to anyone.

And we’ve been on the receiving end of those as well — disproportionate reactions where on the surface they feel confusing, but if we understand this beautiful timeline analogy, they do look very childlike. They are in action, in emotion. When we think of a child even having a tantrum, they are just emoting, and that’s kind of what we look like. So when I even say immature, I’m not trying to degrade anyone in any way. It is a beautiful way to think about it. It’s like we do go back in time in a very real way.

JONATHAN COHEN: Like if we think of the Marvel analogy, a little portal has opened up somehow in this moment and we just got sucked backwards. The work is actually how do we stay here?

The 9 Types of Childhood Wounds

MAYIM BIALIK: You talk about different types of wounds, and there’s this notion of the wounded inner child. And I think a lot of us kind of brush past it — “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it got hurt, whatever.” You go through 9 different types of wounds. I’m just going to name them right now. There’s distrust, abandonment, rejection, humiliation, over-responsibility, scarcity, rebellion, powerlessness, and injustice.

So these are the different kinds of wounds. And some people might be like, “Yes to all.” It’s hard to be experiencing all of those. But what I love is this last column — “What’s the adult pattern?” So if your wound type is one of distrust, you will be guarded, suspicious. You’ll create emotional distance or sabotage because the internalized belief is that people are unsafe and trust leads to betrayal.

JONATHAN COHEN: Over-responsibility is really interesting because a lot of people think, “I was so responsible,” and they get praised for being so mature beyond your years — “You’re an old soul. You can handle this.”

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah.

MAYIM BIALIK: Well, as an adult, you will find yourself compulsively caretaking, experiencing burnout, and having difficulty setting boundaries. Also, a rejection wound leads to people pleasing, perfectionism, and hiding authenticity.

I mean, if you don’t know what kind of wound you had, look at what your last 4 exes said about you, or look at what — when you get really, really rigorous and honest with yourself — what am I actually doing? I’m overfunctioning. I’m having urgency. I’m shutting down emotionally. Oh, guess what? That’s scarcity. It’s very interesting. And to me, this is a very interesting way to also map what happened in our homes of origin.

Where Do You Start If You Don’t Remember Your Past?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And what you’re beautifully describing is a great starting point, because I often get that question, especially again from people who say, “I don’t want to go back there,” or who don’t have access to the story. A lot of people then will think, “Well, can I heal? Where do I even start?”

And we start right here, right now, with what are those moments where we’re having big, urgent, overwhelming reactions, or even the more consistent roles and identities that we have assumed are just who we are. I can even go as far as to make a case that some of these roles are celebrated by society. The overachiever who’s endlessly exhausting and saying yes to everything gets all of the accolades. The person who is shutting down sometimes is the easygoing, low-maintenance person. The person who is passionately erupting every now and again is the person who has so much passion and motivation and drive. And so the list really goes on.

I think now society to some extent has created not only stress that becomes the moments where these wounds are activated, but it’s actually created a kind of self-fulfilling validation cycle where we get accolades similar to the experience in childhood where connection and safety and love and attention came in these moments. We keep repeating them because our body doesn’t update that circumstances have changed, that I’m older now, that I might have access to safe relationships. Yet I continue to feel unsafe in even safe circumstances, again, because that memory at one time and those reactions are quite literally what I had to do to maintain the connections that kept me alive.

The Impact of Emotionally Immature Parenting

MAYIM BIALIK: There’s a lot of talk now about emotionally immature parents. And we had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Lindsay Gibson, who kind of literally wrote the book. But there’s kind of an aspect of that that gets highlighted in your book and kind of in the work that you do. Can you talk a little bit about what it means when we have parents who are doing the best that they can, but ultimately they’re not really emotionally mature? And what does that look like for us? And what does that do to someone when you are parentified?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: First, emotional maturity really, generally speaking, is the ability to be with, tolerate, process, and respond responsively to our emotions. And so while emotions, right, these kind of sensory experiences that send us information about how we’re experiencing the world around us, right? A racing heart tells us that we’re scared, there’s a threat. So these are wired into us. What is not, however, is the capacity or the ability to know what to do with the feelings that we’re having.

So understanding what emotional maturity is, I think, can kind of give them a greater understanding of why the large majority of us as adults, even with very well-intentioned parents, did not have that sort of modeling in childhood. Because parents are humans who were also raised by other humans, some of which in generations where whether or not kind of given their environment, they were dealing with scarcity or they were living in an actually threatened environment where there was war or other abuse or trauma.

They didn’t have the tools, even as recently as— it blows my mind that my field would have professed a parenting method that is now so counter to what we now understand about the nervous system, which is this idea that a child in infancy can cry to the point where they calm themselves down. Of course, I’m referencing the Cry It Out method. Again, it was developed by doctors. It was professed by doctors and by some doctors still. But that is not the reality.

Not only do we need physically present parents who have the means, the resources, the money, the finances, the attention, they need to emotionally, right, know what to do with their own self. So for all of these reasons, I think very few of us had that modeling in action. And the result then is we suffer our own trauma. We’re left alone with very big emotions, and then we develop our own often dysfunctional coping strategies that we continue to carry with us.

Parentification: When Children Carry Adult Burdens

MAYIM BIALIK: What does it mean when a child is parentified, when you have to take care of a parent’s needs? And in some cases, and in many parts of this country and the world, children do have to help take care of other children, and they do have to, if parents are working, and that’s sometimes it, it’s just what happens. But what does that look like for that child? And what does it look like as an adult?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: One of the most common byproducts of emotional immaturity then is parentification, or a role reversal in a sense, where a child either in practical ways where they’re quite literally caring for the home, caring for siblings, cooking, doing kind of actual daily tasks. Oftentimes you will see this, at least in this country, and I’m sure all countries, in immigrant families where for many different reasons the child is left in care of or needing to translate for conversations that are so developmentally out of the realm of ability for the child.

But more commonly, emotional parentification. Right, where there are blurred boundaries. The parent relies on the child, vents to the child emotionally, turns to them for support, shares private details about what’s happening maybe within their marriage or within the co-parenting. Imagine someone doing that. And sometimes though, what is important to understand is these are often a reaction to the parent’s own childhood, right? If a parent was left alone in their own emotions, sometimes they very much think, well, I’m not going to hurt my child in that way. My child will never be alone. We’re going to be so close, we’re going to be besties, right? So sometimes well-intentioned choices that we’re making to right the hurt of our own childhood lead to— so then the byproduct, of course, then is a child who feels overly responsible, often overextends themself in relationships, says yes when they mean no, and then gradually begins to develop resentment, which is very the natural feeling that we have when our needs aren’t being met, or when we’re pleasing or appeasing or caring for the world around us to the extent that we even feel responsible for other people’s feelings as if we can stop them or change them.

And so it really is very pervasive reparenting, whether or not we were again in practical care of the home or emotional care of the home. So many of us, right, were mature beyond our years and then we prided ourselves on that. And now we have some dysfunctional habits where we’re not even cared for in our relationships.

Seeking Familiar Dynamics in Relationships

JONATHAN COHEN: In that scenario, people can also not feel close to other people unless they’re in that dynamic, because that’s what was modeled to them as closeness. If someone isn’t sharing everything about their problems or that person that they’re dealing with, or if especially a parent is processing what’s happening in their marriage with a child and using that child as emotional comfort or a sounding board, then they go into what may be a more healthy relationship with boundaries, and all of a sudden it feels super boring.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, we begin to then gravitate and seek, right, that which we know. And so closeness equals caretaking, so we attempt to be the caretaker, or we do get confused and feeling like something is being kept from us if we’re not fully given all of the story, the information.

The reality is, in a healthy relationship there is something I had to learn myself and still learning. Separation, right? There’s space for me, space for you. We share feelings and I can support your feelings, but never are they my responsibility. Never were they to begin with. We don’t cause feelings in someone else.

Going back to something you brought up a bit earlier, all of these again are beliefs that at a natural developmental time early in life, we only had ourselves to blame. We’re in what we kind of know as an egocentric state. It makes sense in childhood. We are the center of our universe. We can’t zoom out and see all of these different factors. So someone’s actions or inactions reflect on us and impact us directly.

So we have to teach ourselves right over time that that separation— you’re here, I’m there. Your feelings are not my responsibility. I can support them and love you through them and be present, but I can’t take them away, nor was I the cause of them in the first place.

Learning That You Are Not Responsible for Others’ Feelings

MAYIM BIALIK: I mean, I remember the first time I heard that. I mean, I’m embarrassed to say how old I was, the first time that was articulated to me. And it sounded foreign. It sounded like another language. And it’s not like I remember ever being explicitly told, “Your responsibility is to take care of my feelings.” You don’t. That’s not how it’s told to you. But it’s told through a million paper cuts, right? It’s just like a million paper cuts of “make me feel better, I will come to you when I need that.”

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Right.

The Challenge of Parenting and Inner Child Work

MAYIM BIALIK: Those are the messages that you receive that make this mountain of “I am responsible, I’m powerful.” This is the basis of a lot of 12-step work or CODA or Al-Anon — things like that — is, guess what? You’re not responsible. I mean, you’re part of it, and there are consequences of interacting with people.

I’m always interested in why people don’t want to do this work. And I’m sure you are too, because this is what you do. But one of the things — and it was when you mentioned the Cry It Out method — I think one of the reasons a lot of people are loath to think about the inner child is because if they are parents, they are simultaneously learning about the things that they may have already done that have caused a challenge to their child.

You know, Jonathan and I are huge natural birth hippie people. I wrote a book on attachment parenting and my experience with that, and I got my head served to me on a platter for implying that breastfeeding is a natural thing that mammals do. And there’s obviously an extension of that.

But this notion that many people feel, “I did the best I could. Leave me alone. I didn’t have any other options, so I just let them cry until they threw up and everybody seems fine now.” What does it look like to be able to say we may be also creating something as we parent? How do you open that up for people? It’s terrifying. I’m already thinking as I’m reading it, did I do this to my kid? My kid’s very organized. Is it because I created chaos? How do you approach that?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I think again, it’s with sensitivity, with grace, with compassion, because — I mean, no bigger role in my opinion is it to raise a child, to be in care of literally a dependent creature who needs you for every single thing. I mean, that is just so beyond our capacity even at times.

MAYIM BIALIK: Well, we do it alone in this culture also, which is not how mammals are supposed to do it, right?

Parenting, Shame, and the Limits of Our Capacity

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: From family, from support, there’s just so much stress. And so it is natural and normal, I think, to mess up our child, to not show up perfectly.

So with that aside, my hope is always — and why I’m always going into the science, the underlying creation of these habits — is so that the parent who is feeling shameful or upset about what it is they have done, that they can again expand to understand that they were doing exactly what they learned to do.

And the reality of it is, we do need more support. We are at capacity. Sometimes we don’t have the bandwidth to come into a room with a crying child and be a calm, regulated figure. So to some extent, pausing for a couple of minutes before we open that bedroom door might be the best plan of action.

So the other takeaway is I hope that all parents understand that they too are a human who has their own needs and their own capacity, many of which are well beyond. So with that said, I will often follow that up with some practical tools. How can a parent not only be more compassionate about why they’re struggling in ways that they’re feeling shameful about, but how can they begin to make small shifts in their current circumstances so that they can be more resilient, so that they could rebuild their capacity — which might even be looking for support, telling someone when you need help.

Because again, a lot of us have this idea that it’s selfless to show up and do everything on our own, or that we’ve learned that that’s strength. We’ve learned that vulnerability is weakness. So to be a strong person, we can’t tell anyone.

I have this patterning in me. It is so difficult to tell someone when I am in a state of vulnerability because I did not have a parent who was able — when I was stressed in childhood, it just added, seemingly — again, nothing directly said — to more stress in the household. So it became safer for me to hide my problems, so to speak, and deal with them alone. So I still have that deep feeling in me of, “Don’t tell anyone that you’re needing something, because then you’ll be seen as weak or a burden.”

Mismatched Parents and Children

MAYIM BIALIK: And there’s also something to — some kids and parents — and this is true for us when we were kids, and it’s true for us if we are parents — some kids and parents have a more natural gelling. They get each other more and they often are more similar, but sometimes they’re not. That’s another kind of shade here, that if you have a parent who is mismatched essentially with their kid, it doesn’t mean they don’t love them, it doesn’t mean they’re not trying, but there’s a possible wound waiting to be inflicted.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I was sharing the capacity thing because I used to work with a lot of new mothers and they would come in and be so shameful, and I knew they wanted to say something. And then finally they would come out with it, and they would say, “I’m struggling. Sometimes I hate my kid. They’re too much. I want to shake them.” I understand why people — and this was not a dangerous parent at all. This was a parent who was at capacity.

Another reality that’s very hard to say is sometimes, yeah, just like in our adult relationships, some people you just vibe with more. You’re on the same wavelength, you have the same interests. And other people are like a little Martian — you don’t really get them, they feel like a little alien — and that’s all okay.

So the final thing I want to say to parents is there’s never a too late. Coming to this awareness, having honest conversations, telling your children — “You know what, I didn’t show up in the way that I would have wanted to.” We think again that we have to hide all of that from our kids because we don’t want them to think less of us. Sometimes those are the most real healing conversations that we could have — those moments of repair when, “You know what, it was a little hard to connect with you in childhood because we have different interests. And I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be present.” That could go such a long way because now you’re giving language to the felt experience.

When you were talking about things not being directly said — they’re often not. They’re indirectly felt. But those feelings are real and they’re forming the beliefs and they’re forming habits. So if you finally say, “Here’s language that aligns — you weren’t wrong, your reality was valid.” Mom was, dad was unavailable for whatever reason. “Mama cried a lot. Mom was overwhelmed, and a lot was going on, and it had nothing to do with you.” Because that’s another thing children will do.

The Danger of Too Much Information

MAYIM BIALIK: They’ll implicate the other parent also. Like if I said, “I was really struggling” — you don’t want them to think, “Was she struggling because he wasn’t helping?” You don’t want to insert — I mean, that’s what’s also hard. Because a lot of — and this is actually something I’d love for you to speak to. Sometimes when we get really self-aware and we go to therapy and we do all the things and we read the book and we check off all the things and we do all the charts, we can almost have too much information that can often overwhelm children. It can also overwhelm partners who are not at that level. Can you speak a little bit about how to have this information but be able to also gauge when and where you get to put it out into the world?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I think the important thing is to understand and get honest with ourselves about what our intention or expectation is when we’re sharing information. Because a lot of times we’re sharing information to impact change, to make someone do something different. “I want to tell you something about yourself” — to hear ourselves talk — so that I feel valid and my reality is real. And now I’m gifting this awareness to you so that now you can do something about it. You can stop doing what you’re doing or do a little more of what I need you to do. There is an intention there.

Not to say that — of course we sometimes want our partners or need our partners to change, and a vantage point of someone who’s not ourselves can begrudgingly sometimes be the information that we need to integrate into changing. But I think most of us who understand, who are dog-earing pages and doing the work, it is the daily commitment of again creating the new action.

So it’s not to say that one of the intentions of sharing information might not be to create or elicit change in that other person. But I try to use as a marker for even myself — if my intention also doesn’t include my ability to hear myself speak. And the reality in that is my ability to validate my reality, to share my perspective, to say what I might need from you or how I’m experiencing this relationship. That for a lot of us is something we haven’t had the space to do. So if then you don’t live up to the expectation, I still was able to speak my truth.

Fine Is the Enemy of What Might Happen Next

JONATHAN COHEN: When Mayim opened this segment of the conversation about when people feel almost uncomfortable going and looking at these things because the response is often “everything is fine,” what I’m struck by is that we haven’t even begun to realize what human potential is because this is so ingrained and normal. So many people are living life stuck, confused, emotionally unregulated, not even realizing what emotional dysregulation is because they’re spending so much time trying to manage those emotions through distraction or digital distraction or strange dynamics, either in relationships or at work or elsewhere.

And so we haven’t even begun to say, “How do we connect with intuition and have it guide us? How do we feel more alive? And how do we feel inspired to do the things in the world that we’re excited by?” Because everything is just fine. Fine is the enemy of what might happen next.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, we become so much these feeling states, and survival modes have been so normalized that they really just feel like who we are and how we will always be and what society has contributed to. And so this is now just what the human allotment has been.

And then this is a function of our nervous system — it prefers familiar, even if familiar comes with fineness or a lack of fulfillment. It becomes that home base that we continue to gravitate toward. And often it does take such a movement outside. It’s kind of even this common scenario — some of us don’t even realize how much we’re clenching our jaw until you’re asked to unclench your jaw. “Oh my God, I didn’t even realize it was clenched until you prompted me to drop my tongue from the roof of my mouth down and allow my mouth to hang open. Wow, that feels very different than how I normally feel.” It took me changing to inspire then the realization of, “Wait a minute.” And I think you’re right. A lot of this has been so normalized at a societal level that we’ve lost sight of potential.

Patterns Beyond Parenting: Friendships, Work, and Self

JONATHAN COHEN: And if someone is listening and is like, “Well, I don’t have a child, I’m in a relationship where it’s fine, or I may not be in a relationship” — can you talk about how these patterns relate to friendships, relate to being at work, relate to anything that you want to do in life? It’s not just about raising children.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Oh, 100%. These patterns follow us across relationship type, not just reserved for romantic relationships or family relationships. Including the relationship with ourself — from how we define our own worth to the things that we do when no one’s looking, and the habits and dysfunctional things that are shameful moments that we want to avoid. All of that was something that we learned.

Because we also in childhood not only learn how to show up to continue to preserve connections or avoid disconnection — we learn messages about who we are. And so many of us have this internalized messaging that doesn’t say that we’re a worthy creature who’s creative with endless potential. We have all of this belief around our own limitations that we then continue to carry. So it is so pervasive. It’s not just within relationships, it’s not definitely within just parenting relationships as well.

The Somatic Impact of Suppressed Emotions

MAYIM BIALIK: Also along the lines of the jaw, you know, it’s a great example. And if anyone’s ever been led through a guided meditation, the first time that you’re actually listening and getting it, you realize, oh, there’s all these places in my body that I didn’t realize. And I wanted to mention, as we know, the body keeps the score, right? And some of us have a tendency to clench in our lower back. And you get a lot of these reports. And Dr. Sarno was kind of the first to sort of turn this on its head and say, wait, there seems to be a personality type relating to people whose backs keep going out. What is going on?

And indeed, that’s a commonplace. A lot of people will have stomach problems, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, all these things that we’re told it’s genetic. There’s nothing you can do. Well, guess what, everyone? Medicine has completely changed in the last, at least the last 20 years. I think we’ve started talking in such a different way, and especially the last 10 years. Can you talk a little bit about the somatic impact of shoving this stuff down? Because I think a lot of people might say, you know what, I’m just going to put chocolate cake and alcohol and cigarettes and weed on top of this, and that will be heavy enough to keep it down, right? What happens in our bodies? What happens in our nervous systems when we don’t tackle this?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: It doesn’t go away, right? And emotion is energy. So repressed, right? Kind of pushed down energy. Even if we’re not paying attention to it, we’ve gotten very savvy not paying attention to it. It is signaling stress to our nervous system. It is quite literally keeping us in a pervasive state, a chronic state of stress. So our own emotions then become, right, our body stressor. And if we were never able to process or allow the tension to release, or right, all of the different hormones that contribute to the different emotional experiences to be metabolized, then it continues to impact some systems like our fascia, this kind of web-like casing that covers all of our organs and our muscles. And it then continues to activate as if we’re still having the stress experience.

And so I know for me, I have such tension all across my midsection, like the trunk of my body, because one of the major muscles, the psoas, that kind of connects to all of the major organs and allows us to spring into action when we need it. Though, if we are constantly signaling stress because it’s real in our environment, or it’s living in our bodies because it’s emotional, then that fascia system is going to become so constricted. And I watched this with my mom, who for a lifetime struggled with chronic pain that was of an unknown origin. She went to every possible doctor under the sun to find out where it was being caused. And the reality of it is, in my opinion, it was being caused by all of this lifetime of constriction and nervous system dysregulation. And to be clear, it was very much real pain in her body. I mean, she would wail and cry at night. It was absolutely heartbreaking. It is very real, but in my opinion, that’s the ultimate.

The Rise of Autoimmune Conditions and the Mind-Body Connection

MAYIM BIALIK: You know what we’re now learning, and again, even 10 years ago, this was sacrilege to talk about. I have a friend who has had Crohn’s since he was very young. And they used to say, “It’s in your head. You just need to take deep breaths,” which is very dismissive to say to a young person who’s in excruciating pain and can’t control their body that way. But what we now know is not sacrilege to say. And we talked with Gabor Maté about this. It’s not normal. It’s not normal for the proportion of women who have autoimmune conditions, for us to act like this is normal, for our bodies to not recognize, right, our own organs, hormones, and glandular systems. And the notion being your immune system is affected by this kind of stress, by holding that emotion in. Your fascia, your immune system. I mean, all of these properties, the way you metabolize nutrients — it should not be considered normal that we have a rise in young people getting cancer. Something’s going on in the system, right? And what if the answer is right here?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Obviously, we too live in a society, in a world where food isn’t natural and we’re living under blue lights and none of us are in the sun and we’re not sleeping well, right? So there’s all of that as well, but there is 100% the internal. And I think the saddest part for those people, right, who are going into doctor after doctor and to some extent being medically gaslit — most of those individuals, right, grew up with that being their kind of initial wound or trauma, which is having a parent who is denying your reality.

So now it’s kind of like a reenactment, right, where you’ve learned that your emotions or your internal instincts, because a parent, right, kind of dismissed your upset, or there wasn’t room for you to have — or there wasn’t room. It was like my family, there was nothing overt, but it was just too much stress to begin with, so there wasn’t room. So over time you begin to kind of deny your own instincts, and now you’re going to a helping professional desperate for an answer. And to some extent you’re being not only re-traumatized because you don’t have an answer and you’re still struggling with autoimmune or whatever the symptom is, but now to some extent you’re being gaslit again, right? You’re being told, “No, that is not what’s actually happening.” You’re being dramatic.

The Denial of a Child’s Reality

JONATHAN COHEN: The denial of reality. I mean, I’m getting a little emotional because it can be so subtle and so destructive. Just to listen when a child speaks and we’re like, “No, that’s not how it happened. That’s not what that toy is for.” And all of a sudden the thing that they were trying to do, which was reach out for connection and share something with you, has been turned into something that tells them that they’re not right, that their internal world doesn’t work, that something is wrong, that they don’t see the world properly. And what does that do to their instincts?

MAYIM BIALIK: It makes you self-conscious, avoidant, self-deprecating, and having shame-driven behaviors. That’s the humiliation wound type.

JONATHAN COHEN: And I want to almost rip another layer off of this when you talked about, “Oh, if I can just fill it with chocolate cake.” People don’t even realize that they’re being driven to an action because of this. And I can speak from my own experience. I came down to the studio like 3 nights ago. And the first thing I did was raid the cupboard and eat all the chocolate. And it wasn’t until a day later that I recognized the emotion that I was going through, the uncertainty that I was having, the navigating like 6 unknown things. And I was like, “Oh, I went there.” And I know I have a sugar problem. But in that moment, all I thought was, “There’s some sugar, I’m going to eat some of it. It’s not a big deal. I haven’t had some in a while.”

How much of the jobs that we pursue, the relationships that we pursue, the video games that we think we’re just trying to conquer — how much of that is a result of us being unable to sit and navigate and feel? Like that child inside of us who said, “Isn’t the world like this?” and was told that it wasn’t, is just trying to find its way.

MAYIM BIALIK: Also, how many of the relationships that we avoid and the jobs that we turn down and the opportunities that are presented to us and we don’t feel worthy, we don’t feel like we can do it, right? I mean, it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere.

Addiction as a Coping Mechanism

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I’m shaking my head because I wouldn’t be sitting here today if I listened to my inner child. As I started to think holistically and speak about what I was doing, first to my partner Lolly, who was with this whole journey from the start, and she was like, “Nicole, this is so important. This is groundbreaking. You need to tell people.” And I was like, “No one wants to listen to me. I cannot go online and tell people.” And it was, and it still is in moments, right? An inner child in me who was like, “No, don’t see and hear me unless I’m in this really curated space of doing things that I know I’m good at,” which is not public speaking in the least.

So for me, right, it is still like — I would have, if I wasn’t aware enough and had a supportive partner to help me work through that resistance, denied my opportunity to even live at impact. But just something quickly about addiction I want to speak to as well, because that’s kind of what we’re getting at. I worked for a very long time with people at different stages of addiction, whether it was inpatient units, outpatient units, and family systems struggling with addiction. I believe, and I speak about this in the book, that addiction isn’t as narrow as we’ve come to believe it to be. I mean, it’s widening a bit now where we have online gambling and this and that, but I think that there are so many behaviors, like you were saying, Jonathan, that are addictions, because addictions are an attempt at coping, right? They’re a coping mechanism in my opinion. They’re not a genetic chip. Yes, habits are passed through generations, just to kind of give language to everything we’re talking about, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are genetically doomed to develop an addiction. An addiction will develop when we have no other way —

MAYIM BIALIK: That’s right.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: — to cope with our emotions. And we feel so deeply shameful that sometimes unworthiness itself becomes the trigger.

MAYIM BIALIK: We’ve spoken to a lot of people about addiction. It’s actually not the problem, it’s the proposed solution.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Exactly. A beautiful, intelligent one at times. It has a lot of terrifying consequences.

MAYIM BIALIK: Of course. Whatever I’m feeling now, I don’t want to feel, so I’m going to — whatever — watch porn, eat, smoke, do drugs, drink. That’s the solution. And that’s why when people get sober, it’s often worse than it was before for the partners and the people who love them, because now you’re seeing your partner with no coping mechanisms. We took their solution away and now they’re stuck with the exact reason they started using. Right.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And to complicate things further, going even back to sugar as a very common addiction that’s very normalized — that I also have myself — sugar has a very interesting kind of physiological reaction inside of us, which to some extent releases oxytocin, which makes us feel good and comforted and connected. And so, right, if kind of tying this all together, if we feel disconnected, unworthy, right, that wound is kind of — if we have a lot of cortisol, sugar becomes the most comforting habit. And most of us have it, if not in the foods that we’re eating anyway, in our cabinets. And then we kind of continue to foster, right, a feeling that is an escape because that’s what coping is. The quickest way — and our nervous system will memorize the quickest way — that one time that was the only way to relieve my discomfort. But it doesn’t again ever go away. It comes out, like you’re saying, in moments where we don’t have the coping tool anymore.

The Body’s Cravings and Emotional Programming

MAYIM BIALIK: And also, the field of functional medicine, and especially functional medicine in the realms of psychology, is kind of showing us that there are certain bodies that will crave things preferentially to try and soothe what’s going on. So we can look now at serotonin receptors. We can look at these things and say, “What was your body programmed to do?” And it makes sense. You hear doctors say, “Oh, if I were looking at this genetic profile, I could predict without even knowing you what your 3 main triggers are and what your 3 main comforts are.” And so often sugar becomes that thing for the depressed personality, the anxious personality. It’s like, “I can’t help it.” And that’s what it feels like. “This feels good. I can’t help it.”

Epigenetics, Shame, and the Inner Child

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Let’s complicate things even further and bring the story way back in time where for some of us, the way our body even metabolizes nutrients or holds on to weight was impacted by environments that we aren’t even a part of. And a lot of us have in our lineages food scarcity or moments where we did not have access to nutrient-dense foods. And so the most amazing adaptive biological solution then is to change the way our genes function, to begin to hold on to fat storage, for the next time where food is scarce.

And so we generations later might be born in a family— my dad has a lot of scarcity wounding behaviors that came from a time where his needs were unmet from past generations that he passed on. When I’m looking around like, why are we holding on to all of this stuff and rotten food in the fridge? It’s still food though, right? And I had to learn— my partner had to teach me that when food stops tasting like anything, there’s no nutrients in it. So I had to remind myself because we just held on, right?

And so we hold on to food, calories, behaviors. We hoard. We do all of these things again some of which are responses to environments that we’re not even living. So to speak to then the body, right, we’re growing up in a body that thinks that there’s no food around and we’re holding on. And then we live in a culture where different bodies are idealized, and now we feel even more shameful and broken because we’re doing everything we can to eat right and yet we can’t lose weight.

MAYIM BIALIK: Well, and also having extra weight on you in generations past meant you could survive whatever was going to happen, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: A sign of wealth, right?

MAYIM BIALIK: At some times the word in Yiddish is lofty. It’s a pleasant word, right? It’s like you’re plump, you’re healthy, you’re healthy, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: If you want to be psychological about it, for some of us it’s a buffer of protection, right? There is just so much that gets wrapped up in bodies, consuming behaviors.

Understanding Shame

MAYIM BIALIK: You devote a healthy and deserving part of the book to shame. I would love to talk about shame. The acronym I’ve heard is “Should Have Already Mastered Everything.” Which is what I think of when I think of shame. And that’s usually what it feels like. I wonder if you can talk a little bit. I mean, there’s many kinds of responses we have to feeling shame, and I hadn’t thought of people pleasing, avoidance, isolation, projection, body consciousness, overcompensation, being controlling, having secrets, being defensive, self-harm. I hadn’t thought of those as— what if we view these as responses to shame? Can you talk a little bit about what shame is, how we feel shame, how we distinguish that from guilt, and what it looks like when a child experiences shame?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: So in contrast to guilt, which is a feeling that we have about a behavior, right, we feel badly about something that we’ve done. Shame is a more pervasive identity-based feeling where we feel badly about who I am. And shame, right, again, back to this idea that I was referencing earlier about we learn who we are and what we’re worthy of in childhood— for more often than not, shame originates in childhood where we weren’t seen as enough just for being who we are, right?

And I think so many people fall into that category, right, where we were only seen to be enough conditionally when we were performing in some way, or when we were easy and quiet and not rocking the boat, or when we were overperforming or caretaking, like we talked about in terms of reparenting. So we and our inherent worth rate gets defined then more by action. And shame, we can— in my opinion at least— we can even map it on to a nervous system state of disconnection, of a shutting down, right, of where we’re actually kind of disembodying ourselves, where we’re disconnecting from our inherent worthiness, right? Only living the certain parts that are showing the world, right? Hiding the things that we think would cause us to be rejected or abandoned again, just like in childhood.

So for so many of us, right, the actions or inactions of our earliest caregivers, again, because of the way our brain developmentally couldn’t zoom out and defer responsibility because none of it ever was ours, right? We assign that meaning. “You didn’t show up for me, or you abused me, parent, whatever it is that you’ve done, because of something unworthy about me.” In childhood, this is the most ultimate form of control.

MAYIM BIALIK: Why?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I can’t pack my bags and leave, but what I can do is notice those cues. And children are very observant. They will notice what pulls a parent closer and maintains connection, or what pushes the parent away. And then we become, right, shameful if we don’t have a parent that says, “You know what, maybe I don’t like what you’ve done.” So to be clear, we have to, of course, teach children boundaries and they have consequences if they do things. Shame is very healthy because it preserves bonds, right? We can’t get rid of shame, but we can—

Guilt vs. Shame: Personal Stories

MAYIM BIALIK: It’s identity, like healthier, right? We identify. And I’m trying to think— I once peeked on a spelling test. We used to have those desks where there was like a little shelf, you know, there’s like a little shelf underneath. And I was pretty sure I knew how to spell. I believe the word was “disappointment,” which is— oh, the irony is not lost on me. And I just peeked and confirmed it. Right. And I ended up confessing because I felt guilt. Right. I felt guilt.

But when I think about what is shame— and Mrs. Cass was a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And there was nothing negative that came of that. But what I can imagine would lead to shame is, “What’s the matter with you?” And if anyone has ever had that screamed in their face by an adult, “What’s the matter with you?”

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Right?

MAYIM BIALIK: And that’s shame, right? “I’m bad. I’m the mistake.” Right? It feels like a personal flaw. I’m reading the chart— leads to hiding, self-criticism, or withdrawal.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Oh, let’s also factor in the school system too, right? This is even beyond parenting in our homes. I mean, I’m just thinking even back to— thankfully the school systems are somewhat changing and there’s alternate schools you can go into to perhaps more individualize a child’s needs. But when we grew up, that’s still mostly for elite people. Wasn’t the case, right?

And also children— I can’t tell you, my partner being one of them, Lolly, shares horrifying stories. She was told very young that she did some aptitude test and when she was very young she was told that she was going to be a tugboat captain. I mean, she, this lives in her mind until today and she is the most brilliant. I mean, stands right next to me, builds this business. I mean, I look up to her in so many ways. And so these things are so heartbreaking.

MAYIM BIALIK: Not that there’s anything wrong with being a tugboat captain.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: No, tugboat captains are great, you know, to all the tugboat captains out there. But I know it’s not her body type, just wouldn’t be right. She’s just not built for it. That life on the sea is not her. But that aside, you know what I mean? So it’s like, it’s sad the messages that we’re given.

Sometimes I have a memory too of— my mom demanded straight A’s. My family did. And that’s because, again, they thought that success and achievement were the way to me to be financially secure in adulthood, which they were somewhat wrong, but not in all ways. So anyway, it turns out that psychologists don’t make all that much money.

MAYIM BIALIK: Nor do they need to get all A’s.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Nor do they. But I have this memory again in a childhood I cannot recall, yet I can recall the day that I did not get an A. I may have gotten like, God, 78, say, for instance. And we had to have our test signed, and I was now met with the most ultimate dilemma. Do I tell my mom, right, and show my mom my 78, which isn’t even like that bad of a grade? I had— it happens, it happens. And I didn’t. Instead— and my mom had the most hard signature to plagiarize.

MAYIM BIALIK: Forged her signature.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And I did it so badly that I like wore the paper, like it was so silly looking that I’m sure my teacher— I did not confess. I was very good at hiding secrets. They’re still tired. My mom, I didn’t—

MAYIM BIALIK: Surprise!

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And yeah, but I did. My teacher probably knew and felt bad for me because I always got straight A’s, and nothing was ever said. But I remember the amount of stress and turmoil because I felt so shameful that this 78, right, was going to reflect so poorly on who I was, and my mom wasn’t going to love me anymore, that I tortured myself to the extent that it’s one of the few memories I have— sitting there laboring over with whiteout trying to sign my mom’s name.

Shame, Intuition, and the Inner Child

JONATHAN COHEN: When we’re talking about shame, and when you were talking about how it would have prevented you from pursuing the life that you ultimately have, can you talk about how these unprocessed emotions, especially shame, can prevent us from following our instincts, following the life path? I believe that each one of us has a unique life path that we’re here to experience, and it’s by being able to follow the signposts, the moments of intuition, that we get there. Can you talk about what it’s like to have access to intuition and then what blocks that?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, so just to kind of continue the conversation with shame— shame is a shutdown, right? We’re actually disconnecting from our intuition. So, right, we begin to live in our mind separate from our body, outsourcing, asking other people what they think because they’re more worthy. And so we’re not even tuning in to where intuition, right, lives inside of us.

Some of us kind of take what I would call loosely the opposite, right, where we are so tuned into someone else, right? We’re hypervigilant. We’re always scanning, always bracing, always looking for every shift in mood. Again, because at that time, that unpredictability in our early environment, we needed to be attuned in that way, right? So now again, we’re not only— we’re not— we’re disconnected to some extent, but we’re overly kind of like activated. We’re misperceiving. I mean, there’s really powerful studies where the more trauma, especially when it’s relationally based, the more likely we are to misinterpret neutral stimuli as threatening, as aggressive, right?

MAYIM BIALIK: So now when we talk about instincts, that’s having your guard up, having your back guard up, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Thinking, like you read earlier, that everyone’s unsafe, that the world is unsafe, that no one is trustworthy, even in a moment where there is safety that is present. So all of the adaptive ways that our nervous system learned to survive in unpredictability and unmet need, right, follow us and then become what feels instinctual, right? Where we’re just sure that we can’t trust this person. We don’t know why, right? Because they’ve not given us any logical reason not to trust them. It’s just that feeling.

So it’s confusing, right? Because we’re like, “Oh, feelings are internal, it’s my compass.” And we have fused survival states for so long, like we’re talking about earlier with the jaw, right? Always being on guard has felt so normal that we do think it’s our intuition talking that’s telling us that no one is safe. But again, it is really an intuition that has been colored and is really a survival mode that is functioning.

MAYIM BIALIK: And also, and I think this speaks to the whole concept of this book. And I want to get into reparenting next. But the notion that you think you’re walking around with an inner child is incorrect. Your inner child is on the outside. It’s interacting with every single person. It’s getting offended. It’s getting hurt. It’s crying. It’s not being able to regulate emotions. It’s filling the God-shaped hole. Your inner child’s on the outside of you.

So all of these wounds, right, that we think are inside and nobody needs to know and you don’t need to know what my mom was like and like, “I’m fine,” right? You’re just pissing them out all over the street.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: They’re visible.

MAYIM BIALIK: You’re not fooling anyone.

Accessing Intuition and Inner Calm

JONATHAN COHEN: Can you take us a little bit further, one step further on this notion of intuition? What is it like to have access to that inner compass?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Having access to an inner compass is having moments of calm, grounded presence. It’s the ability to be flexible, right? We lose flexibility where we become certain things are all or nothing. We’re just so sure that we know your motives. We lose kind of nuance. So we gain that. We see possibility and alternate solutions too, right? We can become so locked and loaded.

MAYIM BIALIK: Creativity, right?

The Nervous System’s Role in Limiting Our Perspective

JONATHAN COHEN: Can we expand on that part? Because I think that may be the biggest piece that people don’t understand. We see our lives as they are, not what they might be able to be. And how does doing this work and reconnecting with that inner compass show us a much wider range of possibility?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: So first, just kind of focusing on why we can’t see or we limit sight. Again, a very practical kind of function of our nervous system is to do just that— shrink awareness so that all we’re focusing on is what we need to focus on, which in a moment of stress is the threat at hand, which is why we become hyperfixated on what’s bothering us, what’s upsetting us. We ruminate on it in our head and we only then can see very limited solutions, right? Usually what has once worked in the past, again, worked being used loosely, meaning the quickest way—

JONATHAN COHEN: Kept you alive.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Kept us alive and the quickest way to ease the discomfort in that moment. But literally our nervous system, our eyes even turn inward. We become hyper-focused on what we need to focus on, which is the thing that’s stressing us out. So then we limit, right, any other possibility, solution, factor that might be contributing to someone’s behavior.

So until we, again, through not just insight, begin to practice regulating a nervous system by first noticing when we’re stressed, right? Taking moments to rebuild a connection with our body so that we can determine how much stress we’re under, right? If we are kind of in a moment of activation. I mean, I know more often than not in a moment of upset, I am certain that how I’m feeling is correct. I will always feel this way. The only solution usually is for you to do something different or say you’re sorry.

MAYIM BIALIK: Or for us to break up.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Or, oh, love that. I even sometimes, I’m so sorry, Lolly, I will say this on air. I sometimes still throw that out, right, in a moment of upset. Why? Because that’s what I learned in childhood, right? Oh, if this isn’t working, any sign of tension or conflict, any sign of disagreement or definitely disappointment, I’m out, right? And so my protection is to remove myself emotionally or sometimes say something really hurtful like, “Maybe this isn’t going to work,” when that’s not what I mean.

Time goes by, I take a walk, I actually allow my body to calm down, and then I’m feeling a little bit sheepish, shameful, right? Because I see another solution. I see a couple that very much loves each other, is safe and secure, but had a hard moment. How many times, right, in time does our perspective naturally shift?

The Absence of Healthy Emotional Regulation Being Modeled

MAYIM BIALIK: That’s something that so many of us never had modeled. And I guess it depends what generation you’re growing up in, but most of us never had healthy emotional regulation modeled.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And definitely not repair, right? What to do after, right? Like anger.

MAYIM BIALIK: I don’t know what anger is supposed to look like.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: No, my mom would give me the silent treatment and then sometimes days, weeks, even months if it was a really bad thing, like when I came out, which was not to be, not the desired outcome. And then it was as if just one day, just out of nowhere, we’re just talking again, right? So no resolution.

MAYIM BIALIK: That’s crazy-making. I mean, that’s reality bending, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: It’s reality bending, right? You’re left to wonder. I mean, obviously you get the sense that you caused that, and so what happens now? Any movement of distance, right?

MAYIM BIALIK: I—

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Or tension, or you’re not responding to me in the way or as quickly as I want, right? The inner child is there and it’s like, “Oh, I know what this means. This means you did wrong, Nicole. This means you did bad.” And sometimes, right, the best solution is to push you away before I’m hurt even more.

JONATHAN COHEN: And it will happen in friendships, it will happen in work dynamics, it will happen with other family members that are not your children, your cousins. Like, it happens everywhere.

MAYIM BIALIK: Well, because you’re the common denominator.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And how often at work, right, feedback comes and you’re convinced you’re losing your job. You get an email about a standard meeting tomorrow and you’re spiraling, right?

MAYIM BIALIK: Or you want to quit, or you’re going to leave, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: “Screw you, I’ll leave you first before you fire me.” When in reality, there’s a part of your mind maybe that knows you’re doing well at work, you just got a great evaluation, but in that moment, right, the inner child is online and is convinced that someone’s mad at you, that you’re not appropriate at this job anymore.

JONATHAN COHEN: And if you’re trying to do your own thing, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re like, “Well, how do I see a solution to a problem?” Life is really just a series of problems that we have to navigate and a series of disconnections. And if we don’t know how to navigate those disconnections, then we don’t have options in front of us.

Reparenting as Rewiring: Why It’s Not Just “Fluffy” Inner Child Work

MAYIM BIALIK: You talk about the different kind of spheres, right? The spheres that we operate in, that we kind of as primates need to operate in. And the section of the book that is dedicated to reparenting methodically and really beautifully goes through each of these spheres, right? So if this is a desire that was quashed, here are the exercises, the thoughts, the actions you can take to repair that, and you go through each of the spheres.

So we’re not going to be able to get into all of them. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit for people who, again, might kind of roll their eyes at this notion of reparenting. That sounds so soft, right? It sounds like I don’t have access to that. You talk about reparenting as rewiring, and I feel like that’s a really great place for you to help us understand why this isn’t some fluffy “get in touch with your inner child and kumbaya.” This is like your brain is operating a certain way.

And if you are having any dissatisfaction within yourself, in your relationships, at your work, with friendships, if something’s not right, if people are accusing you of being sensitive or reactive or aggressive, or you feel like your picker’s off with who you’re dating, right? It’s likely because there’s something going on that wired into your system. How does reparenting change that wiring?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, so those dysfunctional habits, right, usually come online in moments where there’s a similarity to those earliest experiences, whether the similarity is the first sphere that I talk about. The foundation of any change is creating safety and security in our body, reconnecting with it first, right? Noticing when our body is feeling unsafe, noticing when our muscles are clenching, our heart is racing, our breath is quickening, or we’re holding our breath and slowing down our movement, slowing down our breathing, right? Releasing that tension, not just one time but consistently over time, right? Where we’re sending signals.

So this is right for all the people who are like, “I know I’m safe, but I can’t rest, I can’t relax, I can’t sleep at night, right? I know my partner is coming home to me, yet I have all of these racing thoughts of how unsafe I am.” So by noticing— of course, all change begins with awareness first— then choosing small shifts that we can make to create safety.

Because what reparenting really is, it’s a journey where we’re kind of accompanying ourselves on development and becoming the safe, nurturing, compassionate, supportive, not only in thought but in action, caregiver. And that thought piece is important because once we have an understanding of, right, these were habits that were formed in an environment where safety was scarce or unpredictable or security, or I could not just show up, or I didn’t feel worthy being who I am, right?

So for a lot of us, that part of us gives us compassion for these parts because I think we’re all agreeing they’re not going away. We keep ourselves though disconnected from our fullness when we’re shaming those parts, when we’re not understanding that for some of us, our inner critic— the intention of it is protection, right? We learned in childhood that being a little too dramatic caused mom to scream or yell, or for me, stop talking to me. So I learned to be a little less dramatic. Now I have that voice that’s reminding me of what’s going to happen when I’m too dramatic, right? That is protection.

So everything that we’re struggling with, if we can just soften to the reality that, A, it’s there, B, it’s there for a reason, right? It formed at a time where that was the only option we had, that was what we needed to do to create safety. And then C, expand our awareness to the possibility that we can begin to show up in a new way, because that’s what reparenting and healing really is. It’s learning how to experience the current moment in a new way with a new choice.

Change Happens Gradually, Not All at Once

JONATHAN COHEN: And I think it’s important to emphasize that you don’t need to heal all of your trauma before you notice any difference, right? It’s when we say “you need to calm down, you need to relax,” we’re not saying that you have to be in a relaxed state all the time, and nor can you.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: So another disclaimer here is there is no— I have not found, if any listeners have, please, the holistic psychologist, please find me— there is no kind of “I’m done, I’m healed, I’m kumbaya zen all the time.” The human experience is colored with difficulty, with emotion, with struggles, with disconnection, with disagreement, right? So the goal is to just equip ourselves to show up with intention and alignment, right, where I can choose how I want to move forward.

And the reality of it is, change does come in gradually. It doesn’t happen in one lightning strike of a dramatic, insightful moment where now the wand has been waved and I just totally feel differently. And more often than not, we don’t feel differently for some time, right? We have to show up. And this is what I think prevents a lot of us from starting, myself included. I want to wait until I feel like starting, or until I feel inspired, until I maybe feel comfortable speaking publicly to bring my story back, right? If I would have been waiting for that, I would still be waiting, right?

I had to show up uncomfortably at first, right? Talk myself off of every ledge of how terrible I am and what people are going to think. Sometimes even get verified about how terrible I am and what people think, right? And I had to keep doing it anyway. Now my experience and my feeling has begun to shift. But again, if we go in with the expectation to wait till we feel differently, that it’s not going to take committed action, we’re going to continue to be frustrated or maybe blame the world around us.

MAYIM BIALIK: Like, guess what? This is life, right? Meaning there’s not— I mean, obviously there’s a beginning and we’re kind of always in the middle, but we never know when the end is, right? So the work that we’re doing, that’s the work of your life. So every relationship that you’re in, that’s an opportunity to practice. And for those of us who think of a higher power or of God, like God or the universe, if you don’t like God, the universe will keep giving you an opportunity.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Sure it will. To repair, right?

MAYIM BIALIK: It will keep saying, “How about now? How about now?” Like, we’re trying to give you the lessons. Correct. This is the story of the flood, right? And the fireman knocks on the door and the guy’s like, “God’s going to save me.” And then a boat comes along and he’s like, “God’s going to save me.” Helicopter. He’s like, “God’s going to save me.” And he gets to heaven and God says, “I sent you a fireman, I sent you a boat, and I sent you a helicopter. What?” You know, reach your hand out, right? So this is kind of that work. It will follow you. Emotions are like pee, right? You can try and hold them in, but they’re going to come out.

Sibling Dynamics and the Roots of Anger

JONATHAN COHEN: I’ll share a personal experience of something that I think I experienced very early in my life that repeated and repeated and repeated. And it’s going to tie back to this idea of sibling abuse, which I think a lot of people haven’t even considered that someone very close to them could be causing a huge emotional conflict.

I had a very intense relationship with my older brother. I loved him unconditionally. He was the greatest thing in the world. And also he was much bigger than me. And almost as a way to interact with him when he was ignoring me, I would taunt him like crazy. And then he would attack me, and then I’d be really upset, and we had this back-and-forth dynamic. And especially as we got older, he would hurt me. The rage I felt towards him was like no rage I could possibly ever experience, because I loved him so much that when he got to that place where I was so physically hurt, I would just be out of my mind angry.

That rage followed me into another relationship years and years later, and that person angered me like no one else. And most people who know me, they’re like, “I’ve never seen you mad.”

MAYIM BIALIK: I’ve never seen you mad.

JONATHAN COHEN: But it takes a lot. When that anger would come up, it was like a mystery. It’s like, where did that come from? Why would something so innocuous seem to anger me so much? So the first moment—

MAYIM BIALIK: And you never connected it to this.

JONATHAN COHEN: Never connected it. And I thought it was the problem of the person I was dealing with. Like, why are they acting like this? This is so unreasonable. And in the worst of it, when I was really in conflict, very rarely would I externalize anger. It would just be stuff I would feel inside. I threw my phone across a room. It hit a brick wall. The phone cracked. And I’m like, this is maybe a sign that things need to shift.

MAYIM BIALIK: I’ve broken many phones.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: He’s an amateur.

JONATHAN COHEN: The beginning of the shift was to identify and say, okay, externalizing that rage is a red circle behavior. I don’t want to get there. So I have to identify, oh, wait a second, I am now experiencing something that is likely not attributed to that person. There is something happening going on here.

MAYIM BIALIK: Hysterical. It’s historical.

JONATHAN COHEN: And I have to pull back. Doesn’t mean the anger goes away. But I put some parameters on myself, like a child who is going to tantrum. You’re allowed to be upset. You’re not allowed to break the house. And starting to work with that part to say, okay, I acknowledge it, I see it. And so when you’re talking about first identifying it, we have to be aware of it. Well, how do we start to then contain ourselves and provide that container?

Understanding Anger and Boundaries

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Anger is an incredibly important motivating emotion. It signals when our boundaries are being crossed and when our needs have gone unmet for too long. It is kind of the final stop.

And I, like you, have had a habit of — and this kind of colluded with my desire to overanalyze — my habit is to zoom out anytime someone did anything that possibly could have been upsetting to me, whatever the upset might have been in the moment, and explain away my upset to the extent of over-understanding. And this has followed me up until even, like you’re saying, things don’t go away. The universe says, “Here again, here again, here again.”

So a more recent relationship, I explained away because I had understanding of this person’s past and what caused them to have these explosive moments. And so I know they didn’t mean it and it wasn’t about me. And so I removed me from the equation and I overstepped my own boundaries. To be clear, some of us think a boundary is about putting an ultimatum or expectation on someone else. No, it’s me saying, “I’m not going to be involved or in communication with you when you’re at this state of elevation. I’m going to remove myself.” But I didn’t do that because I held space and I held space and I held understanding and I held understanding. And then when I got done with it—

MAYIM BIALIK: And you’re holding it all.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I became an angry person who’s screaming and yelling and maybe throwing a thing or two myself, in an understandable moment of pent-up anger that came from so many moments where I removed myself, my needs, my perspective from even the conversation.

JONATHAN COHEN: And you become unreasonable. And then — what’s wrong with you?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Why are you acting like this? Now you’re the problem. And in reality, yes, I was acting in a problematic way, 100%, but my problem started in childhood. Where I couldn’t say, “Hey, I understand that you’re not equipped, mom or dad, to show up in the way that I wanted. But I still need these things and my needs are now unmet and I need to find a way and take responsibility to find safety in myself and other relationships with people who aren’t either explosive outward or disconnecting so that I have to manage you.”

Sibling Abuse: Where Does Normal End?

MAYIM BIALIK: Jonathan, thank you for sharing so honestly about this kind of sibling dynamic. This is not something that people like to talk about, and we’re glad that you do talk about it. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between normal sibling tension, roughhousing, fighting, what constitutes sibling abuse, and what additionally does that do to one’s inner child? I guess both inner children, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Thank you, Jonathan, for sharing that, because I think it is something that isn’t talked about because it’s shameful. I think people assume that if one is to acknowledge that they were abused by their siblings, that somehow the parents are at fault. Which isn’t to say that parents don’t play a role — of course there is modeling of behaviors and actions that are then repeated.

MAYIM BIALIK: Again, so many dynamics, but a lot of times kids are also playing out tension in the home.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Exactly. It’s kind of the tension or the dynamics that they see, or tension that they’re experiencing at school is now coming home and manifesting as bullying. Or the parent doesn’t have tools themselves, so they’re maybe engaging in different bullying behaviors, and then the child is enacting it. Because again, children don’t have language, they don’t have logic, they are just being the reaction.

JONATHAN COHEN: Also, the children may be playing out and then the parents get back and they don’t know what actually happened, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: So there is normal children developing alongside of each other. Of course there’s going to be developmental challenges, there’s going to be birth order challenges, personality differences, attention differences. Children are attuned to the child who gets different treatment by parents. There’s so much that will then play out between siblings.

To be clear, disagreements, conflicts, like any relationship, that is a normal part, especially when you’re living in the pressure cooker, especially around some developmental ages like preadolescence, adolescence — a lot of hormones, every year of their life, all of it.

I have two older siblings, but they are so much older, 15 and 18 years older than me, that it is as if I am an only child, so it’s a very unique experience. I have siblings, but we never had that sisterly-brotherly dynamic that some people can relate to.

But there is still a limit where it does cross over into abusive behaviors, which can sometimes look like physical violence, where there are physical escalations and altercations. It can look like more emotional, where there is teasing or defamatory statements or name-calling. There can be ostracism if there are multiple children, where one child is left out. And there are just so many interpersonal dynamics that will come out especially in the home — that trickle-down effect that a parent will often be modeling directly or indirectly, or that is the result of a child not having an outlet for their feelings.

MAYIM BIALIK: And also, just to clarify, you’re not saying that all teasing is abusive. You’re saying that there’s a level that can go to among siblings where it crosses that line, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: 100%. A lot of it has to do with the person experiencing it, and the frequency and intensity of the teasing. There can be good-natured fun, and then there’s teasing where the person is clearly uncomfortable and it is crossing beyond good nature. But yeah, frequency, duration, things like that.

MAYIM BIALIK: Threats, things like that.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: And especially if and when the child acknowledges, “Hey, this is hurting, stop,” or “Hey, this is making me uncomfortable,” and it continues — then I would say that’s a good marker that it is.

MAYIM BIALIK: How prevalent is sibling abuse, do you think?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I think it’s probably more prevalent than we can even imagine, because very few people want to share. It’s kind of like it’s hard sometimes for some of us to share what really happened or didn’t happen in our home, because we want to protect, we feel shameful that we’ve allowed those things to happen.

MAYIM BIALIK: Or it happened without our purview, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: For all of those reasons. I don’t know if there’s a number that has even been landed on, but I would imagine that if there were to be a number out there, it would probably be lower than the reality, because again, children are learning and taking in, and a lot of times children are spending more time with their siblings than with the parents if parents aren’t physically or emotionally present most of the time. So those then become the relationships where these dynamics play out.

Physical Punishment and Its Impact on Children

MAYIM BIALIK: I think the jury has given their verdict on hitting children. And I know that there are distinctions that people make between a swat on the tush when somebody runs out into the street versus a routinized spanking versus also being hit in anger, which is very disturbing and upsetting, obviously.

But there’s been this kind of seesaw, and I’ve heard more and more conversation about, “This is what’s wrong with America — kids don’t have any respect because nobody’s hitting them. Let’s go back to the good old days where they knew who was in charge and they got a whooping once in a while.”

And I wonder if you can speak a little bit about what happens neurologically, somatically, and also psychologically when a child is receiving someone else’s inability to control their anger, which as a parent, I can tell you, every time I could imagine wanting to hurt my child, it was only because I did not have the support, the resources, or the tools to handle what was otherwise pretty normal behavior. Can you talk a little bit about this?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: The first thing I want to say to that is nothing degrades respect more than physical violence or boundaryless behavior in that way, because that’s what that is — it’s a boundary violation. You’ve crossed the physical line and you’ve hit me and caused harm.

In addition, it activates — when someone is under physical assault, even when it’s with a parent, which is even more confusing, right? When the person that’s supposed to love and care and support and protect you is now the person whose hand is causing you physical pain. Even just a hand coming at you — our nervous system registers that as a threat. The hand doesn’t matter that it’s attached to my mom or my dad, it’s a threatening hand. So now my nervous system is activated, I’m in a threatened state, and that is not going to elicit the respect that we’re looking for.

MAYIM BIALIK: And that’s not teaching resilience, because a lot of people will say the world’s hard, you got to be prepared, and that’s going to just get you ready for life.

Shadow Work and the Path to Healing

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: To be clear, boundaries teach resilience. Limits to behavior, teaching a child that a stove is hot, limits the child’s ability to be burnt, or the possibility that the child is burned. So limits are absolutely right. I think the question here is, how do I kind of communicate the limits? And then the consequences when limits are passed.

And again, to be clear, physical violence is going to scare a child and not elicit the respect we’re needing. So it’s about communicating actions that have consequences, and allowing, to some extent when it’s safe and appropriate, the child to live the consequence of the action. And also to be the home safe base, when a child is overwhelmed and needs to then come back.

But we need limits, and we can communicate consequences of actions in a different way that doesn’t activate. Because again, when a child is scared or threatened or abused by a parent right now, we have such a conflict that quite literally their biological wiring is saying, no, this is the person that you need to connect to. That’s your safe space. And at the same time, it’s saying but don’t get too close, because this person, if you act poorly or wrong or whatever, they’re just in a bad mood from work. I mean, sometimes it’s not even really you at all. Then they also could be the cause of your trauma and your wounding.

And so now we create a conflict within ourselves where, again, as a child, we can’t see our parent realistically, or we can’t allow in their inadequacy or their abusive behavior because that feels even scarier and more threatening. So we idealize them and degrade or shame ourselves.

MAYIM BIALIK: And that kind of confusion is sort of like the best way to wound the inner child. That is that confusion. And even when parents are— even if there’s not sexual abuse, if there are boundaries crossed in terms of what you know about them or their lives, or there’s comments or there’s things, those kinds of boundaries can be very confusing for a child. And confusion is very upsetting to that inner child.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah. And so can a lack of conversation. I think some of us were raised with parents who didn’t want the child to be exposed to anything. Everything happened between closed doors, yet you knew that mom and dad were in a fight behind the doors because you felt the tension or you heard the yelling, and then they come out and they’re like, “Don’t say anything.” So silence can be just as confusing.

Sometimes, just realistically communicating what is happening can help. Nothing can be more confusing, especially in a divorce, when a child isn’t told why separation is happening. A child will assume that they’re the cause of it.

MAYIM BIALIK: Oh, nobody knows what to tell kids, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Acknowledging that it’s not you. It can be as simple as— we don’t have to tell what happened in the relationship, but, “Hey, I see you, I hear you, it’s not you, it’s okay to be sad.” I might still hate the partner that I separated from, but I can understand why you still love your co-parent, the parent. And so there’s just so much that parents, I think, again, try to do with well and good intentions.

But even hitting, to some extent the intention is to have a child who does not do unsafe things and has a resilience and can cope with the world. But that is, again, not the path to create that or instill that or even model that for a child.

Understanding the Shadow Self

MAYIM BIALIK: You talk about shadow work. What would you like us to know about the forces that are operating that we don’t see that may be having more of an impact on our lives than we even realize?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, I think the takeaway for this whole conversation, I hope, is that there are forces that we’re not seeing. One of which is known as this kind of shadow, or this dark side. Even just springboarding from the conversation about shame, a lot of what is contained in our shadow are all of those qualities or attributes about ourselves that weren’t welcome, that did get us rejection or abandonment or shame or ridicule or abuse in some way. We’ve marked them as intolerable, unacceptable.

They are still part of who we are, but because we’ve kind of been told that they are inappropriate in whatever way, we continue to keep them below the surface, feeling again that if we were to share those aspects of ourselves, we would be shamed and abandoned just like we once were.

And then something else magical that we do with them is we project our shadow onto other people. We can tell by our reactions sometimes to other people— sometimes the things that bother us about—

MAYIM BIALIK: “You spot it, you got it”—

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: —is the thing that we’re kind of desperate to hide, or desperately want to see within ourselves.

MAYIM BIALIK: Can you give us some examples? Like, is this the same as the disowned self, the exiled self? Is that what these—

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah, this is common to those, similar to those concepts.

MAYIM BIALIK: And those are going to depend on the family. Like, so for example, if you’re in a family where being loud is not appreciated, right?

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Loud people will be the bane of your existence.

MAYIM BIALIK: What’s—

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Oh, they’re so rude, so brash, or whatever it is that you might call that. “Person’s too much,” right? So we can kind of project loudness onto others.

MAYIM BIALIK: So that’s my shadow being— that’s my—

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Right, the things that we are annoyed by. For me, my shadow does not like when people can directly assert their needs. It can even be something helpful. I think, “You’re selfish, who are you, how dare you, you’re inconsiderate”— because there’s a part of me that desperately wants to be able to be assertive in that way. And I am still learning how to communicate my needs in a way that doesn’t come out explosively, or not come out at all.

MAYIM BIALIK: Well, and I think this is like one of the most helpful kind of guideposts for the work that you do and the work that you share with people. Like, guess what? The way you’re interacting with other people, even the things that bother you about other people, is actually not about them.

And it’s not necessarily about acceptance, because some people would say, “Oh, you need to be in acceptance and nothing will bother you.” But this is about— if you spot it, you’ve got it. What part of you hates the things that you hate in other people about yourself? Or what were you not allowed to express?

I was recently talking with a family member of mine and we were talking about the different relationships our family has to money because there was none. So when there’s poverty, you either have people who continue that poverty mindset and adjust it and kind of try and hide it, or you have people who are like, “F* it, I’ll just spend it all,” once it exists. And so you have these two reactions that are both kind of the same thing— “I’m afraid that there’s not enough.”

And so when you see people, if you’re the poverty mindset person who’s continued it, people who spend are frivolous and they’re disgusting and wasteful, because you’ve disowned the part of yourself that deserves to have your needs met financially.

Finding Hope Through the Work

JONATHAN COHEN: Help us leave this conversation with some hope.

MAYIM BIALIK: A glimmer of hope.

JONATHAN COHEN: For what life can be like. We’ve established that it’s never going to be the perfect scenario, but give us a sense of what you hope for people who do this work and, on the other side, what they can experience.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Yeah. On the other side of this work is life, so to speak. Is a life of connection, of awareness, of joy, sorrow— all of these very complicated human emotions that none of us get a guidebook for. That is what is creating this human experience. I think we’re all trying to figure out why we’re here, and I think to some extent it’s for this reason— to have these more tangible experiences, to have an opportunity to learn and grow from another person.

Relationships are mirrors. They are reflection. They bring up parts of us that we didn’t know existed that we can be proud of, and parts of us that we didn’t know existed that we could shift and change. It brings awareness for some of us who aren’t certain of who we are and what we’re doing— awareness of who we are and what we want and our desires, which then leads to fulfillment of those desires and purpose and passion.

And to be clear, it doesn’t have to be lived on a huge, grand stage. Purpose is just showing up in our own creative action and impacting the lives around us. We become then reconnected to kind of all that is, whatever language we want to give it. But the fact that we are not alone— even those of us that feel so deeply alone.

I remember, up until my 30s really, I was a little girl living in New York, feeling alone in a crowded room no matter who was around me at all times. So we can reestablish a connection that, even if we are living alone for whatever reason, we are connected to something beyond ourselves and a transcendental state of just greater knowing. I do think that that’s possible for all of us as we begin the journey.

And the final takeaway is, again, there’s not a “too late, it’s done, I’m set in stone.” Even though some of our parents— my dad likes to tell me how he just is how he is because he’s 88 years old now. And we might hear that from some loved ones, though the reality is we can truly create change and impact and transform at any time.

Book Recommendation and Closing Thoughts

MAYIM BIALIK: I’m also 88 years old, so I do believe I can change. I highly recommend, and I’ve already recommended this book to many, many people, because so many of us are doing the work— going to 12-step and we have therapy and we’re doing somatic work and we’re trying to take the supplement. But honestly, this book, it’s a workbook. This is the kind of thing we need.

You had a life and you went to school and you got this degree, but you didn’t decide to save it only for yourself. And this book is a way— purchase this book, download this book. It’s a workbook. And if you work through it, treat it like it’s your therapy. If you cannot afford therapy, we know there’s a lot of people who can’t— this is what you do in therapy. Treat it like it’s serious work and all of it’s in there. Do the questions, do the exercises, learn to calm your vagus nerve down. This is really it.

So really, it’s a fantastic book and your practice is unbelievable. I also can’t believe that you copyrighted “Holistic Psychologist” and that gets to be your name. It’s amazing.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: I know. I couldn’t believe it. Yes. Signed on, I felt like, okay, now the universe is telling me I have to do this too, because who would have ever thought that 6 years ago no one was kind of thinking in this way? It blew my mind and it was the universe begrudgingly telling me to work on this.

MAYIM BIALIK: It’s amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Nicole LePera. Thank you so much.

DR. NICOLE LEPERA: Thank you both for having me. This is really great.

MAYIM BIALIK: I absolutely see this as not even the future of growth— it’s the present of growth. You cannot avoid it. You can try and avoid it, but you can’t avoid all of these patterns.

I think of people who are really into cognitive behavioral therapy, which I absolutely believe in, and I think it’s very useful. But I think in some cases it really does make sense to say, not that my parents were wrong and not that I’m broken, but to say, “Oh, this is why that happened.” Like when you shared that realization you had that you were having anger that you even realized was not proportional to the situation, for you to be able to say, “Ah, it’s old.” And I think you’ve done some healing from that as well. Sometimes just learning about it is actually transformative.

JONATHAN COHEN: Absolutely. And if you’re someone who is spiritual, who wants to get in touch with their intuition, who likes to think about consciousness and how the universe works, guess what? Your universe, your individual personal world, is being impacted by this.

MAYIM BIALIK: Yes, and I think this is a really— this is a great place to start. And yes, from this leads to being more in touch with yourself, knowing who you are, knowing what your needs are, knowing where you keep getting blocked, and possibly even knowing why jobs aren’t working for you, relationships aren’t working for you, and why your path isn’t working for you. It’s literally the path to intuition.

JONATHAN COHEN: It’s about knowing how you interpret the world. If you think, oh my gosh, that person is some way, guess what? It’s likely the result of something going on inside of you.

Closing Thoughts and What’s Next

MAYIM BIALIK: Really hope you check out Reparenting the Inner Child. So grateful we finally got to speak to Dr. LePera. I think that’s it. We hope you join us on Substack. We’ve got really, really great bonus content from this episode, where Dr. LePera walks us through 3 vagus nerve exercises to try and encourage your body to rewire.

JONATHAN COHEN: Additionally, on a Substack Live where Mayim and I break down these episodes and expand on the content that we talk about here, we’re going to touch on glimmers, a practice that allows you to find little moments of awe in the world that actually activate you on an emotional level, on a biological level, and help you feel more alive. Join us, Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, on Substack.

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