How To Break Subconscious Habits and Heal From Within with Dr Nicole Le Pera #318
Dr. Nicole Le Pera, a clinical psychologist and "The Holistic Psychologist," discusses how past conditioning shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, keeping us "stuck." She offers practical tools to recognize and override these patterns, emphasizing self-healing through a mind, body, and spirit approach.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Understanding Past Conditioning and Feeling Stuck
The Disconnect Between External Success and Inner Fulfillment
Catalysts for Self-Awareness: Relationships and Rock Bottom
The Role of Observation and Subconscious Habits in Change
Radical Honesty and Taking Personal Responsibility
Understanding How Emotions Manifest in the Body
Challenging Deep-Rooted Beliefs and Self-Limiting Narratives
The Mind-Body Connection in Healing and Chronic Illness
Creating Safety in the Body Through Intentional Practices
The Power of Small Daily Promises for Building Confidence
Physiological Sigh Breathwork Practice for Regulation
Emotional Maturity and Widening the Window of Tolerance
Progress Over Perfection in the Healing Journey
Understanding Compulsive Behaviors and Stress Addiction
Navigating Relationships When Only One Person is Doing the Work
Managing External Validation and Personal Identity
6 Key Concepts
Past Conditioning
Most of what we think, feel, and do is a reflection of patterns formed in childhood that no longer serve us or reflect our true selves. These deeply ingrained habits and beliefs, often operating from the subconscious mind, cause us to feel stuck and disempowered in our present lives.
Self-Confirming Machine of Beliefs
Our brain filters the vast amount of daily information to confirm our existing beliefs, especially those formed in childhood when we lacked perspective. If an experience aligns with an old belief, we accept it; if it doesn't, we tend to delete or disregard it, reinforcing our limited view of ourselves and what's possible.
Emotional Maturity
Emotional maturity is the ability to tolerate increasing degrees of life stress without becoming completely dysregulated or resorting to childlike coping mechanisms like screaming, yelling, or shutting down. It involves retaining conscious awareness to make new choices and safely respond to challenges.
Window of Tolerance
This concept refers to our capacity to deal with stress and return to a calm, safe bodily state. A wider window means we can tolerate more stress without becoming overwhelmed, while a narrow window leads to dysregulation and reliance on old, often immature, coping skills.
Physiological Sigh
A natural way the body calms itself, which can be intentionally practiced to regulate the nervous system. It involves a double inhalation followed by a long, slow exhalation, signaling safety and relaxation to the body.
Stress Addiction
A compulsive engagement in behaviors, even socially approved ones like work or achievement, despite their dysfunctional or negative consequences on the body and emotional well-being. It often stems from a familiarity with stress hormones and a lack of other coping mechanisms to relieve suffering or navigate discomfort.
7 Questions Answered
Many people feel stuck because most of their thoughts, feelings, and actions are a reflection of past conditioning and patterns formed in childhood that no longer serve them, rather than reflecting who they truly are in the present.
Relationships, particularly with partners or children, often act as a mirror to reveal ingrained patterns. Reaching 'rock bottom' or experiencing physical symptoms of chronic stress can also serve as a catalyst for self-discovery.
Core beliefs, often immature assessments from childhood, act as filters for how we interpret the world. Our brains actively seek to confirm these beliefs, even if they are inaccurate, leading us to limit our capabilities and perpetuate self-sabotaging behaviors.
Awareness is a crucial first step, but without radical honesty and the ability to regulate our nervous system, our emotional brain can override logic. When our body feels threatened, it cuts off access to conscious choice, leading us to revert to old, reactive patterns.
Feeling safe in the body involves intentional practices that send signals of calm to the nervous system. This includes consistent daily care like nutrient-dense food, adequate sleep, gentle movement, and breathwork, which helps regulate the body's stress response.
The empowerment pause is a practice of intentionally taking a second to pause before instinctively reacting or responding. This brief moment of conscious intervention allows for self-regulation and creates space for a new, more intentional choice, rather than falling back on autopilot.
Individuals should focus on changing themselves, setting new boundaries, and meeting their own needs, as we cannot change others. This shift in personal behavior can change the dynamic of the relationship and may, over time, inspire the partner to consider their own change.
36 Actionable Insights
1. Focus on Self-Change
Create change for yourself regardless of what others do or don’t do, as you can’t control other people. This puts you in charge of your own experience and allows you to affect change around factors you control.
2. Embrace Personal Evolution
Understand that your current identity and beliefs are not fixed and you don’t have to remain who you are right now. It’s possible to override and change core beliefs that no longer serve you.
3. Practice Radical Honesty
Alongside awareness, cultivate radical honesty with yourself to acknowledge your contribution to situations, such as conflicts with partners or children. Without this honesty, you risk remaining stuck.
4. Prioritize Safety & Consciousness
Begin your self-discovery journey by first creating safety and consciousness within your body and mind. This foundational step is integral before exploring deeper feelings or connecting with your authentic self.
5. Become Conscious of Patterns
The first step to changing anything is becoming conscious of what’s happening now, including the role you play in habits that keep you stuck. This allows you to observe your habits and create space for new choices.
6. Observe Your Daily Habits
Learn to observe your daily habits, such as how you care for your body and mental world each morning, and how you relate to others. This helps you become conscious of your autopilot behaviors.
7. Reflect on Your Triggers
When triggered or bothered by external events (e.g., social media comments), turn the focus inward and ask why it’s bothering you. This practice puts you in charge and helps reveal internal areas where you’re not ‘cool’ or okay.
8. Consciously Make New Choices
In moments where old habits are ready to dictate your actions, inhabit a conscious space to make a new choice instead of reacting habitually. New choices over time translate to change and transformation.
9. Control Only Yourself
Acknowledge that you cannot control other people or their actions (e.g., making someone text you back). Focus on controlling your own responses and interpretations of what’s happening.
10. Shift from Reactive to Proactive
Move from feeling like the world is happening to you and causing your feelings, to identifying the internal factors you can change. This allows you to locate yourself as a participant and make choices.
11. Practice Self-Compassion
To achieve long-term health changes, practice compassion towards yourself rather than using willpower to beat yourself up. Without self-compassion, changes often hit a ceiling and revert.
12. Prioritize Nervous System Care
Care for your nervous system daily through nutrient-dense foods, adequate sleep and rest, gentle movement, stretching to relieve muscle tension, and intentional breath work. This helps regulate your body so you can access conscious choices.
13. Drop Into Your Body
Practice dropping into your body by attuning to how your muscles feel and consciously observing your breathing. This helps you assess if your body is feeling tense or calm.
14. Monitor Breath for Stress
Pay attention to your breathing patterns; quicker or shallower breathing indicates nervous system activation and a perceived threat. This awareness can be a first step in recognizing dysregulation.
15. Start with Small Promises
When building new habits, make promises that are so small they are manageable, like five deep breaths. This helps overcome the threat of newness and builds confidence by aligning intentions with daily action.
16. Practice Daily Deep Belly Breathing
Commit to taking five deep belly breaths every morning before getting out of bed, laying down with a hand on your belly. This small, manageable promise teaches your body to send signals of safety and primes your awareness of the tool.
17. Use Breath for In-Moment Regulation
Utilize breath work (like deep belly breathing) in real-time when feeling activated or agitated to internally regulate yourself and stay grounded. This helps you retain choice and respond consciously rather than reactively.
18. Practice Physiological Sigh
Engage in a physiological sigh, which involves breathing in (e.g., for 4 seconds) and then breathing out for double that time (e.g., 8 seconds), elongating the out-breath. This is a natural way your body calms energy and releases tension.
19. Find Your Resonant Breathwork
Explore different breathwork practices and find one that resonates with you, works for you, and is most likely for you to utilize consistently throughout your day. Consistency is key for building this foundational practice.
20. Implement Empowerment Pause
Before reacting, implement an ’empowerment pause’ by taking a literal pause, perhaps a deep breath, before responding or acting. This simple second can be palpable for yourself and those around you.
21. Request Pause During Conflict
When feeling triggered or unable to give a rational response during a conflict, ask for a pause (e.g., ‘Can we continue this in 5-10 minutes?’). This allows you to self-regulate and re-engage in a calmer, more productive way.
22. Accept You Can’t Change Others
Understand that you cannot truly change anyone outside of yourself, even loved ones or children. While you can urge or try to shift their behavior, real change must come from their own choices.
23. Set Boundaries for Self-Protection
If a relationship dynamic is problematic or abusive, take responsibility to separate yourself by setting new boundaries, limits, or reducing contact. This protects yourself and changes the dynamic, regardless of the other person’s reaction.
24. Inspire Change by Example
Instead of directly trying to change others, focus on making changes for yourself. Your loved ones may become inspired by seeing and experiencing your transformation, motivating them to seek change for themselves.
25. View Experiences as Information
If others don’t change despite your efforts, view their reactions and the ongoing dynamic as information. Use this information to learn and make different choices about how to navigate the relationship moving forward.
26. Reframe Discomfort as Progress
When feeling worse or thinking you’re going backward in your healing journey, reframe this discomfort as progress. Often, it means you’re becoming consciously aware of how things have truly been, rather than experiencing a setback.
27. Embrace Healing as Process
Recognize that healing and personal growth are an ongoing process of evolution, not a fixed end point or finish line. Embrace the continuous movement, change, and shifting of energy in your life.
28. Value the Healing Process
Understand that the process of healing and self-discovery is where the true value lies, not just the end goal. Embrace the journey and the discoveries made along the way.
29. Prioritize “Being” Over “Doing”
Aim for more moments of pure existence, consciousness, and presence, simply ‘being’ rather than constantly ‘doing.’ This includes not hyper-doing even internal healing work, but allowing for states of pure presence.
30. Practice Stillness and Non-Doing
Intentionally create moments of stillness and non-doing, such as sitting quietly without engaging in other activities like listening to podcasts or journaling. This helps break the addiction to constant busyness and allows for pure presence.
31. Cultivate Nervous System Safety
To effectively practice stillness and meditation, cultivate a sense of safety in your nervous system. Your body needs to feel it’s okay to stop moving and being on alert, which is a prerequisite for true relaxation.
32. Seek Trusted Feedback
Utilize trusted loved ones (partners, close friends) to get objective feedback on your habits and patterns. Their observations can help you see aspects of yourself that are harder to perceive with blinders on, creating space for new choices.
33. Challenge Self-Censorship
Become aware of how much you censor your beliefs, ideas, and feelings, often due to past conditioning or perceived expectations. Challenge this self-censorship to express your authentic self.
34. Commit to Sharing Authentically
Make a commitment to share your personal journey, struggles, and healing process authentically. This can be a powerful act of self-healing and connection, regardless of external expectations or outcomes.
35. Acknowledge Negative Bias
Recognize your tendency to focus more time and emotional energy on negative comments or feedback, while easily dismissing positive validation. This awareness is a step towards challenging ingrained beliefs of not being ‘good enough.’
36. Allow In Positive Validation
Make a conscious choice to allow in and sit with positive validation and feedback, even if it feels uncomfortable. This challenges deep-rooted beliefs of unworthiness and helps integrate a sense of being ’enough.’
6 Key Quotes
Most of what we think, feel, and do is a reflection of our past conditioning and not a reflection of who we actually are.
Dr. Nicole Le Pera
The first step of changing anything is becoming conscious to what's happening now, to the role I'm playing, maybe in the habits that are keeping me stuck.
Dr. Nicole Le Pera
Beliefs aren't fact. Beliefs, in my opinion, begin from a thought that has oftentimes was the first assigned meaning for a lot of us at a time when developmentally, we didn't have the perspective, the awareness to pull back and objectively know what was happening.
Dr. Nicole Le Pera
I've never seen someone change their health in the long term until they start practicing compassion towards themselves.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The process is where all the gold is. You get all the discoveries along the way. You kind of don't want to go from A to Z without passing through B, C, D, E, F.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The goal isn't, healing isn't hyper-focus, hyper-analyzing, hyper-judging, hyper-criticizing, even hyper-doing internally either. Awareness, again, is a state of just simply being, of witnessing, of again, having more moments on that porch.
Dr. Nicole Le Pera
2 Protocols
Daily Deep Belly Breathing
Dr. Nicole Le Pera- Lay down, placing a hand on your belly.
- Commit to taking five deep belly breaths before getting out of bed each morning.
Physiological Sigh Breathwork
Dr. Nicole Le Pera- Find a comfortable, safe position, optionally closing your eyes and placing a hand on your chest or thighs to ground yourself.
- Tune into your physical body and notice where your breath is currently coming from (chest or belly).
- Breathe in through your nose for a chosen duration (e.g., 3-4 seconds).
- Exhale slowly and completely for double the inhalation duration (e.g., 6-8 seconds), letting all the air out as if sighing.
- Repeat and notice any shifts in tension or release in your body over time.