Nicole LePera: "Your nervous system is screaming at you!" Healing anxiety and panic

0:01Fearne Cotton: Hello, I'm Fern Cotton. A huge welcome to Happy Place. This is the show that lets you gently reflect on your past. Today, I'm chatting to Nicole LePera. I learned that mom and her emotions are to be managed. So if that means stopping my behavior, not sharing my perspective or opinion or emotional experience, in childhood when we need those connections for our physical and emotional survival, we'll listen to those messages before we'll listen to ourself. That's what we needed in childhood is someone to say, you are very upset right now. And I see that. And I'm going to be here through your upset.

0:38And together, we're going to get to the other side and show both of us that we're all OK. And when we didn't have that, we have to be that person in adulthood for ourselves.

0:45Fearne Cotton: So you catch me in the middle of juggling actual life, the life of a working single parent and actually just any parent, because my son was literally just calling me moments ago saying that he's got a really bad headache at school. So just navigating that alongside recording this but it leads me onto the subject we're going to talk about today which is actually not parenting actual kids but parenting ourselves. What a concept. It's something that I've definitely heard being talked about a lot over the years. I've had friends who have really dived quite deeply into this subject matter. We'll use that language in conversation, like talking about the inner child, reparenting themselves.

1:33Fearne Cotton: And I've always sort of understood it. But reading Nicole's book has absolutely opened my ears, eyes and mind to so many things. And I think actually, you know, it does relate to parenting as well because I think many of us are trying to navigate parenting in a way where we're not going to like fuck our kids up which inevitably we will there's that saying that you know your parents fuck you up and it in the best possible way they usually do and it's no fault of ours or our parents you know we're trying our best constantly in most situations obviously extreme examples excluded from that one but I think most of us and most of our parents have tried their best, but we're going to make mistakes and there's going to be imprints on our children and imprints that have been made upon us as we then move into adulthood.

2:26Fearne Cotton: And it's a big old complex subject, but what Nicole does so brilliantly is talk about this in a way that is very practical, very grounded, and allows us to get really curious about ourselves and why we react in certain ways, why, well, maybe we don't react in certain ways, what we say, what we don't say, how we treat our emotions, our feelings, our levels of self-worth is all tied up in this conversation. Now, you might know Nicole best as the holistic psychologist on Instagram. A staggering nine million of you follow her there. I am one of those people. So you're probably already well aware that she particularly likes talking about trauma, childhood patterns and self-compassion.

3:15Fearne Cotton: And in fact, her latest book is called Reparenting the Inner Child, everything I've just talked about. This for me was just a fascinating conversation where, you know, I could have let this one run on for like three hours, but that is, you know, you've not got the time, nor have I. So maybe when she comes back to the UK, we'll do another one. But it's just so fascinating and alerts you to all of the things that you're doing in life. And I think it allows you to get curious about why without any shame or blame on yourself or anybody else. And I think when you notice those patterns and those things, that's where you can then implement change, which is really exciting.

3:52Fearne Cotton: So if you feel like you're stuck in a bit of a rut or that you're going around in circles, you've noticed patterns that you're in, in either your relationships or or how you think about yourself and the world around you, or things that keep happening at work. This is the chat for you. This is the chat that could change all of it. My wife won't stop talking about Jerry. Jerry. Says he saved us money on car insurance. Mine too. Found her a better rate and didn't waste her time. Who is this guy? Babe. Jerry checked again and found us an even better rate. Pulled 20 quotes from top insurers. showed them side by side, and helped me switch policies in the app.

4:35It's a car insurance app. Yep. Let's just... Never happened. Do yourself a favor. Visit jerry.ai slash acast. While every other channel is fighting for your customers' attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears. And when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. ACAST gives you that trust at scale. Digital precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention.

5:10Buy it with ACAST. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.

5:20Fearne Cotton: Right, to this chat in just a moment. But first, have you seen our latest announcement of some more of the incredible guests joining us at the Happy Place Festival this year. I'm so excited. We've got Sam Thompson there and also sibling dreams coming true. Louise Thompson is going to be there. We've got Dynamo. We've got Megan McKenna. We've got Candice Carty-Williams. I loved her first book queen. He can't wait to talk about her new one and so many more. You can head to the Happy Place website to see the full lineup so far. I think it's the best lineup we've ever had, guys. I am buzzing about it.

5:54Fearne Cotton: Get your Happy Place Festival tickets. Come and meet these gorgeous people in real life. Hear them talk. You're going to have the best day out, all the best, entire weekend. I will see you right there. All right, let's do it. Here's the show.

6:28Fearne Cotton: Nicole, it's so lovely to have you not only in the UK, but on the podcast. Welcome. I am truly honored to be here. Thank you for having me. How's the jet lag? It's lagging. I don't like jet lag. It's hard. I noticed as I, when I was younger, I loved to travel, see all the places and for different reasons. I didn't love where I lived, the climate, and I could tolerate the travel and the jet lag. And it's a different situation now, many years later. I can't bear it. It's that anxiety when you either can't get to sleep, but also you coming from the States to here, the waking up when your body is in a deep sleep is...

7:02I made the mistake because I always try as my work to listen to my body. So the first two days, midday afternoon, I was like, I'm tired. I'm going to listen. I'm going to take a nap. Worst decision I made. The worst. So while I will say always listen to your body, maybe not when you're traveling, have coffee and listen to caffeine instead.

7:19Fearne Cotton: Drink coffee and just pretend that you're instantly on UK Times. It's the best way to do it. But you're here for a very good reason, talking about your exceptional book, Reparenting the Inner Child. This book is, I would say, an essential read. I absolutely whizzed through it. The kind of thing that not only I'm deeply interested in, but also I want to sort of continue learning about, not only as a parent, but also looking back at childhood, is, I think, only ever helpful. Would you agree? I think it is necessary, even I think for the many of us, as I will often share. Some of us don't want to look back.

7:56It's painful to look back. I struggle to recollect a lot of my childhood. I can't really tell the story of what happened, though we are all inevitably going to continue to repeat the habits, the patterns, the way we learn to cope from that early childhood environment. And it really is pervasive, the impact, whether it's in our romantic partnerships, our work relationships, those of us who have children. We meet the inner child, the part of us formed in childhood in all of those moments. So I think it is incredibly important to help us build that bridge from like insight awareness about what is impacting us into the new actions that I think we all deserve to make for ourselves.

8:32Fearne Cotton: Without a doubt. I mean, you give examples at the start of the book about the reactions that you have still today or are aware of today. One of them being, or in the past, if you tried to call someone and they don't pick up that you assume the worst. I mean, I certainly have that. But yours comes from a place of sort of reason. You can see it. You can see where that came from in childhood. So can you just tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So for me in particular, in my early childhood home, and this was confusing for quite some decades, especially as I became a clinical psychologist and I was working with people who had really identifiable trauma in the old sense of the word, right?

9:08These kind of cataclysmic, life-changing moments of abuse, neglect. And I did not have that. I did not kind of – I could not remember moments where there wasn't a parent present. But what I've come to understand is that trauma is really not only what happens to us, but it's whether or not we had the support. So for me, while I had two very present parents who were very well-intentioned, who were urging me to succeed in all of the ways that they thought would translate to me being secure in life, relationally and financially, they didn't have the emotional tools. So in my family, there was a lot of high anxiety, a lot of worry, and a lot of anxiety that I carried with me without the language or words.

9:46And even as I gained the words, I'm anxious. I didn't have the tools to be able to, nor did I think it was possible to be able to switch those habits.

9:54Fearne Cotton: So, yeah, I think it's so important to recognise that we're not just talking about people that have had traumatic situations happen in their childhood, but just everyday stuff. And what I also love is in the book, you explain this is throwing no shade on our parents or even us as parents. There is no support for parents. We are all mostly exhausted, overwhelmed, trying our best every day, messing up constantly and then trying again. And that is sort of the nature of parenting in the modern world. And aside from, I think, modern world challenges that you're very beautifully describing, information has changed drastically, even in my field.

10:34I mean, parenting experts until just a couple of decades ago never were speaking of emotions, how emotions map onto a developing nervous system, how children quite literally need not only a present caregiver, but a calm, a grounded one. And the reality is because, again, our parents were raised by humans and had a childhood themselves. And so many of them are under-resourced for all of those reasons. So even if they desperately want to show up in support of their children, they're lacking the ability in their body, which is why I'm always talking about the body development. Acknowledging that while these patterns are wired into us, so to speak, and they become our autopilot in these reactive moments, no matter how much we want to do differently, we kind of drop back to those instinctual behaviors.

11:17yours, they are changeable at any time, thankfully.

11:20Fearne Cotton: Thank God. And I want to get more onto that and also the sort of physical notion of what we're talking about in a moment. But I, you know, I'm by no means a professional and I love studying these different areas. But I, you know, I'm learning on the job constantly as a parent and someone interested in these subjects. But I can even see as an observer how things are changing and have changed since I grew up in the 80s. you know with how I even if I'm sort of quizzing my therapist or talking to somebody like you the one thing that I've really noticed in in sort of parenting in a different way from back in the day is back in the day I think the sort of commonly used tact if a kid was upset angry having a tantrum freaking out was to sort of pacify by going it's okay cheer up it's all going to be all right and now what I've certainly learned and been told by many people is to say is to actually reinforce what the kid's feeling to say this is really hard for you you're sad you're angry and it feels sort of counterintuitive at first because you're you think is this going to make it worse but trialing it with my own children I can see that what it does is it makes them go oh they get they get me I feel seen I feel heard that was definitely not a thing back in the day 100 percent i mean there was a belief that by letting a child deal with it or telling them that they should be dealing with it in the moment just stop doing that right that that would develop a sort of resilience right this idea that oh i don't want a weak child i want a child who can make it in this very tough world so again a very well-intentioned belief though until a child's nervous system is helped to settle by being seen in the emotion not having to feel shame around the emotion their body is not going to develop the ability to eventually do that on their own so So it was right.

13:08What we thought was on the surface, helping them develop the ability to cope was actually doing the opposite. And I think that comes back to what we were acknowledging earlier. A lot of times I even notice in myself when I feel uncomfortable, when I've upset, especially someone that I love, my instinct is to tell them to get over it and that they're OK because I feel so uncomfortable with how they're feeling. We are very attuned, empathetic creatures. We have these neurons in our brain that are quite literally making us mirror the reaction. So when you see your child upset, even if we're not aware of it, we're having an upset experience.

13:40And if we don't know how to cope with it, the easiest way is to avoid the discomfort by just saying you're OK. But for a child, it not only invalidates them and not only prevents them from being able to cope, they begin over time to distrust their own reality. These emotional signals that are so important, they're going to have that voice and that idea that, oh, these aren't to be trusted. that I'm okay, when maybe that signal of being not okay is an incredibly important signal that that child or adult needs to tend to?

14:07Fearne Cotton: Without a doubt, because I think our generation are so good at gaslighting ourselves. We go, oh, people have got it worse. It's okay. I'm over-dramatizing this. I'm catastrophizing. This is stupid. I just need to sort myself out. And then we start berating ourselves. I'm an idiot for feeling like this, or I'm weak or whatever. That isn't helping anybody. That's not helping us actually. A, look at, you know, is change available because I'm clearly not feeling very good about this. But also what, and this totally plays into the kind of reparenting. What do I need? What does my nervous system need?

14:43Fearne Cotton: What do I need? Rather than going, oh, I'm such an idiot for feeling upset or for feeling angry to actually go, I am angry. I feel pissed off right now. And that's okay. And then to deal with it. Yeah. And I have a version of that habit still to this day where it's not that I have a shameful voice when I'm having emotion. I immediately and I had this habit since childhood when someone hurts me to whatever extent because they're behaving explosively, abusively or they're shutting down. I would almost zoom out of my experience of of hurt, of anger, of sadness, of grief, whatever it is. And probably no surprise, I became a psychologist.

15:19I would seek to, in my mind, analyze, understand. And I would often then land on, which I do believe to be true. Oh, they're hurt in this moment. Right. They don't mean it. They had this terrible thing happen in childhood or it's happening now. And but what I have done is I've separated myself from my experience. I've made their emotions and I've given them more compassion than I give to myself. So I'm not even connected. And I'm still learning how to pause and say, OK, I have the habit. I might understand where your reaction is coming from, but I have to pause and sit in the hurt and the boundary that I might now need to create because my emotions also matter.

15:58And so I think we have all of these savvy ways that we've developed because what we're really talking about is a coping skill. If I can't tolerate sitting in what I'm feeling, honoring what I'm feeling, again, if I didn't have that reflection back in childhood, we're going to do all of these things. And even in society, right, I was celebrated. I could help so many people understand where things come from. I still try to do that, which is why I have a very compassionate approach. And I'm still learning to give myself compassion and say, wait a minute, I'm hurt. And this is now what I need to do because of that.

16:26Fearne Cotton: I know you say in the book, your parents would often say, oh, Nicole isn't bothered about anything. so you were praised for being almost I guess detached from what was going on around you absolutely that's what I'm perfectly describing here is right I was disconnected from my own self and on the outside I appeared to be unbothered I was so shook when I had my first boyfriend I was 16 years old we dated for about a year and a half in high school we're going off to college and he broke up with me and I was devastated when he broke up with me and he more or less told me he was a very eloquent young developing man at that time and said, you're emotionally unavailable.

17:01And I was like, I'm what? Because inside, meanwhile, I'm having a ton of emotions in these moments that I'm describing. I'm just not able to outwardly communicating them. So I kind of logged that. I eventually discovered I liked women in college. I was like, oh, that's why I was emotionally unavailable. It turns out when I was in my training program to become a psychoanalyst, which I did not complete, and I was in a training program with other analysts. And we would sit in this group therapy experience once a week, every week, where our goal would be just to experience each other in a very analytic fashion, share our experiences of each other with each other.

17:35And I had this colleague that I respected so greatly. And one day I was on the hot seat and she said, Nicole, I want to share something with you. You have a, I forget how she described it, but it was almost like a removedness about you. And I was like shook again, because I had a ton of feelings happening all of the time. and it brought me back to that teenage moment. And I'm like, what is going on here? Why, right, can no one attune or why does no one else have an awareness as to what I'm feeling? And it's because I had that separation, that stoic, that I'm fine. I still struggle to be vulnerable and tell people when I'm struggling and I need help and I need support.

18:13Again, all going back to that very well-intentioned childhood.

18:15Fearne Cotton: Yes. A very present mother, but a very disconnected mother who could not tolerate sitting with me in my emotion. so I separate it from them as a protection. Yeah, I bet there's so many people listening to this who are like, yeah, that's me because also we were told a lot as young girls, oh, good girl, if we cleared up our fuss very quickly, if we were stressed out about something and then we were told, please stop doing that and we managed to suppress what was going on, we were absolutely praised for it. Good girl, well done for not making a scene, for not causing anybody else distress or in class at school, constantly praised for keeping your mouth shut, piping down, whatever.

18:55Fearne Cotton: So we are conditioned somewhat by society at large just to keep quiet and shut the hell up. I mean, that's exactly what we're talking about is all of these different kind of moments of conditioning where sometimes they're very direct. I didn't necessarily get all of those direct messages. I got indirect ones. I don't know if you or listeners have ever gotten the look, right? Where my mom didn't have to say a word, but I knew when she gave me a look across a table, across a room, that that was an indicator. And that's in childhood what I'm often describing. Things aren't verbal. We don't have logic.

19:30We can't put things into words, though our body is being conditioned. It's learning. It's absorbing those direct messages and those indirect messages. And then if and when she would say something, if I was having an emotion that she felt was too overwhelming and dysregulating or sharing my own perspective, I would get told to stop mouthing off. Right. So this idea that what I was again, it wasn't necessarily direct what she was saying, but the message was the way you're being as indicated by my look or by your self-expression of an emotion being defined as mouthing off the more consistently. And again, I want to be clear.

20:08We're talking about consistent moments. Yes. Not one look, one time. This was so consistently the dynamic, the weather in my home that I learned, right, that mom and her emotions are to be managed. So if that means stopping my behavior, not sharing my perspective or opinion or emotional experience in childhood, when we need those connections for our physical and emotional survival, we'll listen to those messages before we'll listen to ourself.

20:36Fearne Cotton: Yes. I mean, I think also, again, not throwing any shade on that generation, but there was a lot of the look like me and my girlfriends who are still my best friends from school we talk about it all the time all of our mums are like strong working class women who are juggling a hell of a lot like multiple jobs and trying their best constantly but they were fierce and me and my friend Lucy talk about it all the time that you would get this my mum's got light blue eyes. I can imagine those coming out. I'd be like, I have fucked up so bad from that one look. But you do, you're so right. It's not always verbal.

21:13Fearne Cotton: It's these micro moments where you're learning as a kid. Oh, that wasn't okay. How am I going to readdress that in the future? Or how do I avoid that happening? And then we get to adulthood and we've carried all of this shit with us. What your book explains perfectly is that it's not set in stone. And I think that's the part where we can really feel empowered and that sense of liberation that, okay, we may have gone through something traumatic, but we may have just gone through a pretty regular childhood where there were certain adults telling us what was and wasn't okay with the best intentions, but it's impacted us to create the people we are today with the reactions that we have to the world around us.

21:54Fearne Cotton: and probably quite a lot of the time they're detrimental to us feeling okay our bodies feeling okay but all of this due to neuroplasticity is possible that we can change the first thing that you suggest in the book on a very practical level is to find a photograph of you as a child what once we've got this picture what do we do then so looking at a picture and again for the many that might be listening who don't have access to pictures to be able to see themselves we can And also we do this exercise by calling to mind ourself as a child, a moment in childhood, a childhood room, something we like to do.

22:31And when we're doing that, what is happening for us is kind of bypassing the logical, story-driven, possibly critical part of our brain. And we're more connecting with the emotional sense of ourself in childhood. It's so much harder to criticize when you see your little face or you're envisioning yourself small in a room tucked in a corner. and you see your posture and your body language. And so we're activating, again, that empathetic, compassionate center on the right side of our brain, which helps us connect with everything that we're talking about, all of these stored emotions. And so by looking at a picture, calling to mind ourself, we can not only connect with how it felt to live in that childhood body, but we can begin to explore some questions.

23:16Like, what is it that I wanted or needed to happen in that moment? What would have been helpful? Would it have been just a moment of someone saying, hey, you're sad and I totally get it? Might it have been more nurturance, more support? Maybe we needed someone to advocate for us to put up a boundary around something that was happening around us that was making us feel unsafe. So that moment of awareness. And again, it's not we're not worried about the story. So for all of you listening out there who don't have the story is I do not as well. We're looking about we're interested in the feelings.

23:46Right. What's coming up in my body as I'm looking at myself? I actually wore, I don't have it on today, but through the three years of writing this book, I had a locket and I had a little picture of myself. So every moment where, because we meet our inner child, not only in these kind of reactive moments that I think a lot of us carry a lot of shame around, but sometimes we've created a whole identity. And so not having the attunement I needed, not feeling enough just to be how I was, mouthing off or not, sharing my opinion or not, I learned how to perform, to achieve, to be a perfectionist. And nowhere is that more evident than when I'm writing a book.

24:21And I labor over every word, every chapter. I try to make it perfect so that everyone reading it will gain benefit and not misunderstand anything I'm trying to say. And so it's not only, again, these moments of reactivity where we're exploding outward or shutting down and disconnecting. For some of us, it's our way of being because that's become safe and protective for us. So for me, opening the locket, reminding my inner child that I am enough as I am. so the same thing happens again if we want to pull out a photograph a lot of people I know will put it as the background on their phone it's just a daily reminder that we're carrying that being yeah in the sensations reactions even sometimes in the identities that we've constructed all to maintain those safe and secure connections or whatever version of that was available in our

25:05Fearne Cotton: childhood yeah well you also say um it's familiar these reactions it's familiar and and that's I guess a subtler thing to pick up on it's just like oh I'm just used to this you know we think that's we could probably class it as normal this is just my normal this is how I am this is how this is who I am I just because you mentioned there being a perfectionist and you list other archetypes that we can end up as I am absolutely the perfectionist one I am or maybe I shouldn't be labeling myself but that kind of goal orientated living has definitely made me feel safe and it's familiar to me and it is definitely how I was praised or you know I guess if I can look at my own story not go into it too much but I came from a really regular background but I ended up working on TV at a really young age so of course for my family it was extraordinary it was exciting and then that became oh that that pleased everybody that's a good thing so sometimes you're trying to attain this goal without really knowing do I want to do this is this am I really stressing this much because I want to reach that goal?

26:10Fearne Cotton: Or is this just simply familiar? It's quite a basic level of awareness, I guess, to have like, this is just what I'm used to. And when we're talking about familiar, as always, I want to connect it to the importance of familiar in our body, right? Our body, even if familiar is dysfunctional, results in burnout or whatever kind of our familiar has become for us or confusion. I don't know who I am. It to our nervous system is the safest path because it's predictable. It cuts right through the uncertainty that we struggle to tolerate because when there's uncertainty, when we don't know what's going to happen next, our body will naturally feel stress and our nervous system will activate.

26:48So to avoid that, we become a prediction machine, right? We kind of know how to be, to feel, to predict what happens next, even if it's not the reality. And this is all driven by our nervous system. So very counterintuitively and often with a lot of frustration, even a healthier habit, right? So we can both probably agree, right? I don't need to be perfect. I can just be good just how I am. I can say that logically, but the second I try to accept imperfection, a mistake, I try to show someone my messiness, my nervous system isn't going to know what happens next, right? So now my body feels stressed even by a somewhat healthy, so to speak, decision.

27:27And these are the moments why and I often get asked, we often fall back into old habits. It's not a light switch. We don't come to an awareness logically, right? We can all acknowledge all the habits that would be better serving. We're now talking about going against what our body has become used to. And any step outside of that familiar pattern will create stress in the body. And then going back to kind of where we began, if we don't have the resources to tolerate stress in our body, as very few of us have that emotional resilience we're going to go right back into those old habits sooner rather

28:01Fearne Cotton: than later because you also say not all stress is bad like we have to we have to deal with stress that's part of being a human but not all stress is bad stress is what has allowed us to evolve to experience the environment environments are stressful to different degrees in my opinion living has become increasingly more stressful with the closeness, the endless, you know, stimulation on our phones. And so all of the information that we can now get from around the world. So stress, though, isn't nor can it be avoided. The goal is to learn how to cope with more stress, to see the habits that we've relied on, because that's what our body is doing.

28:41It's trying to remove the stress as quickly as possible, sometimes by not even noticing the amount of stress that our body is under and then teaching, not just through intentions or affirmations, teaching our body how to cope with more amounts of stress so that we don't have to go back to relying on those old habits. And we will continue to do so until we get our body on board. My wife won't stop talking about Jerry. Jerry. Says he saved us money on car insurance. Mine too. Found her a better rate and didn't waste her time. Who is this guy?

29:16Fearne Cotton: Babe. Jerry checked again and found us an even better rate, pulled 20 quotes from top insurers, showed them side by side, and helped me switch policies in the app. It's a car insurance app. Yep. Let's just... Never happened. Do yourself a favor. Visit jerry.ai slash acast. You don't need a passport to taste the world's most luxurious beef. Just head to Benihana. Introducing the Wagyu of the World menu. From the rich flavor of American masami ribeye to the bold Australian New York strip to the legendary melt-in-your-mouth A5 Japanese Wagyu, this is the finest beef on the planet, expertly grilled right at your table.

29:57Fearne Cotton: Why settle for an ordinary steak dinner when you can taste the world in one bite? Only at Benihana. Book your table at benihana.com. While every other channel is fighting for your customers' attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears. And when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. Acast gives you that trust at scale. Digital precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked.

30:31Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.

30:41Fearne Cotton: So let's dive in to the body stuff because I'm fascinated in it and I've had a sort of varied backstory, probably only for the last, I don't know, 10 years where I've really noticed the physical stuff. I think I was slightly disconnected physically before that. I had a load of panic attacks from about 34 to 39, 40-ish, say. And they started off being like very, very frequent and it freaked me out. They came out of nowhere. Then more sporadically. And then over the last sort of four years, they've just started to dissipate. But then this last week, I've just felt the edges of that coming back. And it used to be my big trigger was getting into bed.

31:30Fearne Cotton: That would be like, oh, I am fucked. I've got to try and sleep. Of course, I'm going to have a panic attack. You know, that was the big thing. And I've just started getting that. And it's been so horrible to do a backstep. Like, why am I going back to that? And it's so physical. Like, yes, I could probably conjure up a few stories that are creating this, but it is overwhelmingly physical. This adrenaline rush, my chest is kind of on fire, my heart's racing. It's just horrific. And clearly my nervous system is screaming, hello, like do something. This is not like where you're at is not OK. How can you best summarize how we can have an awareness of our nervous system, why it peaks and troughs and how we can have a bit more autonomy over it?

32:20So I have a lot of compassion for the panic attacks because well through my 20s, I had one after the other. I happened to be in training to be a clinical psychologist. So logically, I knew it was a panic attack, though in that moment, I was convinced it was a heart attack.

32:33Fearne Cotton: I would have my shoes on the bed. I'd be curled up. I was in New York City with a big jacket on, ready to take myself to the nearest emergency room, even though logically I know, OK, I know what panic, you know, I've heard of what it feels like. But when you're feeling it, your body takes over. And that's what panic and stress, the like more mild version that a lot of us live with, that's telling us and those signals our body is sending, our muscles becoming tense, our heart racing, our breath quickening. It's sending the signal that our body is perceiving a threat in the moment. Now it gets confusing when those moments are at night, right, when we're resting.

33:06But now, right, the awareness here and the exploration is, well, was there moments to rest in my childhood? Right. Was there enough safety, security, predictability? Was it quiet or did silence and stopping come with everything from the message of not to be lazy, rest when you're dead, to it just wasn't safe to rest? There was dysfunction in the home, abuse. There was loud noises. And so when I look back at my childhood, not only was it what was happening in the home, I grew up in a very urban setting. I grew up in the middle of Philadelphia. There was noises. There were sirens. I went to sleep with noise.

33:41So it's not surprising that when I discovered I went to college in upstate New York and it was much quieter, I had to put a television on to sleep because silence meant what's going on here. Where's the next noise going to come? Is it going to be a bump in the night and something terrible happening to my family? So awareness, again, while I have somewhat of the idea of the story from where it came from, I've been able to piece it together. We start now, right? We tune into our body in real time. We build habits throughout our day. We set alarms on our phone, post-its around or map this onto a habit we already do.

34:17We drink coffee in the morning. We brush our teeth and we make the intentional effort to begin to refocus our attention from the racing thoughts that are probably coming from a stressed body to the body and say, how am I breathing right now? How is my heart? Maybe I'm putting a hand on your chest right now to notice how quickly it's beating. How tense are my muscles? And this is going back to the wisdom you were sharing earlier. Some of us don't even notice that we're clenching our jaw all day long until someone says, hey, let your jaw hang open. Or for me, I carry my shoulders so far up to my ears that it takes me a minute to.

34:50And then by contrast, it's like, wow, all of that stress. And so that stress is happening behind the scenes, is always talking to our brain, is often resulting in those racing thoughts, those catastrophe thoughts. It's not a surprise then that when something was happening, my body helped my mind assign the meaning that what was happening was not good. It was something terrible because my body was always under that stress. Yeah. So as we build that bridge to actually notice our body in real time, I would suggest though, and I would acknowledge that we're probably not going to notice the stress in the moment where we're overwhelmed with stress.

35:28So this is a practice that we want to build foundationally in our day when our body isn't too overwhelmed so that as in the moment, right, our mind is starting to race, our muscles are starting to tense, our heart is starting to elevate. Now we have some real tools. We can slow our breathing. We can just like you and I did release some of the tension that we're holding, downshift our body, clear our mind a bit and give ourselves the opportunity to now respond in a new way as opposed to react in the way that our body will do. It will take over.

36:01Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And I think it's so key to say there to try and practice that when you are in a good space because if I was trying to do that before bed when I know at the moment things feel like a bit out of sync that's not gonna fly I'm gonna go no no I I can't I can't slow my heart rate I can't I have no control you feel so wildly out of control so to do that when you actually feel I weirdly always feel very calm at work I feel like very in control and I love what I do and it would be kind of now that I could go oh I can maybe implement that I could look at my breathing. I could actually have an awareness of, oh, yeah, my shoulders are quite stiff or I'm fidgeting or whatever it is I know that I'm slightly out of whack.

36:43Fearne Cotton: And I guess then to prepare myself when I get to bed, I'm in a bit better shape to actually go to sleep. I mean, what you're doing, right, is you're gradually, instead of turning the knob up and accumulating more stress throughout the day, you're letting that valve out. You're practicing the habit of, right, checking it with your body first and foremost, but you're beginning to let that valve out because the reality is, and we're talking a lot about childhood trauma and the stress that is reactivated in these moments where we're triggered or emotionally flooded and the body takes over. But a lot of us are making a lot of lifestyle choices throughout the day that we don't even realize are causing our body so much stress.

37:20We're not sleeping at night. We're not moving during the day to the best of our ability. We're eating foods that are actually causing stress to our body. We're putting chemicals. I mean, there's a million things now that daily life and some of the habits that we've just maintained over time, because at one time they were not as unhealthy and now they are. All of that is just accumulating stress that we're not even aware of. So we do get, as you described, to this point of no return where those instincts take over. We end up once our body calms down. Some of us even, I know for me, I have a moment where I'm sure how I feel.

37:51I don't like what you did. I become reactive. I say something I don't mean. a couple moments later, sometimes a couple hours later. I mean, it's a completely different perspective. I'm like, well, it's really not that big of a deal now, right? And that's a prime example of our body calmed down enough to have a different experience of what happened. The event didn't change, right? You still said the thing, did the thing that I didn't like, but my relationship to it did. And the only thing that shifted, the biggest thing that shifted was my body is calmer. I can now have a different perspective of what happened, a different response that I want to then initiate the next time.

38:27But again, all of that happens when we begin to look at not only our general lifestyle and maybe the choices that we're making that are unknowingly contributing to a consistent amount of stress, but we're also kind of looking at the moments where we're likely to react and we're preparing ourself before that moment. Yeah.

38:43Fearne Cotton: And it's really good to remember that because I like even yesterday, I felt pretty shit in the morning and then I went to therapy and I felt like a different woman in the afternoon. And I was like, oh, how did I feel so shit only three hours ago? And I think we forget that things move and things pass and feelings pass and dissipate. and we've got a bit more perspective, a bit more distance from something. And I forget that in the moment. I need to almost daily remind myself this is not a reality forever. This is you feel like this for maybe an hour. And then two hours later, you've had a good chat on the phone to a friend who's given you a pep talk or whatever.

39:22Fearne Cotton: And you're in a completely different headspace. One thing I think is integral is, and you've touched on this slightly, but how we think of ourselves and how we talk to ourselves. our general understanding of, I guess, how much we value ourselves and the self-worth that we have. You say from zero to seven, that's where our brains are the most receptive. So the parent's voice becomes our inner dialogue. And that might seem like an obvious thing to say. But when you really drill into that, I think we can see whether it's if we've had both parents bring us up, a carer or a grandparent and a parent, we could probably look at that and go, oh right yeah I can you know my parents are very different characters but I can see how both have influenced how I think about myself and how I go about my business without any blame I'm just have the awareness there but I think if we can begin to look at that and then in those moments where we're really struggling we're in conflict we feel out of control we've made a mistake you know we've messed up the reaction to that is that internal dialogue and you also say that can change and that I think feels often so inbuilt that it's just it's sometimes you know we can hear that voice but it's it's almost just like happening on this tape without us having any control over it we can change that voice where do we begin with that one yeah I want to acknowledge too it's not just parents because school systems teachers I mean these moments and developmental times are so impressionable.

40:55There is so many outside voices that do get directed our way that then get absorbed as who we eventually believe ourself to be and then how we talk to ourself. And I also want to connect behaviors and what is modeled because the ability to respect and love and show up in self-care is not just modeled by how we're talked to, but by how not only we're treated, but by how we're watching the adults around us treat themselves. So we can become very disrespectful and critical of ourselves, sometimes because of these voices that are very critically spoken to us, shamefully spoken to us, but also because maybe no one showed up to care for us.

41:34In childhood, we don't have the maturity to zoom out, to understand everything that we're talking about from a very compassionate lens of all the reasons why my parent was limited in the way that they are. We will land on a very self-focused reason. We become the reason why someone did not show up to physically care for us, why someone might have abused us sexually or physically or neglected us entirely, it's our unworthiness that that is reflected that behavior of. If no one modeled even habits to care for oneself, if we had maybe the selfless parent, as a lot of women had a selfless mother, right, where they put themselves completely last and only showed up for the people around them, and we didn't then see someone caring for themselves, setting the boundaries that they needed, then that voice is connected to habits in our daily life.

42:17Yeah, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. So to acknowledge the voice in our head that for a lot of us is coloring our decisions to see the habits that are, you know, continuing to neglect ourself or abandon ourselves in the moments that we want. We have to get rid of the expectation that that voice just miraculously goes away. I wish there was a wand that would turn that down. But the choice we have is in removing our focus of attention. Right. We don't have to sit there and ruminate on that voice. That voice will pop up in the moments where it typically pops up. So let's anticipate that it's going to.

42:49Right. The shameful, critical voice will come whenever we do the shameful, critical thing that we've learned is shameful or critical. And then we can say, OK, I don't have to sit here and think this for longer. I don't have to focus and ruminate and tear myself down and replay the thing because that's only keeping the emotion alive in my body. What I can do is unhook my attention, maybe check in with my body at that moment. How am I breathing? How can I calm my body down? But also the self-care habits play a big role, too. Right. Can I begin to care for myself in action? Because a lot of times the critical shaming voice aligns with the self-neglecting, abandoning behaviors.

43:26And so can I then show up even if my mind isn't believing that I'm worthy of care? Right. Can I show myself through setting a boundary, through asserting myself, maybe from just giving myself a moment of rest or care or nutritious meal? Or can I in action begin to live a different reality before that voice maybe catches up?

43:45Fearne Cotton: Yeah, or even override it because I have it like say, I don't know, my job's really weird. Some weeks I'll be working insane hours and then there might be a random Tuesday where I'm not working in the afternoon. And I think to myself, oh, I'd love to get in the bath. I love having a bath. I'm always bloody freezing. So I'm going to get in the bath, read a great book. And I get in the bath and it's like, who the hell do you think you are having a bath on a Tuesday? when all your mates are at work? What do you think you're doing just lounging? What if the postman comes and he realises you've just been in the bath?

44:16Fearne Cotton: He's going to think you're so lazy. I mean, shut up. And I have to just stay in the bath and hear it and just think, oh, piss off. I'm not going to believe, I can hear it, but I need this bath. I want this bath. I deserve this bath. I'm having the bath. And you have to sort of ride it out and almost practice, I guess, because the more you do it, the more you realise, oh, this is okay. Nothing bad happened after I had the bath. There was no awful repercussion from having a bath on a Tuesday. That's so wise. That's exactly right. So mine, it wouldn't be necessarily shaming. It would be, I have too much to do.

44:49Right. I have a to-do list. I have emails, either things that are stressful that I want to chuck off the to-do list so I can then relax or things that I'm excited about. So it would always be this, not the time, not the time. Rest when you're done. And then I realized, no, the reason I can't rest is because my body isn't rested in this moment. Can I slow my breathing to be in the bath a little bit? Can I release the tension? Can I put some Epsom salt in and actually just tune into my muscles beginning to relax? But actually also, can I tolerate the discomfort of not acting in that habitual way of not springing into action or doing like you and I are both describing?

45:26Because that's the most important piece of it. We have to tolerate the discomfort. Now our mind won't know what to predict. What will happen? Will someone show up? What will they say? And when none of that happens or it does and we're still okay, that's where the real learning happens. That's what healing is. We have to give ourselves a new experience, not anticipate, not know, maybe even deal with the worst thing that we anticipated happening, but show ourselves that we're an adult. We're okay. We can tolerate discomfort. we can maybe have someone think less of us if that's what they choose to think their perception might have nothing to do with my reality in this moment and we can still go on yeah that's what we needed in childhood is this someone to say you are very upset right now right and i see that and i'm going to be here through your upset and together we're going to get to the other side and show both of us that we're all okay in this moment and when we didn't have that we have to be

46:18Fearne Cotton: that person in adulthood for ourselves well exactly i mean you talk there was a case study that you write about there's several in the book that are brilliant and it was a woman who I was like oh my god this is me whose house had to be immaculate in case somebody came around and judged them because there was stuff on the kitchen counter or whatever that is me I remember someone turning up to my house once out of the blue and uh and they went why is your house tidy and I went it always is and they were like I don't get it you didn't know I was coming over and I was like no this is how it always is in case this happens which has happened literally once in the entirety of my adult life like phew exactly I proved the test but the the silly thing is if someone came around and there was shit everywhere I know they wouldn't care and like you say you have to do it to prove to yourself you will be okay and unfortunately most of us have had our worst nightmare happen or maybe not worst nightmare but things happen that we really didn't want to and anyone listening to this now sat there today or me sat here today having had awful things happen that I wish hadn't happened I am still getting out of bed every day showing up for my kids going to work I am all right I am all right and I think it is so important for us to almost I guess see it as data to go yeah I survived that or I got through that or that was really embarrassing or that was horrendous and I felt so uncomfortable during that whole thing but I'm still standing it's and we should maybe even celebrate those moments i don't think we're very good at patting ourselves on the back for those you know they are victories really right but you're really saying something important too which is that they hurt yeah right it all everything that we're now struggling with came from a very devastating moment perhaps in childhood where again someone wasn't there physically for us emotionally for us someone again abused us crossed our boundaries, those moments hurt.

48:10That's why we work so hard to avoid them at all costs, to be so perfect that I'll avoid even the mildest criticism because it feels to me like what I'm hearing in that moment. My body feels like I'm being told I'm unworthy, or I worry about silence and distance in relationships. I'm very annoying with my partner. I say, are you okay? What's wrong? What's wrong? Anytime her voice shifts in tone or she gets short, nothing to do with me but in childhood my mother wouldn't speak to me on the other side of that look often wasn't an explosion like my brother and sister got thankfully by the time I came along 15 years later it was the silent treatment so now when you're not giving me and you're giving me shortened answers maybe because you're stressed out at work we run the business together I get it I live it but I'm interpreting that as oh I'm being rejected again I'm being abandoned right So it's important to acknowledge when we're kind of talking about all of the ways we've adapted, that we've adapted from pain.

49:09And what we're desperately trying to do, which is why we please and achieve and caretake and do all of the things, deflect, and everything's fine and good all the time. And we're joking when it's not. It's because that was too painful. So we are very adaptive and savvy to try to avoid that pain at all costs, which often, of course, comes with cost.

49:29Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And I guess, can you really heal from something if you're not willing to properly look at it? I mean, I certainly had an era of my life that I was just like, delete, gone, not looking at it. to be honest all of this that you know the podcast the stuff I do with happy place we have a festival and you know we're expanding we've got a book imprint a little marketplace all this beautiful stuff has come from that it's not a coincidence it's come from that if I hadn't felt bloody awful none of this would exist because I would have just been carrying on trying to be a tv presenter so I know that it happened because this is all here but I wouldn't look at it and in the last few years of therapy, I've really looked at it.

50:15Fearne Cotton: And I sit not comfortably, more comfortably with it now, because I pushed myself to look at it. I didn't like looking at any of it. I didn't want to look at any of it, but I did. That has helped me immensely. And I'm not like, yay, I'm healed. Everything's great. Maybe we never are, but I'm a lot better than I was, you know, years ago. Do you think it's possible to heal without really digging into something or having a proper awareness of that happened and actually acknowledging the pain. And again, whether or not we have access to exactly the details of what happened, we could just start even now, right?

50:50What's not working now? One of the moments that I feel flooded, overwhelmed, or confused, or knowing that I am not being the person that I want to be or expressing myself authentically. So starting now, right? Again, some of us can go back and have a look in that sense of, oh, let me unearth and imagine and live in the moments then, but those moments really are probably still repeating now. And what I think the goal is, and I talk about this in the ending chapters, because I'm often asked, what happens when we heal? Are we just good and done? And do we go back to this way of being before it all happened?

51:25And I don't actually know if we would want to. I don't know if there is a going back. What I get to in my book is this concept of integration, where we're not reacting and reliving our past because even in my circumstance, I've created a beautiful life. I hope to think I'm making impact, right? This perfectionist overachiever has now become a purpose. But what is becoming different is I'm giving myself the opportunity to choose, right? To give myself a sense of worthiness and moments of rest and saying no to a project that doesn't align or that I don't have energy for where I'm no longer defined by what I'm achieving or doing to get a sense of worthiness.

52:02Because much like you, I still want to have drive, motivation. That's incredibly important for me to produce and have the impact that I'm so passionate about having. So my life has created the circumstances where at one time that was all I could do to feel worthy. Now, again, there are still a lot of moments where I feel bound to do and create to have that sense of worthiness. But what is different is I'm able to show up with more awareness. I'm able to see that those moments usually happen when I'm under resourced for me when I'm not sleeping well, eating well, moving my body in the way that I need to, when stress is happening in my life, and I'm not taking moments to deal with it or check in with myself, so that I give myself not an erasure of that past, but the choice to decide if and when I still want to act from that very adaptive protective part.

52:51And I think that's the goal for all of us is to, again, know how our past is impacting us. We might not know the story necessarily of where it came from, but we can sure most of us can see the impact now. And instead of having to rely on those old habits, give our body the resources so that we can then in new moments choose, right? Check in and say, am I available for this now? Is it a no instead of the yes that I used to always say? Tolerate the discomfort of perhaps continuing to build that new habit, but now I'm showing up as a super empowered being. Because back to what you're saying earlier, we don't know what comes next.

53:25Fearne Cotton: Our body changes. Hormones change. We don't know what it's going to be like to be in an older body, what our relationships will look like. And so to have that sense of awareness as an on the kind of in the moment possibility is, I think, the only thing that's going to equip us to walk into the unknown future. My wife won't stop talking about Jerry. Jerry says he saved us money on car insurance? Mine too. Found her a better rate and didn't waste her time. Who is this guy? Babe, Jerry checked again and found us an even better rate, pulled 20 quotes from top insurers, showed them side by side, and helped me switch policies in the app.

54:05It's a car insurance app. Yep. Let's just... Never happened. Do yourself a favor. Visit jerry.ai slash acast. Right now at Mattress Warehouse, save up to$800 warehouse-wide. Get buy one, get one free deals, plus a free adjustable base on select mattresses, 0 % interest financing, free delivery, and our exclusive lifetime price guarantee only at Mattress Warehouse. The savings are stacked at Mattress Warehouse. Right now, save up to$800 warehouse-wide on top brands you know and trust, plus buy one, get one free deals so you can upgrade sleep for your entire family and get a free adjustable base with select mattress purchases.

54:43With 0 % interest financing and free delivery available, getting better sleep has never been easier. And with our exclusive lifetime price guarantee, you'll always know you got the best deal. Save big today at Mattress Warehouse. We're more than a mattress store. We're Mattress Warehouse.

55:01Fearne Cotton: I was talking to a friend yesterday for people who sit on the opposite end of the spectrum, because we can often forget, you know, as someone that wants to keep doing and achieving and that sense of restlessness that I have to keep doing, I sort of forget there are people out there and people that I love dearly who have the opposite issue where they're slightly frozen and stuck in, well, I can't do that thing. And there's lots of different reasons why. And some of them are very, very valid, but they are completely frozen. And there is no action because of that. I guess there's like you say there's flight, freeze and fawn.

55:39Fearne Cotton: Is that right? Right. But people who are just like, yeah, I've flopped. I've gone. I can't. There's nothing I can do. How do you begin to override that? That feels I'm happy you're bringing that up. I think whether it becomes a lifestyle, right, where we constantly shame ourself because we're unmotivated, we're procrastinating, we're not showing ourself or speaking up in the moments or even the acute moments or relational moments, right? We have a sense that the relationship we're in is dysfunctional, it's abusive, or there's active abuse happening and we can't advocate or leave the situation.

56:10I think a lot of us carry a lot of shame, either, you know, acutely in moments where, oh, I should have done something and protected myself, or just generally where we're not generating the action that we might desperately want or know that we need to. And so, again, all of that is very much the final step on the chain of nervous system reactions. When a stressful event happens, an unpredictable threat comes, our body will first activate into action. So we can overcome the threat by fighting it or flee the threat. Now, fighting can look like words, verbal, you know, kind of fighting or physical fighting.

56:46Fleeing can look like physically leaving the room or emotionally checking out. If and when those things don't work and we're still under stress. And so for some of us who have lived with a lifetime of stress. So my anxiety in childhood turned down to a shutdown state where when I first met my current partner, which was now almost, gosh, 15 years ago, she would be like, are you are you here? Like you're here in presence and you're looking at me and I'm talking to you, but I'm getting the sense that you're a million miles away. And I was. I was on my spaceship, as I called it. I was so shut down from a lifetime of stress that much like an animal, we're there in body, but emotionally we're disconnected.

57:26And again, some of us, while I was able to, I was in more of the functional freeze where I still had my foot on the gas a little bit to push myself to go to work and achieve the things that I needed to achieve, some of us are in that full state of shutdown. And so to know without shame, right, to not shame ourselves even more in the moments where we're struggling to act. And again, to understand that this is where it's a little illogical. We cannot, because we're already overwhelmed, re-overhaul our life. We cannot decide that I'm going to push myself into so much discomfort that I'm going to do all of these things and force myself to do them.

58:01Because what we're doing is we're now overwhelming an already overwhelmed system.

58:05Fearne Cotton: Yes. So we need to gradually, right, even physically slowly start to inspire movement in the body. Emotionally, right, as we're reconnecting with our body, we're becoming more aware of the overwhelming sensations. Now is not the time to dive into our deepest trauma, right? We need to gradually warm our system up so that we can, again, avoid the habit of then overwhelming ourself even more and going right back into that shutdown state. So small ways that we can inspire, whether it's physical movement or emotional movement into our day so that we're staying safely in that kind of contained window of not going back into that overwhelmed state.

58:46But I think the lack of shame piece is really helpful to hear. And then we can begin to do, again, a little bit of inspired action, taking breaks when we need to so that we can resource our nervous system so that we don't have to go back into that shutdown state.

58:59Fearne Cotton: Oh, it's so cool. I remember like when I first started therapy, my therapist used to go to me, fun, hello. And I'd be like, what am I giving off that shows that I've checked out? And I kind of knew I'd checked out. But shame would be one of the first things like I'm getting therapy wrong. I'm even getting therapy. How am I messing up therapy? She can see right through me. I have failed. and it was so confusing at first and I sort of felt exposed and you know rightly so I was called out because that was the catalyst for huge change for me to then go oh I can drop my guard here I don't have to be performing or saying the right thing I can just say I'm pissed off or this has annoyed me or you know all the stuff that I tried to suppress I had permission to say and she very helpfully allowed me that space to do so but I think in the moment I really felt like oh my god I've got this wrong I mean you talk about shame a lot certainly towards the end of the book and about obviously how destructive it is for us but how we can start to live alongside it because so many people feel it varying degrees for all different reasons what would your number one takeaway be for if you're living with that sense of shame how do we start to move past it yeah And shame is, again, a byproduct, again, of childhood, that sense of unworthiness, that sense of we are the problem.

1:00:25That's where shame begins to develop. But it very much maps on to this shutdown nervous system state that we're both describing. And so even you saying time settling in, right, she gave me space because to this day in moments where I'm emotionally flooded and overwhelmed, I will be the first to admit I don't know what I'm feeling. I just know I'm having a feeling because my voice is getting louder. I'm talking quicker. I'm having the thoughts that I want to shut down and leave you even though I know I don't want to leave you right that fleeing in my mind But I couldn't and I still struggle in those overwhelmed moments to articulate What i'm feeling yeah, because i'm so shut down That I have an idea that a feeling is happening But I can't connect enough to kind of decide am I angry am I resentful am I sad?

1:01:11What is this? Feeling because again, we're talking about a physiology a physiological state that's preventing that ability to connect. Because again, in childhood, when we didn't have the ability to have someone help regulate us, when we assign the meaning that we are unworthy, when our body begins to then cope as if we're unworthy, shame is again, another very protective emotion. We're very social creatures. We are much safer, especially our ancestors, in a group of people than as an individual on the tundra where the lion could kill us. So to attune to the social cues of not only our core family, but of society around us and to figure out what is appropriate versus inappropriate.

1:01:52Again, I'm really simplifying, right? To figure out how to stay connected. Those moments where we feel shame. And for a long time, I would have never said I'm shameful because it didn't land for me as the more traditional, I'm embarrassed, my cheeks are red. But it was so baked in to all of these protective patterns where I was even avoiding feeling that rejection, that abandonment because it was too painful. So even something like shame, again, is important when it's socially appropriate, right? When we are behaving in a way that might cause someone harm and we care about them. So we want to act in a different way.

1:02:26But so many of us assign shame as a sense of worthiness, right? It's kind of, we need to separate that from guilt. I can feel bad about what I do, but so many of us have learned, not only through the critical voice in our mind and what we believe about ourself to feel bad about who we are, but our bodies have begun to shut down. So acknowledging whether you have the more traditional shaming voice that some of you are very clear that you have or whether or not it's just baked into the habits that you're doing to avoid feeling shame, it's in your body. So just like we talked about with the free state, can I rebuild that connection?

1:02:59Can I give myself time and space? So for me, I know I need, if I can break the habit of saying something I don't need in the moment, coming from emotion that I might not have clarity on, if I can take time away, and again, not a walk around the block to ruminate to get an even better case about when I'm going to come back and how wrong you were, right? But to calm my body down, can I then re-access and get some clarity to then be able to verbalize maybe what it is that I am truly feeling in the moment? Because again, when shame shuts us down, we are shut down to the signals in our body, to what is authentically true for us, and more so that's to the ability then to act from that truth, setting the boundaries, sharing our perspective, or communicating our emotion.

1:03:41Fearne Cotton: What if we just cannot access that emotion? Because again, my therapist very early on when I started seeing her regularly said to me, I went there thinking I had like panic disorder or something. And she went, I've got this was literally off the bat. She said, I don't think you're anxious. I think you're really fucking angry. And I was like, angry? Don't know about that it literally took me a month to go oh my god I am livid I'm absolutely and I had no idea it was so deeply shoved down I had no clue until somebody told me how do you start to work that out without someone telling you because they're a professional yeah I mean emotions are confusing we don't have a guidebook and if we didn't have a parent that was attuned aware enough of their own emotions, able to regulate themselves, to gain that awareness, then we're going to struggle to know we're feeling something, to be able to distinguish what it is that we're feeling, and then to be able to feel safe enough to give words to it.

1:04:45So it becomes, again, for me, it's an ongoing practice. It's a practice of connecting with the body, tuning into. Emotions are sensations. Anger and anxiety often do go hand in hand with anxiety, oftentimes overlaying or being the surface experience of anger because it's that amplified state of energy racing through our body, of our fists becoming clenched, of our heart racing. And if anger, as I don't think very few societies have a healthy relationship with anger. Especially for women. It can be very destructive in general, especially if you've been on the receiving end of abusive behaviors coming from dysregulated anger, though, again, across gender lines, it's going back to this idea of the good girl, right?

1:05:27The don't show anger, the don't yell, or to have a more passive aggressive communication or interpersonal where you're gossiping and criticizing and shaming other people, but really you're angry. And we'll all be angry in a couple of different moments when our boundaries are violated. Why? Because anger inspires the action to assert ourself, to fight or flee the thing that's causing our boundary violation. It also comes from an accumulation of unmet needs. So the reality is a lot of us adults, myself included, I struggle to connect with my anger still because it feels too much like anxiety. It feels too overwhelming.

1:06:05I had two parents, one of which my dad, who was screaming and yelling when he was angry over the misplacement of where he put the thing and it's not where it used to be. And so now he's angry all the time in those moments, inappropriately so one might say, and a shut down mother. So I am still learning how to connect with the sensory experience of emotion. So it goes back to how do we do it? We connect with our body. We explore not before we even give the label. We can get out of feelings wheel and eventually over time kind of point to the feeling that we're having. But before we can do that, can we just connect with the emotions, the sensations?

1:06:42Right. Can we learn and be with that amplified energy of anger or maybe the depletion and heaviness of sadness? Right. Before we give words, can we just be with the experience again in childhood, which would have been helpful to happen then that's happening in our body?

1:07:01Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And then as our body comes right, then we can give some language. We have access to the ability of our mind to give language labels. and some of us might even need to learn a vocabulary in terms of emotional words. But anger is something I think in particular that's important because a lot of us, all of us who had unmet needs in childhood probably have some foundational anger and some dysfunctional way that we're coping with it, whether or not we're exploding outward and hurting the people that we love or we're so shut down and threatened by our own anger that we're being passive aggressive or people pleasing to avoid it.

1:07:35So to develop that space in our life, the awareness of what anger feels like in our body, and then obviously a healthier channel. And again, with anger in particular, it's usually creating a boundary, asserting yourself or meeting our need.

1:07:48Fearne Cotton: Yeah. I mean, what a beautiful way to initiate some parenting to yourself. That's what we're talking about. If you're still struggling to sort of think, how do I parent myself? That is it in action right there is just noticing the feeling because so often we dismiss it and we crack on with the next job or we gaslight ourselves and you know carry on with our day rather than going this is how I'm feeling you know that's been one thing for me is going it's okay to be angry like it's not it doesn't make you a bad person which I think I massively believed previously oh I'm such an awful person that I'm angry about this now I'm like oh I'm angry whatever just doesn't it's not a big deal I can sit and acknowledge that but I did not feel like that before I had like you say the language and the awareness of this is this is a feeling and it's all right you know there aren't bad emotions and good ones they're just all emotions that we're we're all going to feel throughout the course of bloody 24 hours probably right we're humans we put so much pressure too I think to know what we're feeling in the moment to be able to give words to it which is why I continue to emphasize that won't be possible if no one taught us if our body is too overwhelmed with the emotion whatever it is we're going to struggle to be able to communicate that which is why it's so important to give ourselves the time the space we need the curiosity not to shame that we don't yet know again i'm still learning my own emotional landscape so that in the moment then or even before when i'm in a state of need and i want to tell someone that i love that i'm feeling whatever it is, that I'm able to have the language to do that.

1:09:23I'm able to tolerate the vulnerability of doing that, the fear of judgment that will come along with doing that. And I'm able to then make that connection. I think that's why a lot of us were walking around. The reason why I kind of evolved my practice into now a solely community focused one is because the second I went online and the community kind of sprung up from around the world, it became so clear to me how shameful we are, how much we all fear that we're the only ones who feel this way, who are struggling with this who are doing this and it is so hard to be authentically connected because we're not showing our true self because that fear is either preventing ourselves from being connected with our own emotions or from our ability to share our actual authentic experiences

1:10:05Fearne Cotton: with other people yes you say something so helpful um healing requires a return to radical honesty goosebumps I underlined it in the book and I was like I need to re-read that again and again and again because I've had so many of those I mean I wrote a whole fucking book about it those moments where you go you're saying the thing because I don't want to upset the person and blah blah blah and inside you're like blood is boiling or you're or you're really upset or there's there's something that you're not saying and it's been very recent for me I'd say literally more since I wrote this book in the last sort of year that I've even dared to go say the thing just say the thing get to the other side of it and you might feel a bit vulnerable and a little bit wobbly because of it but you're going to be all right say the thing I even did one of them yesterday like in my head say the thing one two three and then I'm I'm here I'm still here you know and it is like a constant practice but that radical honesty is key and it's still sometimes seen as unacceptable by society because we're meant to be you know stay in line be civil have the right etiquette in the right place but actually we're doing our authentic selves a disservice by constantly lying it's lying lying people pleasing is often lying and we're doing our relationships one too yeah right because what happens to anger over time it accumulates as resentment it turns into contempt for the other person, I think it's Dr.

1:11:31John Gottlieb, has kind of verified in couples research that that is what leads to the disintegration of relationships, either because we don't feel, right, authentically attuned and connected to it because we're not, right? All those years I spent being stoic, fine, communicating distance to people, I felt alone in a crowded room. I blamed my partners. I thought, if I just find the right person, I'll feel differently. And I didn't see the role that I was playing in that disconnection that I was creating. So to be honest with oneself and to say, I mean, how many of us say, I'm fine and we're not fine.

1:12:05And maybe the first step is to say, I'm not fine. I don't know what I am right now. I'll get back to you, but I'm not fine. And so for me, I'd giggle when you were saying that because there were so many moments at the beginning of my journey when I saw all of the different relationships, personal, my family, that I watered myself down and I started to practice saying the thing. I would write it, text it, and throw my phone across the room and then not want to go look at it, you know, because I was like, I said it, I'm done here. But I was so what I was afraid not was saying it. It was what I was afraid was on the other side of saying it.

1:12:35And I even have seen this as my evolution in my professional world. I was so scared. I started to evolve my practice. I started to understand how traditional therapy wasn't working. I started to apply a more holistic approach. I started to do differently in my life. My relationship that I thought was always going to be with anxiety was actually starting to change. I was so motivated. I started to see clients privately and I was doing the holistic work with them and everyone was starting to make little shifts in their behaviors and get better, so to speak. And I was watching the online world and I was sharing with my partner, Lolly, who I went from so unfulfilled.

1:13:07I want to run away from this life I've created because I'm not feeling connected to it. No one's getting better. I'm not getting better to inspire. And she's like, Nicole, you should start to use, she's brilliant on social media. She's like, you really should start to share this with people. She was going on a similar journey of healing herself. And I was like, I don't know. I'm not used to being seen in honesty. I'm used to being seen as a curated self who's only performing in the ways that I know best. And back then, a couple of years ago, psychologists don't share their own struggles. They dare don't talk about the body and nutrition and lifestyle and the nervous system.

1:13:38It's just not in our trained language. So I was so afraid to share online. Thank God she supported me and urged me. And I began to do that though over time in the beginning I would share much like a therapist I'd dance around topics I'd water it down you'd ask me what I think I'd give you like a it could be this or that because I didn't want to there were some topics I avoided entirely even though I believe them to be true and so even over these last gosh how many years I've been online now oh my gosh it's been eight years I have gradually by learning how to say the thing in my safe relationships outside of social media, of course, first and then on social media to tolerate all the different reactions, opinions, you know, misunderstandings or outright disagreements that I have gotten over the years showing myself.

1:14:25Right. Of course, it's not that I avoid feedback entirely. Sometimes very well-meaning people on the Internet can give me very helpful feedback that I can integrate, though not all of it is. And so over these years, I've even gotten so much more in my own flow because I don't have to pause, run something by, think about all the people that I'm never going to please or I'm not going to be for and I can just say it. And that's been so freeing, but it has taken practice. It has taken me like you're doing kind of being like, say the thing, figure out what the thing is, take time to figure it out. Don't maybe say it in a heated moment, get clear that it is the thing you want to say and then just practice saying the thing.

1:15:01Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And have your own back on the other end of it. So I think if someone does come back in a volatile way or they tell you off or whatever, you've got to be really sturdy with, I've got my back. I know that I needed to say that and I wanted to say that and that feels truthful to me. So I'm going to stick with me rather than you and your opinion. Like that feels like a very important part of it. And again, something I'm constantly practicing and getting a little bit better at each time in relationships, friendships. Certainly I feel the same as you with my working life. You know, I used to be a TV presenter.

1:15:38Fearne Cotton: So you turn up and you read the lines and you are the shiny person you've got to be. And then this has been totally different talking about things where sometimes you think, God, should I admit this about myself or say this? And I think, you know, most of the time honesty is met with other people feeling a resonance with what you're saying and like, oh, I really get who you are now. I might not always agree, but I see you as a whole human. And that's that's that feels peaceful to me, a more peaceful place to be. I can't actually believe we've talked for an hour because I feel like I've not even scratched the surface because this is such a huge topic.

1:16:16So what I would say for anyone watching this now or listening who is interested in learning the process of reparenting, maybe having a look back at their childhood, the voices that were in their childhood, getting your book

1:16:31Fearne Cotton: is going to be the best way, as well as obviously following you put out such brilliant content on social media. But reading this book is such an education with also, may I add, very practical steps along the way, practices that you can do a bit of homework, actually, in between reading chapters, which is really, really helpful. So congratulations on such a great book. Before we wrap up, two questions. The first one is we're creating a playlist of songs that make us feel really great. What song would you put on that playlist? So good. Let me think of a song that I've been bopping around to recently.

1:17:07it's so funny I love music and now I'm blanking oh I have this every time I can't think of one song I'm stressed and I'm blanked out I'm stressed and I'm blanked out look at real time I checked out I don't know I don't know I mean the song is coming to mind it's funny too because in my first book it was very impactful for me there will be time by Mumford and Sons and that is the first thing that popped into my head now there's a million more recent ones but I'm having that moment where I can't grab it but there will be time and I think again this is really much applying to this conversation there is time for all of you listening there is never too late that for me has been a constant kind of go-to of inspiration not only for the very short amount of lyrics that are in the song but the feeling that kind of goes through my body now that I'm getting more connected with it and can allow myself to connect with the resonance of music which will also be really healing to access emotions yes oh my god it's one of the quickest ways I mean that is so big for me to be able to listen to a song and get brought back to either a time period in life or an emotion and this is what we're talking about the emotional resonance that I think comes through literally energy of

1:18:10Fearne Cotton: music the frequency of music I love crying to music yes I bloody love it put on a sad song purposefully to have a cry well it's funny to connect this even back to anger I noticed that I struggle to listen to high aggressive what sounds to me aggressive same angry music I maybe I should practice more as we're having this conversation I'm like maybe because it's like it's scary to me i'm like i and again if those of you like that music great you have a you're in touch with your anger correct um i am not if music is too loud and too aggressive feeling in my body i'm like oh i'd rather the more melodramatic sad or just like calming chilled um and also nicole where is your happy place oh where's my nature nature has always been growing up in a city anytime i was in nature i always was able to notice that slight contrast where yes my thoughts were still racing I was still an anxious mess but felt a little more grounded thankfully now I live very much in a beautiful natural setting near a lake and I spend a lot of time just being in nature and it's just my happy place it's the best I love it well look thank you so much for being on the podcast I have been so looking forward to talking to you I think we're gonna have to do a part two when you're back next because there's just there's so much more to discuss we have a lot of personal residence too which I think is really it's really special so thank you for having me this is a great conversation oh my god I love Nicole's approach to just everything she's obviously smart as a tack but just explains things so clearly and with such conviction not only because of her background as a psychologist but because she's living and breathing it as a human being that's the point of difference.

1:19:51Fearne Cotton: Often when we either read books written by psychologists or indeed I've interviewed them on the podcast, it is, as Nicole mentioned earlier, very rarely inclusive of their own backstory. And that's what I love about Nicole is that she's able to really tap in to her own past, her own childhood, how she's reacting in real times to things today and use all of her knowledge and skill set and what she's professionally trained for to think about it and dissect it and talk about it. I found that chat wildly helpful and I really hope that you feel the same. Nicole's latest book, which I urge you to read, is called Reparenting the Inner Child, the new science of our oldest wounds and how to heal them.

1:20:35Fearne Cotton: And it's out right now. Lots of practical exercises to do in there too, which are really, really good. A massive thanks again to Nicole and to you because you are ace.

1:21:06Fearne Cotton: Happy Place is researched by me, Fern Cotton. The producer is Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios with studio engineering by Basil Oxtoby. The savings are stacked at Mattress Warehouse. Right now, save up to$800 warehouse-wide on top brands you know and trust. Plus, buy one, get one free deals so you can upgrade sleep for your entire family and get a free adjustable base with select mattress purchases. With 0 % interest financing and free delivery available, getting better sleep has never been easier. And with our exclusive lifetime price guarantee, you'll always know you got the best deal. Save big today at Mattress Warehouse.

1:21:44We're more than a mattress store. We're Mattress Warehouse. Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer. They tune in every week. They trust the host. And that host wants to talk about brands like yours in their own words to their audience. The problem is you just haven't been introduced yet. We're A-Cast, where that introduction happens. As the world's largest podcast marketplace, We let you browse shows, see who's listening, and book host-read sponsorships or run your own ads all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real-time data, complete control.

1:22:22Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast.com slash advertise.