Speaker 1: Too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and
Speaker 1: in swirling the story instead of figuring out how to
Speaker 1: really move forward.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: If you've ever felt like you're stuck in your head, overthinking,
Speaker 3: second guessing, and feeling weighted down by your emotions, it's
Speaker 3: good to know that you're not alone. Today I'm talking
Speaker 3: with Nicki Eisenhower, who's a psychotherapist, a coach, and the
Speaker 3: host of Emotional Badass. She believes that emotional sensitivity isn't
Speaker 3: a weakness, it's a strength. We'll explore why so many
Speaker 3: people struggle to change, how overthinking keeps us trapped, and
Speaker 3: what it really takes to break free from our old patterns.
Speaker 3: As we talked, I realize how much of my own
Speaker 3: journey has been about learning when to listen to my
Speaker 3: emotions and when to challenge them, because, as Nicky says,
Speaker 3: our feelings aren't always telling the truth. By the end
Speaker 3: of this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how
Speaker 3: to quiet the inner chatter, take real action in your life,
Speaker 3: and step into your own strength without getting stuck in
Speaker 3: your story. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one
Speaker 3: you feed. Hi, Nikki, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: I am excited to have you on and talk about
Speaker 3: all kinds of different things. You have quite an interesting
Speaker 3: background as a psychotherapist, as a coach, as a podcast host,
Speaker 3: and you cover all kinds of topics, so it'll be
Speaker 3: really interesting to see where we end up. But we'll
Speaker 3: start in the place that we always do with the Parable.
Speaker 3: And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 3: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 3: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops and think about it for a second,
Speaker 3: and they look up their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It means so much. I used to teach a group
Speaker 1: with that parable, well before I even knew what a
Speaker 1: podcast was. It hits me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I think we have so much power to feed the good,
Speaker 1: to feed what serves us, and I think the confusion
Speaker 1: is that sometimes we don't know what we're feeding, or
Speaker 1: we don't know that we have that power to feed
Speaker 1: different beasts inside of us, if you will. And so
Speaker 1: to me, that parable is all about the empowerment of
Speaker 1: that choice and being mindful and intentional so that we're
Speaker 1: feeding what we really want to feed, so that we're
Speaker 1: growing in a direction of lightness, of ease, of peace,
Speaker 1: of joy, of really experiencing what is good in this
Speaker 1: one precious life and letting go of the rest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, as I was listening to a couple
Speaker 3: recent episodes of Yours, they were what seventeen years of
Speaker 3: working with my clients has taught me? And there's lots
Speaker 3: of interesting lessons in there, But I kind of want
Speaker 3: to pivot a slightly different direction off of that, which
Speaker 3: is that seventeen years of working with clients is a
Speaker 3: long time. You've worked with a lot of people, and
Speaker 3: in that time you have seen people grow and prosper
Speaker 3: and change and just beautiful stories. And you've seen tragedy
Speaker 3: and heartbreak. You've seen people who don't change, people who die,
Speaker 3: all the negative outcomes we could think of. And I'm
Speaker 3: curious if you have any wisdom about what it is
Speaker 3: that allows some people to change and others not, because
Speaker 3: any of us that are in this field for very long,
Speaker 3: or even if you're not in it directly, if you
Speaker 3: observe people in your own life, it is a mystery,
Speaker 3: right Like why was Bob able to moderate his weight
Speaker 3: and his health and his cholesterol and become healthy where
Speaker 3: Sam is now a Type two diabetic and only gets
Speaker 3: out twice a week, Like we see it all around us,
Speaker 3: And I'm just curious if you have some thoughts on
Speaker 3: what are some of the key factors in people's ability
Speaker 3: to make change.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I think the main thing that
Speaker 1: is so hard to put our finger on or name
Speaker 1: about that difference. It is so easy to see because
Speaker 1: you can really see it, especially when you do this
Speaker 1: work over and over again. It's like, what is that
Speaker 1: stuff that one person has that motivates them towards this change?
Speaker 1: And what is this stuff that this other person is
Speaker 1: missing that doesn't seem to be able to do that
Speaker 1: work or to let go of what isn't serving them.
Speaker 1: To me, that stuff is insight, and insight is one
Speaker 1: of those things that we can't really teach and we
Speaker 1: don't really know why. This is something that I had
Speaker 1: professors in my counseling program when I was in my
Speaker 1: master's program teach and what they taught brand new green
Speaker 1: therapists was that we were really going to try to
Speaker 1: hammer in insight to people that just didn't have it,
Speaker 1: and their intelligence level would make it seem like they
Speaker 1: should be able to connect these dots and make these
Speaker 1: changes and go forward, and that that very thing that
Speaker 1: seems to motivate change is in sight, and it's sight
Speaker 1: and just like our eyeballs. Like if you and I
Speaker 1: are standing next to each other looking out at a landscape.
Speaker 1: I live in the mountains and see the mountains right
Speaker 1: now as we're talking outside of my window. If you
Speaker 1: and I are standing there looking at those mountains, we
Speaker 1: know very well that you're going to have a different
Speaker 1: site ability. I'm gonna have different site. Maybe one of
Speaker 1: us has glasses, but when it comes to things like
Speaker 1: our intuition or our insight, we can't really measure it
Speaker 1: like we can to get prescription glasses. So I think
Speaker 1: it's harder for us to really understand that other human
Speaker 1: beings have different parts of them. And it's part sensory,
Speaker 1: maybe it's part spiritual. Maybe it's the different karmas that
Speaker 1: we're living out why some of us are born with
Speaker 1: insight and some of us aren't. I tend to work
Speaker 1: with very high insight people that come from family systems
Speaker 1: where most of the players seem to suffer from and
Speaker 1: really suffer, whether they know it or not, from low insight.
Speaker 1: And that's just our ability to look inward, our ability
Speaker 1: to observe ourselves, our ability to see our own patterns,
Speaker 1: our own inclinations, our own motivations, our own desires, and
Speaker 1: question them. That if we can't see those things, then
Speaker 1: it's not going to be easy to question those things
Speaker 1: or to change them. So I think the stuff that
Speaker 1: you're talking about is insight. And you and your work,
Speaker 1: I'm sure of it, and me and mine we do
Speaker 1: insight oriented therapies or coaching, or we're helping people who
Speaker 1: already have insight connected and many of them are hurt
Speaker 1: in the world by people that just don't seem to
Speaker 1: have that insight and likely never will, which we don't like.
Speaker 1: Right Like, I'm all about hope and change, and so
Speaker 1: one of the things I teach in my Boundaries course
Speaker 1: every October is that we also have a dysfunctional hope.
Speaker 1: You know, we're kind of supposed to give second chances,
Speaker 1: not infinity chances. So I think there's a lot that
Speaker 1: plays there about that ability, that willingness, that seekers spirit,
Speaker 1: that drives us to change.
Speaker 3: I have a thousand follow on questions that So when
Speaker 3: we say insight, I think it's worth talking a little
Speaker 3: bit more about what that is because I'm certain that
Speaker 3: you see this and I've seen it I got into
Speaker 3: a recovery at twenty four years old, and I hate
Speaker 3: to say fifty two, right, And so I mean I've
Speaker 3: been watching some people change and other people not for
Speaker 3: a long long time, right. And what I have seen
Speaker 3: is people who show up and put in effort, who
Speaker 3: appear to have some degree of insight, because they wouldn't
Speaker 3: be there putting in the effort if they didn't have
Speaker 3: some insight, or they can pare it back some insight.
Speaker 3: Maybe what is it you think that they need to
Speaker 3: be seeing that Oftentimes people are not connecting or are
Speaker 3: not seen more deeply.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's how deep our personal responsibility really run. And
Speaker 1: I also think we're not so aware naturally of what
Speaker 1: are motivating factors. So I've worked in addiction where people
Speaker 1: live for residential treatment, and I did intensive outpatient That's
Speaker 1: where I started my career, and very often someone could
Speaker 1: speak the speak right, talk the talk, and the truth is,
Speaker 1: as a trained therapist, we want tangible, evidence based stuff
Speaker 1: to help people with and to speak from. What I
Speaker 1: learned as a human being going through that experience beyond
Speaker 1: a therapist going through that experience was that I had
Speaker 1: to decipher and it was a feel It's very hard
Speaker 1: to put into words. It's a feeling because two people
Speaker 1: can stand next to each other and utter the same thing,
Speaker 1: the same desire, But I can feel the difference between
Speaker 1: someone who is genuinely passionate and driven about going after
Speaker 1: the very behaviors and mindsets that will serve them, and
Speaker 1: someone else may say the exact same phrasing, but it
Speaker 1: feels empty, it feels hollow, and often the difference there
Speaker 1: is they're not really motive to do it for themselves.
Speaker 1: We don't understand motivation, and when we have lower insight,
Speaker 1: we also tend to have a lower empathy and a
Speaker 1: lower maturity. So often what I think is at play
Speaker 1: is a lower maturity, and we don't do a great
Speaker 1: job in mental health. I think even in spiritual circles,
Speaker 1: just as people. I don't think we talk about maturity
Speaker 1: in any kind of self development space, but we can
Speaker 1: see that. There was a philosopher that I very much
Speaker 1: identified with when I was going through my schooling. I
Speaker 1: think it was Ericson, But I'm not great at remembering
Speaker 1: the names and pairing them with the right information. That's
Speaker 1: not my strong suit. My strong suit is the how
Speaker 1: to heal, but in that one of those philosophers theorized
Speaker 1: that most people did not truly emotionally develop into adulthood,
Speaker 1: most stayed kind of stunted in adolescents. And for me
Speaker 1: that was a gobsmack moment to hear that information, because
Speaker 1: I could see in my own family system that was
Speaker 1: very dysfunctional, and in the family systems I was working
Speaker 1: with and learning about at the time that that was very,
Speaker 1: very true. That often there was a younger person who
Speaker 1: had been parentified, who seemed to be born an old soul,
Speaker 1: like just born with some kind of maturity. And we
Speaker 1: can really see that a lot of people have parents,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have family members. A lot of
Speaker 1: people themselves may really be operating emotionally like a twelve
Speaker 1: year old. They really may be operating like a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old. And some of that is temperament, some of
Speaker 1: that is experienced, some of that is nature, some of
Speaker 1: that is nurture, some of that is drug and alcohol use.
Speaker 1: Stunting emotional development, we certainly know about that, But I
Speaker 1: would also say growing up with chaos for certain personalities
Speaker 1: can stunt that development. So when we say trauma or dysfunction,
Speaker 1: those are overused they're overplayed. They're almost like the word
Speaker 1: good at this point, it's like we all know what
Speaker 1: it means, but it doesn't mean much of anything anymore.
Speaker 1: Things that would not try ammatize us today, that would
Speaker 1: just be annoying to us today, are truly traumatic. For
Speaker 1: a child, we need a certain amount of peace. So
Speaker 1: if we grow up with chaos, that may become traumatic
Speaker 1: in a way that today would just be annoying. But
Speaker 1: for the child we were was really unfortunate for the
Speaker 1: development of our own maturity, our own ability to communicate
Speaker 1: with more and more age and wisdom instead of reaction,
Speaker 1: being able to really respond with greater wisdom. And if
Speaker 1: we come from people that functionally didn't mature, I can
Speaker 1: very much say that's true in my family system. That
Speaker 1: is so confusing and frightening. And so if we have
Speaker 1: a portion of the population that isn't emotionally maturing, then
Speaker 1: of course that's going to affect how they grow and develop.
Speaker 1: Because an immature person is going to want to eat
Speaker 1: that whole bag of oreos. It takes a certain amount
Speaker 1: of maturity to go, wait a minute, even though part
Speaker 1: of me wants to just stuff my face with all
Speaker 1: those oreos, another part of me has to step in
Speaker 1: and now, hey, that'll make me sick. And we need
Speaker 1: to know that about all these more complex interactions and
Speaker 1: dynamics and motivations and desires. Who are we doing things for.
Speaker 1: We're pleasing the people in our family because they want
Speaker 1: us to get sober, you know, and we want them
Speaker 1: to quit riding our ass. So we learn to say
Speaker 1: the right things. Or are we really cultivating and innern
Speaker 1: drive towards expressing in this life to our highest potential?
Speaker 1: Is that our driving force? Are we just trying to
Speaker 1: get by and feel good in the moment? And if
Speaker 1: we're immature, I suspect we're more likely. I know that
Speaker 1: we're more likely to reach for those in the moment
Speaker 1: feel goods that really thwart our personal development and our
Speaker 1: security and our groundedness and even developing things like a
Speaker 1: certain amount of wealth and financial stabilities, because money is choice,
Speaker 1: and it's power, and it's comfort, it's so many things.
Speaker 1: So I think so much plays on what comes together
Speaker 1: to really a person towards seeking and working and it's work.
Speaker 1: And again, if you're immature, how do we convince somebody
Speaker 1: that the work is worth it? If their immature part
Speaker 1: is just like I don't want to do that uncomfortable stuff.
Speaker 1: I rather sit and watch TV. How do you motivate
Speaker 1: that if we're not really talking about maturity in these
Speaker 1: spaces too.
Speaker 3: So I think there's a lot to be said for
Speaker 3: this idea of maturity. When you're talking. It made me
Speaker 3: think of Ken Wilber, who formulated that sort of we
Speaker 3: need to clean up, grow up, and wake up. Right,
Speaker 3: there's these three elements. Some people even include showing up
Speaker 3: in that. What I think is interesting though, is that
Speaker 3: by definition, so many of us arrive at the process
Speaker 3: of change very immature, though growing through immaturing is part
Speaker 3: of it. But is that the essential element because many
Speaker 3: of us don't have it when we get here. I
Speaker 3: know I didn't, right, you know, when I got sober,
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit grateful. You know, I got sober
Speaker 3: and kind of a hard ass aa environment and today's
Speaker 3: world it would not be smiled upon too much. Maybe
Speaker 3: there were some things about it that were not great,
Speaker 3: but there was a real strong focus on personal responsibility
Speaker 3: and growing up and being an adult and taking care
Speaker 3: of your business, and that was really good for me.
Speaker 3: I really needed to see that element of like all
Speaker 3: the different ways that I show up in life. But
Speaker 3: the other thing that that time really taught me that
Speaker 3: I think is interesting about thinking that insight is the
Speaker 3: stuff was you know, what I was really taught was
Speaker 3: sometimes we can't think our way into right action. We
Speaker 3: have to act our way into right thinking. And so
Speaker 3: my focus was always on like, let me just do
Speaker 3: what I'm being told to do. Let me just try
Speaker 3: and do the thing, even though my brain still feels
Speaker 3: like an angry four year old all the time.
Speaker 1: So I work with a lot of highly sensitive people,
Speaker 1: and often I think I shock them when I say,
Speaker 1: you cannot be so feeling driven. Our feelings are liars.
Speaker 1: Part of the time. We have to do hard work
Speaker 1: despite how we feel. We cannot let how we feel
Speaker 1: drive the bus of our life. Like I'm from New Orleans,
Speaker 1: it is the land of vices. We eat and we drink,
Speaker 1: we feed people, we hand people drinks. We almost don't
Speaker 1: know how to socially relate unless we're doing it through
Speaker 1: food and alcohol. So we have to be able to
Speaker 1: get real about the difference between what we want and
Speaker 1: what we need. When I'm talking to highly sensitive people,
Speaker 1: that is shocking, and it used to not be shocking.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for seventeen years, and it used
Speaker 1: to not be shocking. And I think it's part of Frankly,
Speaker 1: where mental health has failed in the last two decades
Speaker 1: is becoming so soft and so listening of emotion that
Speaker 1: we've forgotten that we need a balance between. Yes, of
Speaker 1: course we need to listen to ourselves and each other,
Speaker 1: we need to pay attention to emotions and their inherent
Speaker 1: information to check those things out, But I believe we
Speaker 1: very much need to have that real world grounded basic. Hey,
Speaker 1: you are going to have to grow up. Hey, you
Speaker 1: can't give in to every feeling you have if you
Speaker 1: want to have a really good life. It is just
Speaker 1: that simple sometimes, and I believe sometimes therapists too get
Speaker 1: caught in over complicating what really is simple in this way.
Speaker 1: That's why AA has saying it's like, just do the
Speaker 1: next right thing, no matter how you feel. Stop paying
Speaker 1: attention to how you feel in that moment, and just
Speaker 1: do the next right thing. So as a profession I
Speaker 1: think mental health has gone way too far into holding
Speaker 1: space for emotion, dropping the ball of that personal responsibility,
Speaker 1: and I think that is why we are seeing skyrocketing depression, addiction,
Speaker 1: and suicide. We need to tell people that they must
Speaker 1: take responsibility for their lives. There's no getting around it.
Speaker 1: There are no people with white knights that will come
Speaker 1: and save us. I waited for one for a while.
Speaker 1: I hope for one. I fantasized about somebody coming and
Speaker 1: doing the work for me. That may be part of
Speaker 1: the grief process, the bargaining stage of grief. But to
Speaker 1: get real, deep down into the nitty gritty of my
Speaker 1: life comes down to me, no matter what happened to
Speaker 1: me in childhood, no matter what choices my own immaturity made,
Speaker 1: if I want a matured life, I have to actionably
Speaker 1: take myself towards that maturity, and as myself sees me
Speaker 1: do those actions, I will mature. I also think like
Speaker 1: in your story, yes, of course you came to it
Speaker 1: with immaturity, but whatever that stuff was, that insight that went, hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't right for us, this feels icky. There's got
Speaker 1: to be a different way that desire to want to mature,
Speaker 1: I believe is the insight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few different things there. I tend to
Speaker 3: agree with you. You know, I've been doing this podcast
Speaker 3: about nine years, I feel like even just in this
Speaker 3: nine years, I have seen a shift where I mean,
Speaker 3: I can see even in the answering of the wolf parable, right,
Speaker 3: Because on one level, the wolf parable is a simple
Speaker 3: parable about choice, right. Our actions and our thoughts and
Speaker 3: our behaviors, they all matter and we have a choice
Speaker 3: in them. Right. So on one level, it's a very
Speaker 3: straightforward and simple parable, And once upon a time that
Speaker 3: was how most people would answer it. More and more
Speaker 3: now the answers are about how we need to embrace
Speaker 3: and love our bad wolf, and I think that's an
Speaker 3: insight that's important and useful. I'm not saying we shouldn't
Speaker 3: be doing that. I do think we need to listen
Speaker 3: to our feelings. I do think we need to hold
Speaker 3: space for emotion all that stuff. But I agree with you,
Speaker 3: I feel like the pendulum has just swung a little
Speaker 3: bit too far in the direction of being a victim,
Speaker 3: of being traumatized, of not being able to do something,
Speaker 3: away from empowerment. I mean, I don't think we want
Speaker 3: to go back to something that's very extreme. And I
Speaker 3: don't think my early days in AA were great, right.
Speaker 3: I had to actually move out of that for a
Speaker 3: period of time where I was like, you know what,
Speaker 3: they just keep saying, it doesn't matter what happened to you,
Speaker 3: just act like a certain person. I was like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: but at a certain point, certain level of healing, I'm
Speaker 3: going to have to deal with what did happen to me.
Speaker 3: I have to deal with the trauma. I do have
Speaker 3: to deal with the ways in which I didn't develop.
Speaker 3: So it does feel like the pendulum is a little
Speaker 3: over too far, and I'm waiting to see it sort
Speaker 3: of start to swing back because I feel like it will.
Speaker 1: I think it has to.
Speaker 3: I just hope it doesn't snap back right. So I
Speaker 3: think it's, you know, let's kind of come back in
Speaker 3: the middle, because I think that actually the answer is
Speaker 3: it really is in the middle, right. It is a
Speaker 3: case of like, yes, we'd need a really strong sense
Speaker 3: of personal responsibility and accountability and a real focus on
Speaker 3: like here's the right thing to do, here's the right action,
Speaker 3: and we need to be compassionate and kind to ourselves
Speaker 3: and others about the challenges that we faced and the
Speaker 3: ways that we haven't developed. I think your work actually
Speaker 3: strikes a pretty good balance between those two things, which
Speaker 3: is partially why I wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about that balance. I mean, for years my
Speaker 1: clients would probably tell you that balance was the word
Speaker 1: that came out of my mouth the most. And we're complicated,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I've had to work on accepting
Speaker 1: in myself. I think most highly sensitive people walk the
Speaker 1: world like, Hey, when are you going to accept me?
Speaker 1: And then tell me that I'm okay? And it doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. If it did, I wouldn't be uttering
Speaker 1: these things out of my mouth. What works is to
Speaker 1: work on accepting who we are. So I had to
Speaker 1: do a lot of work on hey, I'm an intensely
Speaker 1: feeling person. Hey, I have had a lot happen to
Speaker 1: me in my history. I have survived the abandonment of
Speaker 1: one parent. I have survived the sexual abuse of another parent.
Speaker 1: I have survived a mother that is a sociopath and
Speaker 1: an ice queen and not warm with me. Those are
Speaker 1: things that need to be considered in who I am,
Speaker 1: how I developed, how those shaped me, what I want
Speaker 1: to let go of, what I don't want to take forward.
Speaker 1: There's a lot there, but there's also a point at
Speaker 1: which I just have to do the next right thing.
Speaker 1: In this present moment, So talk therapy sometimes gets people lost.
Speaker 1: I see people sometimes partnering, like you said, embracing our
Speaker 1: inner dark parts or our inner dysfunction. I see people
Speaker 1: more in the last three to five years partnering with
Speaker 1: their depression instead of seeing it, acknowledging it, and then
Speaker 1: fighting their depression. So there's nuance there that I think
Speaker 1: gets missed. You know, like the Internet connected you and I.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so much power in this technological contraption.
Speaker 1: We're all using way too much. But there's also downside.
Speaker 1: And so as much as these messages get celebrated and
Speaker 1: shared more, they also get watered down. The nuance gets lost,
Speaker 1: and you have to be really real with yourself. Therapists
Speaker 1: have to be real with themselves. Are they enabling people
Speaker 1: to just keep circling their story? Are they helping them
Speaker 1: really connect the dots and move forward? And as a
Speaker 1: patient or a client of a cult or a therapist,
Speaker 1: are are you asking that person to challenge you to
Speaker 1: help you get unstuck? Are you helping them just kind
Speaker 1: of circle and circle and circle, Like everybody has to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for their part and their role. And I'm
Speaker 1: passionate about If we do that, we really are healing
Speaker 1: the world, one person at a time, as corny as
Speaker 1: that might sound, and that is our job. It is
Speaker 1: your one precious life. You're responsible for it. If you
Speaker 1: keep trying to farm that out, I think you'll just
Speaker 1: be resentful later for the time wasted not taking responsibility.
Speaker 1: I don't live with a lot of regret, but if
Speaker 1: I could go back in time, I would tell myself
Speaker 1: stop thinking so hard, do some of these healthy things,
Speaker 1: and move forward. You're gonna have a chance to process.
Speaker 1: But move Yeah, like with trauma. Yeah you have to
Speaker 1: move slowly sometimes, but you got to move. And too
Speaker 1: many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and the
Speaker 1: swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really
Speaker 1: move forward.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of one of my favorite, you know,
Speaker 3: tropes about depression, which is depression hates a moving target,
Speaker 3: because that's just been my experience is I just have
Speaker 3: to move, you know, whether that be physically emotional, I
Speaker 3: mean movement in all the different ways you can think
Speaker 3: of it. Now, one of the cruel paradoxes of depression
Speaker 3: is it sucks the energy out of you, and you
Speaker 3: don't have much energy to move and so I think
Speaker 3: sometimes we have to recognize what is the next right
Speaker 3: thing for me and my actual real capabilities right, So
Speaker 3: the next right thing for me, I may be able
Speaker 3: to take a bigger next right step than the next person.
Speaker 1: Or vice versa.
Speaker 3: Right, but I do strongly believe there are always positive
Speaker 3: steps to take, even if they're really really small, and
Speaker 3: we need to be taking them. And one of the
Speaker 3: other things you're talking about made me think of is
Speaker 3: I interviewed a guy named Ethan Cross. He's a University
Speaker 3: of Michigan researcher, and he wrote a book called Chatter,
Speaker 3: which is all about kind of the internal chatter. But
Speaker 3: he references a study in there that has really stuck
Speaker 3: with me because the question was, when somebody comes to
Speaker 3: you with a problem, what is more helpful. Is it
Speaker 3: more helpful for you to listen and empathize, or is
Speaker 3: it more helpful for you to offer solutions and advice
Speaker 3: or to give them a gentle nudge. And what this
Speaker 3: study found was surprise, surprise, it's both right that what's
Speaker 3: actually most helpful is both. You have to start, at
Speaker 3: least my experience has always been you have to start
Speaker 3: with the listening and the understanding and letting someone know
Speaker 3: they've really been heard. That is essential. If that step
Speaker 3: is skipped, the next one simply won't work. But then
Speaker 3: there is a point where sometimes we need a nudge
Speaker 3: from the people who care about us.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's interesting to hear you use that language that
Speaker 1: is almost verbat on the language I use with individual clients.
Speaker 1: I will often at the beginning of a session a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes and say, what do you need today?
Speaker 1: Do you need to vent? Do you need to talk
Speaker 1: this through? Do you need some strategies, do you need
Speaker 1: some tips? What do you want? What do you need?
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about me leading with that question
Speaker 1: frequently is that I can see and people will tell me, huh,
Speaker 1: They basically don't realize that those are the two options.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people, I think, get caught in
Speaker 1: that story or that venting as a mode. When I
Speaker 1: ask that question, it's also a teaching of Hey, you
Speaker 1: have the empowerment to decide, and you need to be
Speaker 1: mindful about what you're doing there, because there needs to
Speaker 1: be a time to be done with the venting, at
Speaker 1: least in this day and this season. Sure, we might
Speaker 1: revisit it if it's impactful for something that's happening in
Speaker 1: our future. But there's a point at which is that enough.
Speaker 1: So that's another question I will ask someone, is hey,
Speaker 1: have you vented about that enough? And watching the wheels
Speaker 1: turn of have I, and sitting with that question, have
Speaker 1: I does that ego? Want to just complain about this
Speaker 1: some more because you can start to feel it if
Speaker 1: you're paying attention to it. There's a point of diminishing
Speaker 1: return for all things, right. Yes, So I want my people,
Speaker 1: I want anybody listening to me to know that you
Speaker 1: have the power inside of you to start sensing is
Speaker 1: this useful for me and helpful? Have I said enough?
Speaker 1: Then let me be done with that venting part and
Speaker 1: move on. And that's the kind of nuanced skill that
Speaker 1: sounds so freaking simple when I say it out loud,
Speaker 1: but it's the very thing that somebody doesn't ever intentionally
Speaker 1: teach us as a kid, unless you're doing this kind
Speaker 1: of process with me and then you pass it on
Speaker 1: to your child. Most of us did not organically come
Speaker 1: to that kind of nuanced emotional education about sensing yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what's interesting is that it does seem that
Speaker 3: people by default fall to one side or the other
Speaker 3: of that more naturally, one side is the stereotypical man
Speaker 3: who just doesn't think about process or emotion at all.
Speaker 3: It's just here's what we need to do, cuts right
Speaker 3: to it, right. And then the other would be the person,
Speaker 3: as you're describing, the classic ruminative person right, who gets
Speaker 3: completely stuck in their head and it just spins and
Speaker 3: it spins and it spins. And what we're looking for,
Speaker 3: at least for me, is sort of like you said,
Speaker 3: it's that middle ground, that middle way between those two
Speaker 3: things where we're able to do it. And I agree
Speaker 3: one hundred percent there is a point where the thought
Speaker 3: processes has diminishing returns. And you use one of my
Speaker 3: favorite phrases in there, which is useful, right with thoughts?
Speaker 3: Is this useful? Because there are some very difficult, negative
Speaker 3: thoughts that are very useful at times, they are very helpful.
Speaker 3: They have a lot to teach us. You know, we
Speaker 3: can be very uncomfortable, and then there's a point where
Speaker 3: they are no longer useful, and you know, knowing that
Speaker 3: point can be really helpful. I mean, for me, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of looking at like, am I covering the same
Speaker 3: ground again and again? With no new back to your
Speaker 3: word earlier insight, like nothing new is popping up. Like
Speaker 3: the first five times I thought about the conversation I
Speaker 3: have with my partner, Each time I went through it,
Speaker 3: I saw something slightly different. So I went back through
Speaker 3: it and oh, I saw this, and ah, God, that
Speaker 3: makes me cringe. But at least I know, you know.
Speaker 3: But now the last five times that my mind has
Speaker 3: circled it, it's circled it in the exact same way
Speaker 3: at which point diminishing returns, and now it's moving into Okay,
Speaker 3: this thought now is becoming not useful, even possibly destructive
Speaker 3: and harmful. Now how do I move out of that?
Speaker 1: I am passionate about helping people understand that if they're overthinkers,
Speaker 1: likely they're very smart, and likely they started overthinking as
Speaker 1: a kid in my own life, because I didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional nurture, urrence or understanding of what
Speaker 1: I was going through that could help me understand what
Speaker 1: I was going through. I believe I had a lot
Speaker 1: of intuitions that I couldn't do anything with because my
Speaker 1: intuition would say, Hey, your mom's real scary right now,
Speaker 1: maybe you're about to be hit and as a child,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do anything with that intuition. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: in my car and drive off. You know, I couldn't
Speaker 1: handle the situation any better than just taking it because
Speaker 1: I was a kid, or trying to mouth off and
Speaker 1: rebel against it. But I was a pretty good girl
Speaker 1: growing up in the South, too good good Southern girl
Speaker 1: like you just don't fight back. So if we really
Speaker 1: understand that concept, if we grew up with a lot
Speaker 1: of stress, if we grew up with a lot of
Speaker 1: unsafe parenting or immature inadequate parenting, and you're really smart,
Speaker 1: your energy had to go somewhere. So I think it
Speaker 1: leaves the intuition and goes to the head and we
Speaker 1: start overthinking in those moments where we can't escape with
Speaker 1: our bodies. So when we start to understand that I
Speaker 1: can help people manage their own in our child and
Speaker 1: be able to say in that moment to themselves when
Speaker 1: they catch that cloud of overthinking that starts or oh
Speaker 1: this isn't useful. I've already thought this from the beginning
Speaker 1: to the end and through ten different times. I don't
Speaker 1: need to think about this again. That it is your
Speaker 1: job and it's a gift. It's a gratitude that it
Speaker 1: gets to be your grown up job to do for
Speaker 1: your own inner psyche, your own inner child, what your
Speaker 1: parents or your childhood situation didn't know how to do
Speaker 1: for you. You get to step in now and go
Speaker 1: oh sweet boy or oh sweet girl in there. This
Speaker 1: is a time where grown up me says, we don't
Speaker 1: need to overthink this. We've thought about this enough and
Speaker 1: learning how to internalize enoughness with the overthinking that so
Speaker 1: many of us do when we have a lot of emotion,
Speaker 1: a lot of passion, a lot of intensity with who
Speaker 1: we are, and we're really smart. The way I say
Speaker 1: it a lot is you gotta be smarter than your
Speaker 1: smarts because your critical voice and the overthinking part are
Speaker 1: going to be just as smart as you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've got to outthink your thinking parts so that
Speaker 1: you stay sort of in the integrity of using your
Speaker 1: intelligence for your own greater good and not letting your
Speaker 1: critical voice or that overthink or grab your intelligence and
Speaker 1: dig a hole into the ground with it.
Speaker 3: I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making, and that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Oftentimes,
Speaker 3: I naturally go back to my sort of early recovery days, right,
Speaker 3: And there was a real sense there that like, being
Speaker 3: smart was a bad thing because of what you're describing, okay, right,
Speaker 3: because you would just overthink things. And this is not
Speaker 3: a time for overthinking, right, This is a time for
Speaker 3: taking the actions that will keep you sober. Right, It's
Speaker 3: time to stop the overthinking. But it sort of cast
Speaker 3: that thinking as a negative. It's one of the things
Speaker 3: that ultimately sort of pulled me away from that place.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying all twelve step programs or AA
Speaker 3: or like this, By the way, I want to be
Speaker 3: extraordinarily clear, this was a particular group of people at
Speaker 3: a particular time in place in history, you know, twenty five,
Speaker 3: twenty six years ago. So don't think, listeners that all
Speaker 3: twelve step groups are like this at all. So I
Speaker 3: just feel like I always have to say that. But
Speaker 3: knowing that I was somewhat intelligent, you know, it ultimately
Speaker 3: sort of drove me away because I was like, wait
Speaker 3: a second. My goal here is not to dumb myself down, right.
Speaker 3: My goal here is not to cut out my thinking brain, right.
Speaker 3: So to your point, it's how do we do it?
Speaker 3: So let's say that we have realized, like, okay, too
Speaker 3: much enough, you know, I am past the point of
Speaker 3: usefulness in this thinking. What are some of the strategies
Speaker 3: that you recommend that people use to try and deal
Speaker 3: with that inner chatter? Because just because I've realized that
Speaker 3: I don't want to think about it anymore certainly does
Speaker 3: not mean that I have the skills to not think
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: So I could answer that for the next fourteen hundred hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any one tool. I think it's
Speaker 1: actually about wrapping our minds around a lifestyle change, like
Speaker 1: this is how I live now. I think the world
Speaker 1: is also speeding up so much and requiring so much
Speaker 1: of us that no matter what our childhood state was, like,
Speaker 1: our addiction history was like, we are really being brought
Speaker 1: into realms of just ridiculous levels of expected franticness. For
Speaker 1: lack of a better way for me to say that,
Speaker 1: so I think, yes, there's healing childhood trauma. Yes there's
Speaker 1: healing and learning how to take care of yourself post addiction.
Speaker 1: But just being a human being right now in this
Speaker 1: time period I think requires very similar strategies. I try
Speaker 1: to live slowing down now, even if that means I'm
Speaker 1: doing a lot that day and I'm moving fast. I
Speaker 1: want to understand that. I don't want that sort of
Speaker 1: frantic go go go, rush, rush rush to be in
Speaker 1: my brain, in my mind, in the tissues of my body. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's a lifestyle choice of practicing slowing down. I'm
Speaker 1: actually it might be releasing today as we're recording. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have a emotional strength training thirty days to peace course,
Speaker 1: because it takes repetition. I can tell by the things
Speaker 1: that you offer, you very much understand that it takes
Speaker 1: repetition of what it is to calm, to internalize peace,
Speaker 1: and to actually value stillness. In this world that gives
Speaker 1: stillness the finger, it doesn't value it, It dismisses it. Hustle, culture,
Speaker 1: work harder. I'll sleep when I'm dead. If you're trying
Speaker 1: to heal your nervous system too, that is a way
Speaker 1: to feel fried and burnt out. And how are you
Speaker 1: supposed to evolve and be your best self if you're
Speaker 1: living from a place of fried and burnt out. So
Speaker 1: just having a framework of I want to fold the
Speaker 1: laundry like a Buddhist monk eats. They sit down, They
Speaker 1: don't multitask, they sit down. They pay attention to everybodite
Speaker 1: going into their mouth. When you really think about that
Speaker 1: versus our American eyes. Eat while you're driving, while you're
Speaker 1: balancing your checkbook, I mean, you know, while you're doing
Speaker 1: a handstand. On one hand, I mean, we are expecting
Speaker 1: out of ourselves to do really a ridiculous amount of things.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of my framework for just let's in general,
Speaker 1: understand the forces at play, no matter what our history was,
Speaker 1: and we have to understand that we have to combat
Speaker 1: those forces or those forces are going to take a stand.
Speaker 1: We have to limit the scrolling. It's like a slot machine,
Speaker 1: you guys, and especially if you have addictive history. It's
Speaker 1: addictive to all of us, you know. We have to
Speaker 1: do simple things like that that our inner adolescent doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do. It doesn't want to put down the phone.
Speaker 1: But putting down the phone, stopping and taking a breath meditation.
Speaker 1: And when I say that on my show, I go,
Speaker 1: I hear the eye rolls, I feel the eye rolls,
Speaker 1: because every spiritual psychological teacher just says meditate, meditate, meditate.
Speaker 1: All forces out there are the opposite of meditative energy.
Speaker 1: But if we really understand that, then I think it
Speaker 1: can give us a permission. We need to counterbalance those
Speaker 1: forces in the present, and we need to do some
Speaker 1: counterbalancing of our historical forces also, So slowing down, I
Speaker 1: try to fold laundry like that Buddhist monk eats. I
Speaker 1: try to drive slow and calm and use each experience
Speaker 1: to be the practice of calm. Instead of giving yourself
Speaker 1: five different peace practice tasks, our mind quieting tasks to do,
Speaker 1: which is just adding more things to your to do list,
Speaker 1: which you know technically is correct and right, you can't
Speaker 1: find something wrong with. But in terms of the spirit
Speaker 1: of what I'm saying, adding to your to do list
Speaker 1: isn't it. You don't need ten more things to do.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the whole focus of the Spiritual Habits
Speaker 3: program that I created, which is, as we go about
Speaker 3: our day to day lives, how do we do some
Speaker 3: of these things that will allow us to access more
Speaker 3: peace without adding a lot to our to do list
Speaker 3: because there's just no more time. There just isn't. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's what the cause of a lot of stress is
Speaker 3: to be told. Well, now you need to in addition
Speaker 3: to eating, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking care of your children,
Speaker 3: having a career, now you need to meditate for an
Speaker 3: hour a day and journal for thirty minutes. It's just
Speaker 3: like you know, it just isn't going to happen. So
Speaker 3: there's got to be a way to integrate more of this.
Speaker 3: And as you said, there is something to some time
Speaker 3: in stillness I think being really beneficial. Whatever that way
Speaker 3: of stepping out into stillness is for you. It could
Speaker 3: be meditation, It could be sitting quietly, It could be
Speaker 3: listening to a piece of music you love, very focused
Speaker 3: and intently, but it is slowing down, nowhere to go,
Speaker 3: and some attempt to sort of put our attention on
Speaker 3: something and keep it there. I do think that is
Speaker 3: a foundational skill for humans, and one that is becoming
Speaker 3: even more important, as you said, as we become increasingly
Speaker 3: distracted and fraged.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think people like you and I are doing
Speaker 1: the work to hold on to that art form so
Speaker 1: it doesn't become a lost art of knowing the value
Speaker 1: and stillness. So many of my clients at a point
Speaker 1: wind up laughing and going, Nikki, am I really paying
Speaker 1: you to teach me how to just be still and
Speaker 1: do less? And in some ways yes, yes, And it
Speaker 1: sounds so it sounds like the simplest thing we could
Speaker 1: possibly to ask ourselves with, But it really is something
Speaker 1: that I find we need help with. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't see anybody value stillness growing up, not one time,
Speaker 1: not for one minute. It was do do Do. I
Speaker 1: was raised by a German descent grandmother who if I
Speaker 1: got still, if I just stood still for a moment.
Speaker 1: She would say, what is the purpose of what you're doing?
Speaker 1: And as a child, I could not answer that. Today,
Speaker 1: if she was still alive, i'd go, aha, I finally
Speaker 1: know the answer to that question. I'm centering, I'm breathing,
Speaker 1: I'm giving my nervous system a chance to just ground
Speaker 1: its I'm being a human being instead of a human
Speaker 1: doing so. It's looking at those dynamics to understand. Oh oh,
Speaker 1: I was really taught that it was wrong and bad
Speaker 1: to have stillness. You take that old teaching on top
Speaker 1: of what's going on in modern life and my goodness,
Speaker 1: of course, I have to intentionally bring in stillness, and
Speaker 1: I have to talk to my inner child because I'm
Speaker 1: going to hear that critical voice. In some ways, I
Speaker 1: was raised by very critical people, so in some ways
Speaker 1: that's like my original language. I only speak English. But
Speaker 1: what we know that other speakers who speak multiple languages,
Speaker 1: they tend to think in their native language. I've accepted
Speaker 1: that in some ways, I may think in my native
Speaker 1: language of the critical voice, and so I have to
Speaker 1: know that when I get still, that critical voice might
Speaker 1: show up and go, really, again, you're being lazy, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? And I need to know about how
Speaker 1: that voice works, because in that moment, I'm being different,
Speaker 1: I'm being intentional. I'm doing something against my original programming
Speaker 1: and the programming that's going on right now. So of
Speaker 1: course that voice is going to show up and go ooh, nikkiya,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is right. Bad bad, shame,
Speaker 1: shame on you. And I have to know how to
Speaker 1: feel that vibe wash over me or hear that voice
Speaker 1: so that I know exactly what my job is and
Speaker 1: how I can effectively combat those forces. And in that moment,
Speaker 1: if I'm on my game, I can turn to my
Speaker 1: own inner self and go, oh no, that would have
Speaker 1: worked before, but now I know the value in the stillness.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm doing, and we're going to be still.
Speaker 1: Grown up wise woman me decided that this is a smart,
Speaker 1: right practice for us, So we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: And the more I do that, the more that that
Speaker 1: voice lowers an intensity in frequency and kind of steps
Speaker 1: to the background, whereas it used to drive as the
Speaker 1: primary driver of my life.
Speaker 3: You said a whole bunch of great things there. I
Speaker 3: think one thing that we sort of hit on briefly
Speaker 3: was repetition and quieting the inner chatter or quieting that
Speaker 3: inner critic, at least for me, has simply been a
Speaker 3: matter of just more times than I could possibly begin
Speaker 3: to count at this point, recognizing that voice and doing
Speaker 3: something different with it, like over and over and over.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the places that people get
Speaker 3: discouraged is they hear stuff like this and they go, well,
Speaker 3: I tried that last week and I'm not better. I
Speaker 3: do think, you know, if we want to talk about maturity,
Speaker 3: that is another sign of maturity is recognizing like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is going to take a long time. It's the
Speaker 3: only game in town. Really, there are no other good choices.
Speaker 3: I can continue to try and believe that it's this
Speaker 3: supplement or this one magic trick or this one thing.
Speaker 3: But once we realize like wellness is a thing that
Speaker 3: takes a lot of repetition, a lot of time.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing you do, it's the way you live. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that is what traps people. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I went to the doctor, they gave me these meds. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I did this health thing. When am I going to
Speaker 1: feel better? Living well is what makes us feel better.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people show up to a therapist
Speaker 1: or a coach basically saying this without realizing they're saying this, Hi,
Speaker 1: will you please help me change while I try to
Speaker 1: remain the same. Gee? Why is this so hard? Why
Speaker 1: do I feel like I'm spinning my wheels? Why do
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm stuck in one spot? Well, because
Speaker 1: you're trying to hold onto the sameness while you're just
Speaker 1: using language and telling yourself thoughts about wanting to change.
Speaker 1: If we take that thought process away, what are you
Speaker 1: doing Because you're living the same as you've always lived,
Speaker 1: are the same as you've lived in this last season
Speaker 1: of your life. You can't be different and the same
Speaker 1: at the same time. What are you willing to change?
Speaker 1: And that's not unique to any individual. That's the human experience.
Speaker 1: There is something about being a human where our egos
Speaker 1: they don't go, oh wow, this change would be great
Speaker 1: for us, let's dive in. That ego really grips sameness.
Speaker 1: And I think that comes from survival for centuries since
Speaker 1: the beginning of time, the beginning of humanity, because stepping
Speaker 1: into an unknown was dangerous, and so we learned at
Speaker 1: a very deep level to just hold on to sameness,
Speaker 1: even when that sameness is screwing us over is not working.
Speaker 1: So it takes a lot of courage and a lot
Speaker 1: of I think just seeing and that might be insight again,
Speaker 1: but seeing, oh, that is what I'm doing. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be the same and different. No wonder, this is
Speaker 1: getting weird and struggle bussy. Let me let go of that.
Speaker 1: Let me just try to be different in these simple ways.
Speaker 1: It's why I'm so passionate about offering simple strategies. And
Speaker 1: it's simple. It's not easy, but if you let it
Speaker 1: be simple, you stop chattering in your mind about it
Speaker 1: and you just go do this stillness thing. Let's just
Speaker 1: do this thing, Nicky or Eric suggested, let's just do
Speaker 1: it for a while, stop thinking about it and do it.
Speaker 1: Then you can see yourself in the change, and that
Speaker 1: becomes its own self motivator.
Speaker 3: Yep. I think what gets so difficult is that we
Speaker 3: have all these inner voices that often want different things,
Speaker 3: and they all sound like us, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: That's been one of my insights, is well, whether it's
Speaker 3: my alcoholic voice, or my inner child voice, or my
Speaker 3: grown up voice, my ere voice, whatever, they all sound
Speaker 3: like me. They all know how to impersonate Eric very well.
Speaker 3: And so what gets hard is it's like, well, I
Speaker 3: decided I'm going to do this change, but now the
Speaker 3: same voice that decided I was going to do that
Speaker 3: change is now telling me that that's stupid and it's
Speaker 3: never going to work. And so then I believe that
Speaker 3: I often think about, like when I got sober, I
Speaker 3: sometimes feel like like fifty one percent of me wanted
Speaker 3: to give up drugs and forty nine percent of me
Speaker 3: did not, And those two were engaged in moral struggle
Speaker 3: for a while, and eventually that proportion has changed. Right
Speaker 3: now it's like ninety nine percent does not one percent
Speaker 3: still like, well, come on, we need to think about this,
Speaker 3: but ninety nine percent of me knows it's a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: And I think when those things are closer to fifty
Speaker 3: one forty nine, which is often the case when we
Speaker 3: start to make a change because we're still getting something
Speaker 3: out of the old thing, sorting those voices out is
Speaker 3: really difficult. How do you encourage people to be able
Speaker 3: to sort that out and know what's their way wiser voice,
Speaker 3: what's their truer voice.
Speaker 1: I think when people listen to my show over time,
Speaker 1: that starts to clarify because very often I am speaking
Speaker 1: to different parts, and in the work that I've done
Speaker 1: with my clients and myself over the years, it's in
Speaker 1: really differentiating and learning to hear the difference in those voices. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have trained myself into nothing's one hundred percent right,
Speaker 1: but damn near one hundred percent. Where I don't make
Speaker 1: a decision, I don't mean like what cheese do I
Speaker 1: want to buy at the grocery store? Not just big decisions.
Speaker 1: I basically don't make a decision without the check in
Speaker 1: which part of me is at the home. So that
Speaker 1: I have learned to distinguish the difference between is that
Speaker 1: an inner child part and in that moment, I might
Speaker 1: give in what my inner child wants that might very
Speaker 1: much fit the situation. But the person that I give
Speaker 1: the power to, the part that I give the power
Speaker 1: to is my wise woman. So there's always the check
Speaker 1: in there for hey, wise woman, what do you think
Speaker 1: about this? Because my wise woman is always going to
Speaker 1: want what is best for me because she is the
Speaker 1: wisest part of me, and I'm checking in with her
Speaker 1: for her wisdom, her hard earned wisdom, and the easier
Speaker 1: wisdom too. I can differentiate my inner child for my
Speaker 1: inner adolescent. When people work with me, I'm often pointing
Speaker 1: that out because I can sense their resistance. If I
Speaker 1: throw a suggestion, I'll go, ooh, what did your interadolescent
Speaker 1: think about this? And they'll go, how did you know
Speaker 1: that I had that kind of reaction? I saw it,
Speaker 1: I felt it, I sensed it. Did you feel it?
Speaker 1: Insense it? Yeah? I did? All right? What makes me
Speaker 1: call that the inner adolescent? And that's just my name
Speaker 1: for that resistant part. And if you were neglected a
Speaker 1: lot as a kid, if you were parentified, if you
Speaker 1: were abused a lot like I was, you got to
Speaker 1: deal with your inner adolescent. Whence therapists would tell me
Speaker 1: things that I knew, damn good and well would have
Speaker 1: been good for me to do, I would feel my
Speaker 1: inner adolescent resist and there were not very many skilled
Speaker 1: therapists that could call me on that. It's part of
Speaker 1: why I do because that inter adolescent and basically pokes
Speaker 1: its head up and goes, excuse me. You basically raise yourself. Now,
Speaker 1: this therapeutic boso is going to tell you to do something,
Speaker 1: and what you're just going to do it? You raised yourself.
Speaker 1: You don't need this shit, And that really is the vibe.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can hear that language, but that's really the vibe.
Speaker 1: It is a feeling that washes over and if you
Speaker 1: don't know how to wrangle that, how to start attending
Speaker 1: to that. I think that's where people have tons of relapses.
Speaker 1: They have tons of slips and all kinds of different behavior,
Speaker 1: not just addictively, because they don't understand when that part
Speaker 1: sort of takes over. And then after when your wise
Speaker 1: part comes back and you look at the choices you made,
Speaker 1: then you have to go through this whole shame process.
Speaker 1: I know better, Why did I do that? How many
Speaker 1: times am I gonna have to learn this lesson? How
Speaker 1: many times am I gonna have to talk about the
Speaker 1: same thing? What's going on with me? Then you have
Speaker 1: to work through that too. So at a point when
Speaker 1: you start to really give the baton to your wise
Speaker 1: woman or your wise man, you start to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I waste less energy processing I make less mistakes. I
Speaker 1: kind of like that. Actually, Oh that's what's helping that
Speaker 1: inner child and that inner adolescent actually grow up because
Speaker 1: I'm giving them what they need. Because what they need
Speaker 1: are proper yes, is in proper nos, proper encouragement, and
Speaker 1: proper discouragement. Sometimes really so, I want to tap in
Speaker 1: somebody to parent me. And we all have that part.
Speaker 1: And I can prove that we all have that part
Speaker 1: because most people will admit to me if I said, hey,
Speaker 1: would you say what you're saying inside of your own
Speaker 1: head to a five year old orn eight year old?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Why? Well, because that would crush them. Then simply do
Speaker 1: not say anything to yourself. Disallow yourself, tell yourself, no,
Speaker 1: tell yourself. I'm not going to listen to that. If
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say it to a five or an eight
Speaker 1: year old, probably shouldn't be saying it to yourself.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So we are cultivating that wisdom and with more cultivation
Speaker 1: and maybe more stillness too, meditating on what was this
Speaker 1: part of me? Why did that wash over me when
Speaker 1: that part gave me that suggestion? Why did I want
Speaker 1: to give them the middle finger instead of going thanks?
Speaker 1: I'll consider that. Because I'm a grown up, I can
Speaker 1: take or toss out any advice. Why the resistance to
Speaker 1: hearing the advice and working through that inter adolescent resistance?
Speaker 1: I think it's the missing piece for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: That missing piece being able to recognize which quote unquote
Speaker 3: part of us is at the helm.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because I'm complex and most of my highly
Speaker 1: sensitive people are. I'm super complex. I like almost everything,
Speaker 1: So asking me what I want to eat, like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, like everything, you know, Like I want to
Speaker 1: experience everything. So I have to have a part of
Speaker 1: me that is going to be at the helm that
Speaker 1: can just say, you know what, just make a quick decision.
Speaker 1: That's what we'll serve you right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the more that you work with differentiating these parts,
Speaker 1: even if you're hearing me say that and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to how to feel that out,
Speaker 1: that's the very thing. It's like, how do you work
Speaker 1: up to big muscles at the gym. You don't show
Speaker 1: up and lift one hundred pound weight. You might start
Speaker 1: with a three pound weight. You might even start with
Speaker 1: a one pound weight, And so emotionally and in terms
Speaker 1: of getting to know yourself better, just start where you are.
Speaker 1: The more that you work with those parts, it's like
Speaker 1: lifting heavier and heavier weight, and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you're lifting heavier weight and it feels really light. It
Speaker 1: feels really easy because you've worked up to it. So
Speaker 1: just check in with yourself. And when I teach my
Speaker 1: Boundaries course every October, I lead with, hey, please don't
Speaker 1: go to the most difficult person in your life and
Speaker 1: try to set a boundary. And everybody laughs because that's
Speaker 1: how almost everybody shows up to that. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: give me the wisdom, Nikki, and then I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: tackle the tallest mountain. It's like, start small, Start small,
Speaker 1: confront the barista who keeps getting your name wrong. You know, like,
Speaker 1: let yourself grow into healthy confrontation with yourself and with
Speaker 1: other people. Let yourself grow into healthy yeses and healthy
Speaker 1: knows Healthiness is available even if you feel super lost.
Speaker 1: Just start where you are and cultivate that relationship with
Speaker 1: your wise man and your wise woman, because you have
Speaker 1: it in there. That is definitely a part of you,
Speaker 1: and you're either going to feed it or you're going
Speaker 1: to feed the other parts, maybe the immature parts, maybe
Speaker 1: the dysfunctional parts, the rebellious parts, feed that wise part.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's so funny. In the Spiritual Habits program, one
Speaker 3: of the principles is around allowing things to be the
Speaker 3: way they are right. It's about acceptance or it's about
Speaker 3: not resisting, and inevitably, nearly everybody will be like, well,
Speaker 3: how do I accept that children are being abused? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, so let's slow down, Like I'm
Speaker 3: not asking you to accept that, but let's not go
Speaker 3: to the very worst, possible, hardest things in the world,
Speaker 3: Like can you just work on accepting that you need
Speaker 3: to go to work this morning? Like can we start
Speaker 3: with the little stuff? Can we stop resisting all the
Speaker 3: little parts of our day that we know we're going
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I think that's a younger part. I think that's
Speaker 1: a younger part that has misunderstood wisdom there, because if
Speaker 1: I say it back to you like this, we can
Speaker 1: really kind of hear it. It's like the little kid
Speaker 1: in us goes boo, I don't like that everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: die worst case scenario? What about the worst case scenario?
Speaker 1: What about the worst thing ever, the worst thing I
Speaker 1: could think of? And so we need our wise part
Speaker 1: to come in in that moment and go, oh, honey,
Speaker 1: you don't have to take on the hardest thing right
Speaker 1: now in this moment. That's not gonna help you talk
Speaker 1: about is that useful or not? Exactly as you marinate,
Speaker 1: because I think it's more of a marinating than a
Speaker 1: headspace learning of the knowledge. Because I know this for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm on your show. I know for my show, I
Speaker 1: suspect for yours too. There are gonna be so many
Speaker 1: people listening right now who are really frustrated with where
Speaker 1: they are. And I know part of the problem. Part
Speaker 1: of the problem is you're just listening to podcasts, you're
Speaker 1: just talking in therapy. You gotta let yourself actionably do
Speaker 1: these things. Yes, even just sitting still. Maybe your threshold
Speaker 1: is twenty seconds the first time you sit and get still.
Speaker 1: But you've got to encourage yourself to really do the
Speaker 1: things that will move you forward and help yourself grow
Speaker 1: that wise woman and really do it. Give that baton
Speaker 1: to the wise woman or the wise man in you
Speaker 1: and play around with it. Life is an experiment and
Speaker 1: you have to sort of experiment with these things and
Speaker 1: marinate inside of them. And that's how our change comes.
Speaker 1: It's not because you took a quick pill or you
Speaker 1: did one exercise or one course. Yep, this stuff will
Speaker 1: come together. But please don't just listen to my podcast
Speaker 1: or anybody's like, please do the stuff, or you're going
Speaker 1: to feel doubly frustrated because you think you're doing the
Speaker 1: things when you're really just thinking the things. You gotta
Speaker 1: do the things too.
Speaker 3: Let's change directions a little bit here. We're nearing the
Speaker 3: end of our time. But you've used the term multiple
Speaker 3: times highly sensitive, and it's something you talk about a
Speaker 3: fair amount. So what does that mean. I have a
Speaker 3: sense in my mind of what I mean by it,
Speaker 3: but I'm curious how you're using that term.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of science behind high sensitivity. Doctor
Speaker 1: Elaine Aaron is the one that first coined the term,
Speaker 1: and she's written the books and there they're pretty scientific,
Speaker 1: heady books to get through. There's a lot of science there.
Speaker 1: Emotionally and functionally, we know that we have people who
Speaker 1: have different intelligences, you know, we have people who have
Speaker 1: different abilities to see with their eyeballs, to hear with
Speaker 1: their ears. People have different emotional intelligence too. We also
Speaker 1: have different sensory systems. So there are some professionals who
Speaker 1: will make the argument that trauma is wholly responsible for
Speaker 1: creating high sensitivity. Others will say we're born with it.
Speaker 1: I'm balanced between those two, no surprise, they're hearing me
Speaker 1: talk about balance, all show the balance there is strong
Speaker 1: for me. So I believe that I was born with
Speaker 1: a propensity, a predisp position to be more of an observer,
Speaker 1: to be more feeling, driven, to sense my world through
Speaker 1: more of my being than my thought process. Just a difference,
Speaker 1: just like I'm born with curly kind of wavy hair
Speaker 1: and somebody else is born with straight hair. It's just
Speaker 1: a difference we have. Then, trauma heightens our sensitivity because
Speaker 1: to survive, any kid growing up in a home, okay,
Speaker 1: is either trying to deny what's going on and block
Speaker 1: it out, or is observing everything and taking it in.
Speaker 1: We're very spongy is highly sensitive people. So I say
Speaker 1: a lot. I sponged up a lot in my childhood,
Speaker 1: and healing has been ringing out that sponge and being
Speaker 1: able to be more intentional with what I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: that sponge soak up. Okay, highly sensitive people. As a tribe,
Speaker 1: we tend to be highly conscientious, sometimes too much. So
Speaker 1: if we were conditioned to be a people pleaser, that's
Speaker 1: a struggle. How do we please ours and other people
Speaker 1: enough to not be in the realm of overfunctioning? For
Speaker 1: other people, just like overthinking versus just thinking. How do
Speaker 1: we function for ourselves and others without overfunctioning? Okay, we
Speaker 1: tend to be overly conscientious. We tend to be observers
Speaker 1: of others in energy and action. We tend to not
Speaker 1: so much psychic. Some people might use that word. I
Speaker 1: don't the gift of prophecy. It's like we can sense
Speaker 1: things coming. And because we can sense what's coming, we
Speaker 1: tend to be highly attuned to preventing future struggle. So
Speaker 1: all of these little quirks that we have as highly
Speaker 1: sensitive people take tools, take understanding, take awareness. So many
Speaker 1: people show up to me going, Nikki, how do I
Speaker 1: dial down this high sensitivity, And I'm like sorry to
Speaker 1: tell you can't. You can learn how to work with
Speaker 1: it and embrace it and make it a tool and
Speaker 1: a gift. And sometimes it's hard. Life is tough. It
Speaker 1: always has been for every species on the planet, you know,
Speaker 1: So this expectation of it's just going to be easy
Speaker 1: at some point, No, life is going to be a
Speaker 1: certain amount of struggle, but you get to have more ease.
Speaker 1: I think when you understand your makeup who you are
Speaker 1: as a highly sensitive person, I heard all my life
Speaker 1: I'm too sensitive. So a lot of sensitive people, interestingly
Speaker 1: and paradoxically will tell me sometimes they think they're too much,
Speaker 1: and then other times they think they're too little. So
Speaker 1: learning how to be the amount of who we are
Speaker 1: and accept who we are, learning how to advocate that, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm an intense person. There's nothing wrong with my emotionality.
Speaker 1: I'm intense. So if I'm in a coffee shop or
Speaker 1: a grocery store, just randomly running errands, I can feel
Speaker 1: a wave wash over me. If a baby smiles at me,
Speaker 1: I might get teary just from the beauty of this
Speaker 1: little being taken a moment to connect with me, like
Speaker 1: his spirit to my spirit, and I might tear up.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years ago, I would have been ashamed, embarrassed. I
Speaker 1: would have held my head. I would have apologized if
Speaker 1: anybody noticed me crying. Today, I have taught myself and
Speaker 1: grown into in that moment, keeping my head held up high.
Speaker 1: And when other people get weird, oh showing emotion in public,
Speaker 1: I look at them and I say, it's okay. I'm
Speaker 1: tearful and I'm strong, it's all right, And watching their
Speaker 1: wheels turn on that like what is this crazy lady saying,
Speaker 1: and then watching them go, yeah, okay, all right, maybe
Speaker 1: she can be strong and emotional at the same time.
Speaker 1: The more that I have worked on accepting who I
Speaker 1: am in the world and not seeing myself as a problem,
Speaker 1: the more that I am in self respect and self
Speaker 1: regard of myself, and then I'm walking the world teaching
Speaker 1: people how to treat me and teaching them to have
Speaker 1: regard for my sensitivity too. One of my things is
Speaker 1: that we are highly sensitive. We are not delicate, and
Speaker 1: I absolutely resist any teaching, any therapy, any coaching, anything
Speaker 1: that gives someone directly or indirectly the message that they
Speaker 1: are delicate and they better tend to their delicacy. We
Speaker 1: are sensitive, and we are strong. We are sensitive and
Speaker 1: we are tough. We are not delicate, and going into
Speaker 1: delicacy is victim mode, and it will not serve you.
Speaker 1: If becoming the victim actually helps you in any way,
Speaker 1: I'd be all for it. It will thwart you, it
Speaker 1: will ruin a life, it will ruin satisfaction, it will
Speaker 1: ruin purpose, and it will make your life small and
Speaker 1: good healthy people will not hang out with a constant victim.
Speaker 1: So this victim mentality that's getting pushed. I am against it,
Speaker 1: particularly for highly sensitive people. You are strong and you
Speaker 1: are capable to surmount anything, even in the moments where
Speaker 1: you think you can't. And when sensitive people step into
Speaker 1: their strength and their self acceptance, my god, are they
Speaker 1: are force?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I really like that. So listener and thinking about
Speaker 3: that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
Speaker 3: If you were going to isolate just one top insight
Speaker 3: that you're taking away, it be remember little by little,
Speaker 3: a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly
Speaker 3: taking positive action. And I want to give you a
Speaker 3: tip on that, and it's to start small. It's really
Speaker 3: important when we're trying to implement new habits to often
Speaker 3: start smaller than we think we need to, because what
Speaker 3: that does is it allows us to get victories. And
Speaker 3: victories are really important because we become more motivated when
Speaker 3: we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less motivated
Speaker 3: when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small
Speaker 3: and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation
Speaker 3: for further change down the road. If you'd like a
Speaker 3: step by step guide for how you can easily build
Speaker 3: new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to Goodwolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Well,
Speaker 3: I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up
Speaker 3: on that really strong message there of not being delicate,
Speaker 3: sensitive and strong.
Speaker 1: Thank you sir, Thank you for having me and spending
Speaker 1: time with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I love talking with you and
Speaker 3: I will see you next time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it so much.
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