Ep. 601 “Why High-Functioning Women Stay Stuck” – The Nervous System Patterns Keeping You in Survival Mode with Dr. Nicole LePera

I am delighted to reconnect with Dr. Nicole LePera today. Trained in clinical psychology, she is a holistic psychologist whose work explores the interconnections among the mind, body, and soul, incorporating holistic lifestyle and psychological wellness practices. She has written multiple New York Times bestselling books, most recently Reparenting the Inner Child.

In today’s conversation, we unpack what the inner child really means from a clinical perspective. We explore how understanding your childhood wounds intellectually differs from truly re-parenting yourself at the nervous system level, and how perimenopause and menopause influence the way we view the world. We look at ACE scores and the biology of childhood adversity, how ACE scores measure what happened to us, but fail to measure resilience, protective factors, or the capacity for healing. We examine how reactive parents shape our nervous system, and how that shows up as hypervigilance, emotional scanning, and self-erasure, and how the fawn response can lead to chronic people-pleasing, relentless accommodation, and an inability to say no. We also cover how epigenetics and lifestyles influence behavioral patterns, critical parenting, stress addiction, gut-brain dysregulation, and the disruptive effects of vagal tone gadgets.

This is truly one of those must-listen conversations! I love Dr. LePera’s grounded and practical approach to helping people work through their childhood experiences and advocate for themselves.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How childhood wounds become stored in the nervous system rather than just the mind

Why understanding your dysfunctional habits intellectually will not change the emotional patterns that drive them

How perimenopause and menopause can magnify unresolved emotional patterns

What ACE scores measure and what they fail to capture

How reactive parenting can lead to hypervigilance and emotional scanning, even in safe environments

Dr. LePera describes the fawn response and explains how children learn to over-accommodate others, suppress their own needs, and avoid conflict.

How chronic stress becomes a learned response, and how stress responses can be passed across generations  

How chronic stress and a dysregulated nervous system can influence gut function and microbiome balance

Why it’s essential to return your attention to your body in the present moment to begin healing

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Purchase a copy of Dr. Pera’s latest book, Reparenting the Inner Child.