How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

by Nicole LePera

I discovered that our genes are not destiny and that in order to change, we have to become consciously aware of our thought patterns and habits, which have been shaped by the people we care for, and have been cared for by, the most.

trauma,

We all have a childhood that is creating our current reality, and today we’ve chosen to heal from our past in order to create a new future.

The part of you that knows this to be true is your intuition. It has always been there. We have simply developed a habit of not listening to or trusting what it says. Being here today is a step in healing that broken trust within ourselves.

Holistic Psychology focuses on the mind, body, and soul in the service of rebalancing the body and nervous system and healing unresolved emotional wounds.

It offers practical tools that will enable you to create new habits for yourself, understand the behavior of others, and release the idea that your worth is determined by any person or thing outside yourself.

physical (with breathwork and bodywork), the psychological (by changing your relationship to your thoughts and past experiences), and the spiritual (by connecting to our authentic Self and to the greater collective)—are effective because the body, mind, and soul are connected.

Holistic Psychology helps us find that intuitive voice, to trust it, and to let go of the “personality” that has been modeled and shaped by parent-figures, friends, teachers, and society at large, allowing us to bring consciousness to our unconscious selves.

the practice of Holistic Psychology is rooted in freedom, choice, and ultimately empowerment.

SelfHealing—is an act of self-empowerment.

No person is an island. We are social creatures, and it is not until we are able to truly embody our authentic Self that we become able to connect deeply with the people we love.

Ultimately, learning who you are and what you are capable of is not only empowering and transformative, but one of the most profound experiences we can have.

The real work has nothing to do with anything “out there.” It has everything to do with what’s in you. It comes from you.

Unanimously, no matter their backgrounds, every client felt stuck—stuck

predictable and problematic patterns—and

unworthiness”—a

They could look backward and see the issues, yet they hadn’t built the capacity to apply that insight in real time to their present life.

To truly actualize change, you have to engage in the work of making new choices every day.

Eventually, in my practice with clients, it sometimes felt constraining and not really tailored to the unique individual in front of me.

You’ve just experienced the mind-body connection without putting down this book.

Instead of listening to the body—after all, symptoms are its way of communicating with us—we seek to silence it.

By assigning a genetic cause, we naturally imagine our sickness to be part of who we are. When we become a diagnosis, it decreases incentive to change or try to explore root causes. We identify with the label. This is who I am.

Once we see beyond the narrative that genetics are destiny, we can take ownership of our health. This allows us to see how “choiceless” we once were and empowers us with the ability to create real and lasting change.

we find ourselves unable to change because we are not being told the whole truth about our human existence.

In other words: our life experiences alter us at the cellular level.

we can be active participants in our own well-being.

‘You are the victim of life,’ to introducing the fact that we are the creators of our life.”11

We can and should help heal our bodies and our minds to create wellness for ourselves.

The mind can create real, measurable changes in the body—and the placebo effect is mainstream science’s recognition of this fact.

When our body expects to get better, it sends out messages to start the healing process.

basic tenets of Holistic Psychology

Small and consistent choices are the path to deep transformation.

others are within our control.

power of ...

choice enables ...

the main function of your subconscious mind is to keep you safe, and it is threatened by change.

making consistent, small, daily choices through these push-and-pull resistances helps empower us to maintain change.

my prompts for an exercise that I call Future Self Journaling

yourholisticpsychologist.com),

The more she wrote about herself in a kinder way, the more she began to notice the constant chatter of negative self-talk running through her head all day long.

The more she started to trust herself, the quieter the chatter became and the more her daily acts of self-care and self-love started to extend out into the rest of her life.

the power of choice.

Future Self Journaling (FSJ) is a daily practice aimed at helping you break out of your subconscious autopilot—or the daily conditioned habits that are keeping you stuck repeating your past.

Like Jessica, we all want to be better versions of ourselves. But our attempts to do so have failed because we don’t understand our own minds and bodies. We don’t have the practical tools to understand how to create the changes we seek to make. We can’t expect others to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

conscious mind is not constrained by the burdens of the past. It is forward thinking and constructive.

unconscious, even asleep, that we aren’t aware that there’s a script continually running through our minds. We believe that script is the true “us,” the Self. But that chatter is just our thoughts. We practice thoughts all day long.

You don’t “practice” thoughts. But we do. We practice thoughts from the moment our eyes open in the morning until we close them at night.

You’ve practiced thoughts so consistently and for so long that the act of practicing is beyond your awareness. You practice thoughts in your dream states and in your subconscious. You may label these thoughts as “you,” but they are not you. Y...