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

by Nicole LePera

Having a parent who does not see or hear you.

learn early that they must quiet their true nature in order to receive love.

Having a parent who vicariously lives through you or molds and shapes you.

Because they have always been told what they feel, think, or should be, they have no connection to an intuitive guidance. Often, this leads to their constantly seeking a guru or guide or constantly “drinking the Kool-Aid” of new ideas or groups.

Having a parent who does not model boundaries.

Those experiences overrode our intuition and innate limits, causing us to question our inner messages.

we may find ourselves overriding our own needs in relationships and consistently allowing our limits to be crossed.

Having a parent who is overly focused on appearance.

we can develop a habit of comparing ourselves to others to see if we measure up on superficial levels, not understanding that emotional wellness goes far deeper than surface appearance.

We may even deny or intentionally hide painful or difficult issues we are experiencing in order to maintain the appearance of being “perfect.”

Having a parent who cannot regulate their emotions.

Many of us model the same emotional reactivity or inhibition that was expressed by our parent-figures.

pay attention to how your body feels around the people in your life. Our relationships are a guidance system that enables us to determine the state of our mental wellness.

A healthy relationship provides space for mutual evolution. This is the essence of authentic love, when two people allow each other the freedom and support to be fully seen, heard, and Self expressed.

She found her identity in pleasing others, and since she had no boundaries in place to protect her, she became so in service to others, that she lost all connection with her authentic Self.

Boundaries, the clear limits that separate you (your thoughts, beliefs, needs, emotions, and physical and emotional spaces) from others, are necessary in order for you to be able to develop and maintain authentic relationships. The ability to set clear limits and keep them over time is critical to our overall wellness.

Parent-figures are overly invested in their children’s lives; emotional activation spread across the whole family; spending time away from other family members is actively discouraged or even punished.

The parent-figures fear not being able to control the child, and the child fears being ostracized from the family unit. There isn’t a true connection, a uniting of souls, because no one is truly ever fully themselves.

Because we don’t have a secure relationship with ourselves and have actively denied our own needs, we don’t know what our needs are, let alone how to communicate them clearly.

as our core needs continue to be consistently unmet, we may grow angry and resentful.

All of this is intertwined with the guilt and fear of abandonment, keeping us emotionally addicted and stuck in a vicious cycle.

Boundaries protect you. They keep you physically balanced. They help you connect to your intuitive Self and are critical to experiencing authentic love.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura argued that niceness is based on the following inaccurate formula: “If I please others . . . then others will like me, love me, shower me with approval and everything else I want.”75 He referred to this phenomenon as “the niceness cage”—wherein

It’s not about being mean or arrogant or inconsiderate; it’s about knowing what you want, what your limits are, and then communicating that.

Though many of us struggle with permeable or nonexistent boundaries, quite a few of us exist on the other extreme: we create too-rigid boundaries. We don’t allow for any interconnectedness, walling ourselves off with moats of emotional withdrawal to stay separate from others.

In doing so, we repress our intuitive voice and end up in the same lonely, inauthentic place as those who live with no boundaries at all.

the boundary is not for others, it’s for you.

The first step in using boundaries is to define them—to examine your life and notice where boundaries are lacking.

Do you feel expansive, spacious, and nourished, or do you feel depleted, constricted, and limited?

When we understand other people’s limitations, when we see pain and fear where we once saw cruelty, this is healing.

This is what the work is all about: making space to allow each of us to be seen, heard, and authentically expressed.

most awakenings emerge from an accumulation of insights over time.

three common elements: they often emerge from a state of inner turmoil; they often occur in a natural setting; and they often connect us to some kind of spiritual

no one can figure out and know your wants and needs and how to meet them better than you. No one but you can,

Each day, you could begin to ask yourself the question What can I do for myself in this moment?

The first pillar of reparenting is emotional regulation, or the skill to successfully navigate our emotional states.

Emotional regulation is our ability to cope with stress in a flexible, tolerant, and adaptive way.

The second pillar is loving discipline. This pillar involves creating boundaries with ourselves that are maintained over time.

by proving to ourselves that we are worth showing up for, we build a sense of inner reliability and resilience.

The third pillar goes hand in hand with loving discipline: self-care.

Self-care is the act of learning to identify and care for your physical and emotional wants and needs, especially those that were denied in childhood.

The fourth pillar, one of the ultimate goals of the work, is to rediscover our childlike sense of wonder. This

Your reality is valid because you’ve experienced it, not because someone or something external has said so.

The reality is this: You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fall short. You’re going to mess up in some way or another.

Emotional immaturity is far more common and revolves around the inability to tolerate.

Most of us spend loads of mental energy trying to be understood.

The evolutionary drive toward social acceptance makes it impossible for us to connect with the people around us when we are in a fear state. It makes us reactive and irrational.

One of the major achievements of emotional maturity is learning how to be at peace with these misunderstandings or with being misunderstood.

We might not like all parts of who we are, and yet they exist and must be acknowledged. When our core sense of self is so variable and dependent, so open to outside influence, even what we think others believe about us can shape the way we see ourselves.

Emotional maturity allows us to accept all of our emotions, even the uglier ones we don’t want to admit we harbor.