How to Do the Work Quotes

“Not everyone wants to get better. And that’s okay. Some people have an identity tied to sickness. Others fear true wellness because it is the unknown and the unknown is unpredictable. There is comfort in knowing exactly what your life will look like, even if that reality is making you sick.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“You may label these thoughts as ‘you’, but they are not you. You are the thinker of your thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“Our practiced thoughts become our truth.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“The familiar feels safe; that is, until we teach ourselves that discomfort is temporary and a necessary part of transformation.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. —James Baldwin, Remember This House”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Trauma occurred when we consistently betrayed ourselves for love, were consistently treated in a way that made us feel unworthy or unacceptable resulting in a severed connection to our authentic Self. Trauma creates the fundamental belief that we must betray who we are in order to survive.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“As we expand our level of conscious awareness, we can see that we are not our ego stories. Thoughts happen to us. They don’t mean anything about who we are. They’re simply our ego attempting to defend our identity and protect us from pain.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“Our brain actually prefers to spend most of its time coasting on autopilot—it is best able to conserve its energy by knowing what to expect. This is why our habits and routines feel so comforting”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“I discovered that our genes are not destiny and that in order to change, we have to become consciously aware of our habits and thought patterns, which have been shaped by the people we care for most.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“To truly actualize change, you have to engage in the work of making new choices every day. In order to achieve mental wellness, you must begin by being an active daily participant in your own healing.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“You have to see yourself to love yourself—and you have to love yourself in order to give yourself what you weren’t able to get from others.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“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.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Your inability to move forward or make changes isn’t about you, it’s an extension of the conditioned patterns and core beliefs you developed in your childhood.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“If parent-figures have not healed or even recognized their unresolved traumas, they cannot consciously navigate their own path in life, let alone act as trustworthy guides for someone else. It’s very common for parent-figures to project their own unresolved traumas onto their children. When even well-meaning parent-figures react under the influence of their own unconscious wounds they, instead of offering guidance, may attempt to control, micromanage, or coerce a child to follow their will. Some of these attempts may be well intentioned. Parent-figures may consciously or unconsciously want to keep the child safe and protected from the world so that the child will not experience the pain that they, themselves, have. In the process, they may negate the child’s wants and needs.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Our minds are powerful tools, and if we do not become consciously aware of the disconnection between our authentic Selves and our thoughts, we give our thoughts too much control in our daily lives.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Healing is a daily event. You can’t “go somewhere” to be healed; you must go inward to be healed. This means a daily commitment to doing the work. You are responsible for your healing and will be an active participant in that process. Your level of activity is directly connected to your level of healing. Small and consistent choices are the path to deep transformation.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“How a parent-figure treated you as a child is not a reflection of who you are. Or even who they are. You do not need to be a reflection of their unprocessed trauma.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t damaged. In fact, those habits and behaviors were learned responses that my body used to keep me alive. They were survival mechanisms.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Healing rarely comes without difficulty. It’s painful at times and terrifying, too. It means letting go of narratives that hold you back and harm you. It means letting a part of yourself die so that another part of you can be reborn.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Once our immune system gets the signal that we’re living in a near-constant threat state, it repeatedly sends out chemicals that cause inflammation throughout the body.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“Emerging science tells us that the genes we inherit aren’t fixed; they are influenced by their environment, beginning in utero and continuing throughout our lives. The groundbreaking discovery of epigenetics tells a new story about our ability to change.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“Many of our core beliefs, unfortunately, are shaped by traumas.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“heal self-betrayal by rebuilding the trust you have with yourself,”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. With objective consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of everything. Attempts to connect these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or philosophical way lead to nothing because man cannot reconstruct the idea of the whole starting from separate facts. —George Gurdjieff, The Fourth Way”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“When we are stuck in fight/flight/freeze mode, we devote our resources to managing stress, and, to put it simply, our child brain suffers. Childhood is a time of great vulnerability. Unable to survive on our own, a parent-figure’s withholding of anything perceived to hinder our survival sends stress signals flooding through our bodies. The resulting ‘survival brain’, as I call it, is hyperfocused on perceived threats, sees the world in black and white, and is often obsessive, panic driven, and prone to circular reasoning. We can break down or shut down when faced with stress.”
― Nicole LePera, How To Do The Work

“This has been an issue in almost all of my romantic partnerships. It has kept me reserved and pathologically self-sufficient in my friendships and professional life; it can even rear its head when someone cuts me off in line, when the narrative in my head tells me: You don’t matter. Why? In that instant, I truly believe that a complete stranger doesn’t consider me, just as my mother couldn’t. I’m a ghost that they can walk right through.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“As a result of a lifetime of unmet needs, you may consistently feel resentful, unfulfilled, or needy.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“You are the thinker of your thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

“was detached, avoidant, and unresponsive. It was as if I learned not to love anything too much, because if I truly loved something, it could be taken away from me. It wasn’t just a feeling of loss and abandonment; it was a fear that without a certain person I would not survive.”
― Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self