(00:01) can you hear me i hear you now awesome hi how are you i’m awesome sorry i’m just getting let me make sure all my crap in the back is shut so you don’t have to hear my emails dinging no problem cool awesome hi hi hi hey so exciting thank you thanks for being with us here today of course i appreciate you guys being so flexible with scheduling i know we went back and forth a bit so no thank you i felt like i was like sent me so many different options and i was it was like um sounding messy on my end but thank you for we’re here now

(00:38) that’s all that matters um okay so mercedes you want to hit record on out there yeah i did good okay all right so we’ll read your little bio and then start asking me some questions sounds good okay oh real quick did she did she get a mic for this no okay um i feel like it might not be chosen it doesn’t sound like it sounds like computer right now so on the bottom left of zoom you see the little it says mute and then next to it’s a little arrow up button click that and make sure that that mic is chosen in the select i’m

(01:17) like okay it wasn’t you okay thank you thank you i never knew this little trick how about now let’s see uh better different testing sounds different to me okay and as long as it’s chosen there it should be gay and i also know a little trick is i have to talk a little bit closer to it sometimes so i will do that okay cool thank you so much and then listen you both have me literally for the hour i have someone at well my two times so an hour from now so i’m all yours until then okay let’s get started then um

(01:49) [Music] yes without further ado let me introduce the founder of the mindful healing center in philadelphia where she works with individuals couples and families to heal issues around gut health sleep movement cellular health belief and mindfulness as part of her treatment she evolved her more traditional training from cornell university to also acknowledge and include the connection between the mind and body as both a clinical and holistic psychologist she views mental and physical struggles from a whole person

(02:19) perspective and works to identify the underlying physical and emotional causes a healer through and through with even her social media presence shedding so much light on us and the world we couldn’t be more excited to be speaking with her today please welcome dr nicole lespera to the show thank you both jaden mercedes so so much for having me i’m beyond honored and really excited to have a chat and to connect with your audience yeah thanks we’re excited too i want to kick this off by getting your side of um well your story

(02:52) about the journey you took from conventional psychology to holistic psychology yeah absolutely so it’s interesting because my journey was both personal in that realm in terms of psychology and mental wellness and professional so i’m someone on the personal end of things who has had anxiety for as long as i can remember i was the little girl afraid of you know catastrophes happening to my family so it’s really all i knew um upwards into about probably my early 20s when i was living in new york city i

(03:26) was just starting my training program i had some health things happening in my family and my anxiety completely spiked to i mean it might as well have been one pang panic attack after another so long story short i entered into you know i did what i thought i had to do um being in the field but also i think the messages i went and i got the talk therapist and i clocked many hours sitting on a couch you know exploring what was going on for me in terms of my anxiety and i was on medication and i sought out a psychiatrist so

(03:57) taking very much the traditional approach i was managing as i would call it my anxiety but it never really went away i was in training you know learning similarly i was going to be the talk therapist at the same time so flash forward i got to a point in my training where i was able to move from new york city to philadelphia where i live now and hang my own shingle and start my own practice meanwhile behind the scenes i’m still struggling in many of the same ways my anxiety was better but there i could go to the brink of panic i might

(04:27) not have the full panic attack that i would have had in the past but it was still present in my life and i was still finding myself in my relationships in my world finding myself up against the same patterns things that weren’t working even though at this point i felt like i was gaining so much insight in myself i knew you know what i needed to do differently and yet i wasn’t started to realize this is where it kind of spans then professionally start to realize the same patterns that were happening in my clients and at this

(04:54) point i was logging hour upon hour week after week and words of a couple years with same things symptoms still there not really all fully gone same patterns great insightful session oh way to go see you next week oh that same fight with my boyfriend or my partner happened oh i did that same negative you know behavior to cope with it long story short i my for some reason i know why now i think nutritionally i started to have really scary physical symptoms myself some of them were becoming evident in my sessions with clients i was forgetting

(05:27) names i was thinking at home i never fainted before i got really scared and of course my anxiety spiked again like what clearly it was that you know no jokes aside i thought there was something legitimately wrong with my brain and my fear propelled me into my own personal research at this point i’m so grateful for the world of online because i was introduced to a whole new world of information about gut health and epigenetics our genes aren’t our destiny about the subconscious the reason why i was finding myself repeating those

(06:01) patterns despite the incredible amount of insight that i had come to have on myself et cetera et cetera so i started to change things in my life on a personal level i changed my nutrition i changed my lifestyle i changed how i slept i changed how i dealt with stress to explore this this subconscious world of mine and i started to get better get better in such a way that i had not been seeing or i had not experienced personally and in my practice which brought me online i was like okay where am i gonna go with these tools now

(06:30) yeah i knew that they were working for me i knew that they were working with my partner she too is someone who has extensive anxiety but i didn’t know if it went beyond that so intuitively you know social media became my outlet okay let me talk about some of the struggles that i was having and the success that i’m having and a couple months in i was blown away because i started to get messages from people i would talk about what i would do to heal how i changed my nutrition yeah i worked on breath work

(06:58) consciousness everything i was doing i was talking about and i started to get messages trickling in where people are saying oh i’m doing this too and i’m feeling better so now i started to realize i have to take a look at this this holistic way of treating a human if i if these people are affecting change in their life without even sitting in front of me yeah there has to be something here that can be harnessed for the people in front of me at that point i did a really big pivot professionally so i say that

(07:25) because it really was an intersection of my own personal healing journey that brought it into my clinical work i decided that i really need it to and i think all practitioners start um looking more holistically and i started to do just that yeah it’s like oh sorry do you notice it’s like the same with most people like anxiety is linked to gluten or sugar or is it different for everybody there’s a lot of similar contributing factors so when i word it the way i work now holistically so we take the whole person

(07:54) so in the body what i’m concerned around especially with anxiety is resolving any underlying physiological imbalances that some food items nutri glutens things like that processed sugar processed oils things like that could be causing some damages that could result in those physiological imbalances in our gut we now know our gut plays a really pivotal role yeah with the anxiety depression too is another one that’s very strongly linked we’re starting to believe that depression is an inflammation in our

(08:21) brain that slowed cognition all of the symptoms are actually upstream damage from that that originates in the gut so i look at sleep i think sleep is under it’s underrated and under under underutilized you know what i mean because for a lot of us depressions and anxieties and the symptoms that we’re experiencing are affecting our sleep our sleep quality our sleep and males so you know looking at anything that can balance our body i do think is a common factor in a lot of the symptoms that people are struggling with and then

(08:54) there’s the subconscious part of our mind that i know for even those of us who already have the symptoms yeah if we just find ourselves not having satisfying relationships relationships are a playground for our subconscious and helpful anymore um just finding ourselves up against the same you know uh hurdles time and time again and using not helpful ways to navigate them is really evidence of that subconscious so i think those core tenants are really do apply pretty universally some people i’ll work with

(09:25) have more of the need to balance their body some people are more of the need to balance their mind in a sense right a new conscious self from that there’s there’s always some sort of gut mind yeah connection connection 100 it is interconnected and just as much as the mind affects the body the body affects the mind as i see it i i don’t believe that there’s going to be a reality of the future where i actually think and i i light-heartedly joke but i hope this is the case that this time in history where the two were separate is

(09:56) going to be one of those times in history what the hell were they thinking right the hell could this be separate you know i’m hopeful that we get there i think that honestly the success i was i had no expectation when i went online i had no idea what that was going to be i just wanted as an outlet you know the knowledge that i don’t i know is not out there for most of us as practitioners let alone as humans um my hope is that this and and i think the the growth of my account is emblematic of people being ready for it and honestly i have a

(10:28) lot of practitioners i was unsure of how my peers were going to react and i started to put this information out there but it’s been wholeheartedly welcomed i have a lot of people that i actually see now for professional mentorship sessions um that want these tools as well because they have had similar observations in their practice it’s just not working until you consider the whole being in front of you i think people too are getting tired of being dismissed by their western medicine practitioners you know

(10:56) immediately like oh you don’t fit into these boxes then you’re fine nothing’s wrong with you it’s like dude something’s wrong i’m sitting here telling you and you’re not going to look any further into it it’s real frustrating and then doing our own work on the web or we go and find you you know whatever it is but um i wanted to bring it back a moment and just touch on how you said when you moved from conventional psychology to holistic psychology that it took this like hitting rock bottom in order to

(11:23) make that move and i think that’s another interesting point of how the human brain works we have to get to that place yeah so afraid or be so detrimentally ill to finally make a move forward yeah i agree and i’ve said this i’ve observed this put it that way about humans for a while now i did a lot of early work in my training around substance use and obviously change and things like that around you know wanting to stop those behaviors and i started to realize that i mean that rock bottom statement is prolific in in that field

(11:55) you know even the people that are in recovery we’ll talk about their rock bottom use that exact language and i started to look at that and my understanding has always been we need desperately we we have to feel so desperate that we cannot this is a very simplified way right simplify things we have to feel that we cannot tolerate life as it currently is to feel motivated to make a change because and i talk about change often because with holistic healing tools i’m always the bearer of this not so welcomed piece of information which is

(12:24) they’re not the magic elixirs these are not even the things that we can use as needed or when we you know really just we only want to use them you know in that way we have to develop a consistency we have to change our lifestyle in some ways we have to integrate these consistently into our day so that then when we really need them these are really effective in addition to the fact that we’re building in this balance that i think as most of us humans we need but with that said you’ll also often always i should put

(12:52) hear me talk about the challenge of change that as i say it is a universal human so back to this why don’t i change i think for two reasons the threat of the unknown our brain does not it actually does view it as a threat i use that word you know kind of very strategically because when we don’t know when there’s a question mark and we don’t know what this change will feel like or how it’ll be or what’ll come on the other side of this change it our brain interprets that as threatening to be avoided even though

(13:19) logically you know you and me and we all might sit here be like no logically these changes are going to get me to this goal that i want right for our subconscious it’s it’s threatening it’s unknown and it would prefer the familiar that it already understands like anything foreign afraid of it everything that’s the thing and we throw it and then we some of us actually get a threat based and those of us who for sure have experienced any version of trauma not only even big t trauma i expand my definition of trauma that trauma can be

(13:46) a consistently unmet knee not being seen or heard right there’s so many ways i think you posted yeah there’s so many ways because i think and this used to be me i had a really hard time understanding why i was struggling in the ways that i was struggling because logically when i look back i didn’t check any of those big boxes i didn’t see the big cataclysmic you know events that peppered my past experience that were the reason why i now with a different set of awareness understand i had many underlying

(14:14) low-level consistent reasons why but i think a society most of us look at look for the big things that we know and when we don’t have that it’s confusing with why we’re stuck in the ways that we’re stuck and so speaking of stuck how do we move those emotions through our body yeah how do they get stuck in the first place in our in our body and mind yeah so i i believe i like that you even said through our body because the simplest way when i talk i very much simplify things but i define very simplistically emotions as

(14:46) just that they’re energies that are moving through our body with the goal to be you know processed as you essentially to move in have the feel that they offer and then they move away and then we’re done that’s what processing is it’s this elusive concept but that’s simply put the way that i see it so there’s a lot of ways that they become stuck so when we are children and we get to you all often hear me describe us little beings i don’t know how you believe we get to this planet however it is we get there i will

(15:14) describe us in two ways even as very little beings we are intuitive and we are adaptive so we have an inner guidance system that i believe we retain our whole entire life some of us just become disconnected or distrustful of it and we adapt and this is what applies here so as children if we are not given the experience and we have to remember anytime i talk about child that acknowledges truth we are humans raising humans so the caregivers that each of us had or were born into were are limited to the extent of what

(15:44) they know and what they provide themselves so i say that because a lot of times as i see it many of us did have lacks in our environment our early caregiving it’s only natural it’s very hard to consistently show up and to and to show up for a child outside of yourself if you were not given the tools if no one did that for you and and i know that a lot of the older generations that produce you know the humans that we are and then we weren’t they weren’t given those tools so if you’re not being seen heard

(16:13) accepted as just a unique being in your childhood if you don’t have someone helping you regulate from the very earliest level your nervous system i mean that’s what we’re doing when a child is crying we’re co-regulating so an adult nervous system is teaching the child’s nervous system to come back down to calm if you don’t have as an attentive of a caregiver who’s either not present at all or is not attuned to your need in those moments or can’t regulate themselves so they’re

(16:38) you’re crying this as an infant is sending them yeah mirroring their own right you’re going to be very limited to soothe yourself then as an adult and unfortunately you’re going to carry that with you unless you consciously treat or regulate develop the ability to regulate your nervous system right so one of the tools i always talk about to that extent is breath work is learning how to navigate that active nervous system that a lot of us have yeah so that’s part of it and then when i say adapted to i also mean if you didn’t

(17:09) have someone aside from when you’re crying infant helping you understand your emotions giving them language teaching you how to soothe them or just be with you in them you’re going to adapt we all have tools we all have the thing that we do and again in a very simplified way it looks these are two really general categories i go outward and i react you know when my feelings come up i discharge them everywhere i fall into this latter category or i numb i detach i just right and a lot of times we look very

(17:38) childlike in those moments because we’re using that tool that we actually did develop as that child wherever we were developmentally when no one was helping us to do differently so i say that because i think the reality is we all have tools it’s about modifying or getting an extra tool kit yeah i uh grew up in a really chaotic um household where there was a lot of abuse and drug addiction um all forms of abuse and i i i wanted to talk about addictive emotions with you because i’m curious if maybe um

(18:08) my brain or if our brain releases a chemical when we’re stressed and then now um you know i have i’m a single mom of two toddlers and my main concern is that i’m everything to me has a sense of urgency to it and i the thing that bothers me most is that i don’t want to put that on my children because i’m always rushing them now let’s go let’s go let’s go and i’m wondering if um maybe i have this addiction to stress where um you know i don’t know if it’s it could be a tool

(18:40) like you said uh maybe i would need to be better at time management but for me i’m wondering if it’s a chemical thing i’m really happy and thank you for sharing all that jade because this is really going to be beautifully illustrated very similar experience that i had and i’ll talk a little bit about what i mean when i say emotional addiction it also piggybacks on why changes are stepping back into the subconscious for a second because this is going to lead into exactly what you’re describing here

(19:03) and i think a lot of us have this experience so our subconscious as crazy as it sounds it literally blows my mind every time i speak it has logged everything that’s happened to us thus far in life and we’ll continue to do that until we’re no longer on this planet which is a whole hell of a lot of stuff right so it’s categorized it and the reality of it is us as humans are very habitual creatures from our just daily habits that we tend to repeat more consistently than not to the thoughts that we think to the feelings that those

(19:34) thoughts that induce in our body so i describe it i said our subconscious each of us has a little avatar memorized us in there so when i say change is hard i’m just going to lead into this kind of dry this emotional addiction component what happens when we go to do something new even though we all agree logically all of these great new whether it’s a habit or this affirmation and this new way i want to feel in the world it’s all going to get me this goal that i want in life the second we go to implement and take

(19:59) the step to initiate that new routine or maintain it or to affirm a new thought think a new thought or to have a new emotion so for you peace slowing down the second we try to do that our subconscious is very black and white it registers things in a very dichotomous way with again back to this idea of threat the one end of the spectrum is familiar safe good very simplified the other end is unfamiliar possibly threatening bad to be avoided at all and then one of two things happen it either produces mental chatter which

(20:30) is simply an endless reason litany of reasons why not to ever do this thing again and to abandon jump ship right now if not sooner or some of us get this other piece of it some of us like to feel physiologically or agitated in our bodies i’ve heard it described as i get a little bit of this i get an energy that i can’t describe some of us will say i’m crawling out of my skin some of us will just feel weird oh we don’t feel like ourselves another perfectly great reason that our subconscious is offering us to go right

(20:56) back into that memorized comfort zone so for you jaden this has happened for me logically and here you are logically saying i don’t want to pass this on to my children i know i know chaos so thinking about what your subconscious knows a chaotic experience complete with the the hormones the stress hormones that are released when we’re over-activated nervous system they’re stress hormones or cortisol there’s adrenaline your body’s actually changed now physiologically so similar with me and a very chaotic

(21:24) upbringing small things where my partner actually had to break it to me a couple years into our relationship when she told me nothing ever happens in your family and i’m like my mouth dropped open my brain like sorry i was like what do you mean because all it ever felt like my whole life is a catastrophe because the way it was reacted to so similar to you a lot of chaos different reason different cause but a lot of chaos a lot of it was health related i have a chronically ill mother and older sister so there’s a lot of points in

(21:51) time to feel chaotic and to feel stressed right so logically if you would ask me just like you’re saying to me i want to i want to do this for my children i don’t want them to feel this way me all i would say is i want peace i want calm that’s all you would hear me say desperately i want to say yeah flash forward to a moment of peace and calm when i was not you know i’m living separately from my family you know i’m in a zen-like experience i would notice that would happen internally i would

(22:17) start to find the thing to worry about because that’s what i was used to feeling and i add the physiological piece because what i would start to feel is that either i feel like i had to do something to get it out or i would agitate my my partners and whoever i was yeah i’m and then i’d be fighting and then i’d have something for something so when i say addiction that’s what i mean it’s just familiar so some of us are similar to i think you and i and maybe those listening have an addiction really just a pull toward a

(22:45) familiar feeling likely one that you’ve experienced predominantly in your older relationships maybe your caregiving childhood environments that make even change toward a logical other end of the spectrum that we desire and want uncomfortable on some level does that make sense yeah um i think it plays out in my life to noticing that whenever i’m stressed i i want the other people around me on board with that stress in essence and not not just like i’m not necessarily blatantly starting a fight but my stress

(23:20) energy and being like you know this needs to be done and this needs to be done and all these things need to happen and that starts stressing everyone else around me and i guess it’s because i want to live in that chaotic space is the solution to be just to start being conscious of it then i my always number one suggestion is to practice daily self-observation practice whether or not you’re developing it in a sitting meditation practice that allows you to do it during the day regardless getting yourself to be

(23:50) internally or practicing a new way of viewing yourself in the world which is also incorporating the the endless thoughts that are yeah our day and painting our experiences so change does not i always simplify change in the two steps the first step being that consciousness or that awareness and the second step being actioning changing doing something different and both steps are integrally important but step two doesn’t happen unless we’re practicing that consistently what that means is noticing that pattern in yourself yeah

(24:19) if they’re if it is induced if the thought is inducing an agitation in that moment the quicker you’re intentionally that’s another muscle that we’re developing when we are practicing what i feel is the most impactful tool of meditation change which is mindfulness-based meditation my thoughts i’m viewing them objectively and i’m learning pull my attention away from them because more attention is just keeping it stronger and stronger and stronger and that’s not going to help any of us so

(24:45) after we practice that consciousness and i start to see quote unquote how often those thoughts are coloring how i’m reacting or feeling about the world then i start to have the tools to implement change which is sometimes removing our attention sometimes giving us a new toolkit on how to soothe that feeling so when we’re in these moments of stress addiction is it something you can liken to other addictions that potentially we use to block out what we actually need to take care of or what our subconscious actually needs to

(25:19) uh what we need to do yeah and then i guess the other question on on that end is is it also related to um victim mentality you know having a victim mentality or choosing not to forgive somebody or yeah yeah of course of course so um the yes and yes so what i want to say is two things so the thing about victim mentality and i think this maps right in to consciousness so i like to use a simple description i know victim mentality is a very loaded word would i the way i define that is this so before we get eyes on our

(26:03) internal world right on the on the way that our thoughts are coloring our experience what we believe happens in our world day to day moment by moment is again very simplified something happens in the world i feel some kind of way and then i do that kind of thing typically the thing that i always do and i feel that kind of way whether it’s happy sad glad mad whatever what we come to realize when we practice this internal self-observation is what really happens throughout our day is thing happens in the world same thing

(26:29) i’ve run it through a filter i’ve interpreted to mean something i’ve applied a meaning to it typically this is based in an accumulation of my past experiences not always are there helpful models and beliefs and you know there’s pain in there for sure that’s what’s contributing or resulting in that emotional reaction and then that reaction that then follows right so while i think so version a we are understandably feeling the way i call it as reactive because we are when the world is showing up with roses

(26:59) we’re okay and when it’s not we’re not okay and we’re riding a roller coaster of the world that’s not an empowered place to be but it’s natural we have no other way to feel about it because we are reacting to the world because we don’t see we don’t feel we’re part of the equation we think that our partner is causing us to feel this or our family is causing or the promotion that i didn’t get is causing me to feel this way but what’s really causing us when we become self-aware is

(27:29) the meaning i assign to what happened or didn’t happen in my life so while that’s uncomfortable it switches us from reacting to the world or a victim mindset of the world to one a person a being that has a say now and i don’t i believe that all empowerment starts with choice so now we can make an intervention we can choose whether or not that meaning actually applies to our current situation because a lot of us are applying meanings that don’t and to wrap back around the first question about the distracted nature of stress too

(28:01) as i don’t know how this sounds when i say this but our thoughts can be a source of welcome distraction for a lot of us as well so stress that which i’m used to in a sense if it’s familiar as it is for many of us that might be preferred than what’s below that’s maybe not even related to the stress right yeah what’s what’s the deeper stuff down yeah so to wrap back around um the question is you know are we distracting ourselves away sometimes this i also see this come out a lot in productivity an endless to-do list

(28:37) because on the one hand we’re very much validated i know i was this i have very valued in the world you know when i check my boxes i mean [ __ ] i went to school longer than most humans you know or you know i mean the school and the phd and all this and i got all this great healing i mean talk about endless checklist you know what i mean so a lot of us and there’s a balance obviously i believe that us humans are capable of pretty much anything creatively we can create any life that we want however i do know

(29:07) that a lot of us use productivity yeah whether or not it’s on the deepest level to feed a sense of self-worth or yeah distract it i know for many years when i look back at the timeline of my uh dips if you will before i got to my really low point it was probably mapped on to when i didn’t have that focal point for my attention summers things like that years off between school when i didn’t have the things to be worried about up came all the other crap i didn’t like it so i activated myself right out of

(29:39) that feeling yeah i think most friends that i feel like are have been going through that type of cycle where when they’re busy they suddenly feel okay and when they’re not busy all these these things are popping up for them that they’re not sure how to deal with or don’t have the tools yet to deal with and um wanna and i i noticed this too i have um a really close friend of mine who i i don’t know what’s going on in her body or brain but it seems whenever she’s really busy she’s feeling better inside herself you

(30:14) know but when she’s not she is seeing every doctor on the planet and trying to figure out what’s wrong with me what’s wrong with me um and do you see that often in your work yeah absolutely i mean i think this i this piggies back to something like you were saying before there’s two there’s two what’s wrong with me is that i see a lot right there’s the very intuitive one we were talking about earlier i know something’s off and i’m not sure what it is or i’m not getting the information the clarity the what

(30:46) next to to fix it like i said earlier we’re intuitive beings we never lose like touch of that so some of us that’s what’s speaking the part of side of us that knows that something’s off even if the person in the white coat is telling us we’re fine go do this it’s in our mind we know deeper something’s off yeah we know something’s off the other i think path to something’s wrong is again that endless searching sometimes a lot of us i come from a family of this so with within the system

(31:11) of chronic illness of my mom my sister there was an endless reliance on something outside of me fixing it again in a very general way i’m putting this right so whether it’s the diagnosis that and again i am never one i do believe that to some extent even though i have all my thoughts on diagnosis and dsm which are for another conversation right i do believe that that we can feel a relief when we have a need to what it is so that’s not what i’m talking about here i’m talking about the the drive to

(31:40) have something external provide again a very simple way a feel better of any kind whether it’s sympathy or people knowing that something’s actually wrong cause we now have you know the thing that says it is and or what we have to do next but again i see sometimes we localize that outside of ourself and then we go on this endless search because not to say the most cliche thing in the world but here it goes the answers all are in here or not even if there’s something actually wrong that can maybe be verified with a test

(32:10) ultimately i believe that it’s up to us to navigate how we’re going to navigate life with that being the case and not being fully reliant although i understand some things do need medications and this and that i’m never going to say if at all don’t you know we have to navigate our illness or our struggle or whatever it is our own way but i think we are most empowered when it starts from within first i totally agree and it’s hard to it’s hard to communicate that to someone who’s not you know ready i guess for it

(32:40) or however you want to say they’re not on that part of their journey um so all you can do is support them and hold space when they’re around and you know and be be a friend um but yeah i mean bringing it to that idea of dis-ease in the body you know it being somewhere where we’re uneasy uh in our in our own minds especially or something that’s rooted in our childhood trauma um and that creating the actual disease you know like we would call it in western medicine um that can only maybe be fixed uh to a small degree with

(33:20) something external the rest has to be done completely internally so that’s that’s something really close to home for me so thank you for exploring that with us um i want to ask you about the different aspects of ourselves and our ego maybe you could just highlight that for us because i’ve heard you talk about it before yeah absolutely so again i think this ego word is one of them that has taken on a kind of societal based meaning and typically i think what most of us that’s what comes to mind when most of

(33:52) us think ego is a negative connotation right it’s this it’s this pompous self-assured holier than they all you know way of being i think that’s pretty generally what most of us call to mind when we think of that concept so with that said i think what follows is a lot of us think we’re striving to get rid of it entirely and to not show up in that way in the world but my view of what ego is is a bit different i view ego as something that universally we all experience and likely will continue to experience so it’s not about eradicating

(34:30) our life of ego because i actually see it as having fulfilled a very early time of our life and what it believes continuing to fulfill a protective function right so to put it really simply we come here as children and we are given some of us very direct and some of us indirect messaging on again very simplified language what’s appropriate or okay in the world and what’s not okay in the world in terms of attributes ways of being things that we do or don’t do we’re told we’re guided and if we’re not

(35:00) guided as directly in our family before we know what we’re finding ourselves in the school system where we’re definitely so things are positive you know we’re positively rewarded or reinforced and then other things are are disowned or told or shamed and we’ve changed some of us based on certain aspects or responses that we’re giving to the environment so that’s what what ego is it’s a separateness that has learned through the adaptive quality that we all our children how to present ourself in the world in

(35:30) the most socially acceptable way they’re aimed at gaining recognition or validation some of it aimed at inclusion and connectivity and love and these deeper emotions that i think as humans we all desperately want and to some extent we are social creatures um you’ll always hear about me speaking what i believe our goal is interdependence which means separate independence but with the the aspect of social creatures we’re going to have relationships in our life that’s how we survive this is how tribes you

(36:00) know were rested places for us it helped alleviate some of the stress of life in addition to just the practicality and that’s the reality of human beings so i don’t think we’re striving for you know women man you know whomever alone on a on an an island separate we’re striving for that interdependence so we’ve learned at a young age how to ensure those feelings get met to the best of our ability so another uh interestingly uh very hot hot um connection or hot concept connected to this concept of ego that you’ll hear

(36:32) talked about now which is really cool which is shadow itself so that applies to so what the shadow is is all the stuff that we’ve been shamed or have come to believe is shameful about ourselves that we don’t want to um appear or we so what we do is then we start to project outward right we start to see aspects of this shadow and others and we respond very negatively become triggered in some way what the ego seeks to do at its core is two things protect us but protect us furthermore by keeping us separate and safe so it thinks from

(37:04) others so if i can feel myself as different than you i can feel safe within myself and it’s really i think uh a deterrent from feeling fully in everyone around us um and from being for being and you know part of the collective as we’re often talking about it now so when we talk about ego work first and foremost it’s important to notice when we’re reacting from that ego please you know anytime we’re feeling emphatic about something or we’re feeling triggered to speak our mind you know really loudly and get

(37:36) someone to understand our point of view this thing right chances are you know that might be coming from that more ego protective place so there’s something below the scene for me in that moment that i’m trying to protect myself from or get away that i want to be perceived in the world by this person in front of me defending against something so a little i wrote a if anyone’s interested i do have a blog um and i wrote a big a long piece on ego work where i outline some of these steps but a little fun thing that i was doing and

(38:07) um a couple of people have kind of found a lot of success in this is naming our ego you know and identifying like oh that’s you know so mine is just so i can throughout my day and it was oh that was that was just in that way so she came out with a really passive comment that she liked right so we start to learn the pattern of our ego something helpful i think just being aware of it and redefining it yeah for what it is which is not a negative thing to be eradicated but a protective and understand what it’s coming from and

(38:44) then as all things giving ourselves a bit of a tool to navigate it differently it’s so interesting that ego uh you know it’s at a primal nature yeah it’s there to protect us but also there to because we’re tribal beings to get out of the and community but it seems to be the also the thing that pushes everyone away from us so it’s yeah they can’t win with it or without it you know yeah yeah well that’s the thing i don’t think we are going to have a life without it sure but i do i i bring this up so i think a lot

(39:14) of us because we’re using that other definition which doesn’t feel so good you know in the world um i do think a lot of us are striving to get rid of it and then we feel shame upon shame when it’s there we’re like oh you know but that’s why i word it this way because i don’t necessarily think that any of this this goal is yeah even with the subconscious let’s wrap that back in i have people ask me all the time does this ever go away we all want i don’t know if you or any of your

(39:39) listeners have ever watched the eternal sunshine or the spotless mind yeah that pill where oh yeah while that might be ideal for some people i just don’t that’s how life works right which is that whether we’re talking ego whether we’re talking inner child whatever we’re talking about chances are the goal is integrated yeah that’s always going to be part of our existence but how do we navigate that in a new way how do we get a self-conscious choice in those moments so that we can start to

(40:06) get some new results yeah i just want to say i think it’s so important to use gratitude to integrate how we can allow ego in our lives to you know better serve us so just the fact that we how much learning happens because of our ego right like when we can sit here and witness what’s going on in our brain what about like in terms of finding the quote unquote white right person for us um how can we differentiate between intuition like our intuitive knowing versus our ego yeah absolutely so i get this question a lot in different

(40:45) versions um because the reality of it is we have fields most of us all day long so it gets confusing to know the difference between what i call as a top-down feeling which originated in a thought if i think of thought long enough as i think we all know i can throw myself into complete panic just sitting here meanwhile nothing’s changed you know but i focused on the thought and now i’m having a whole visceral reaction to my body which feels like a feeling to me feeling nervous as hell scared as hell angry as hell

(41:21) whatever it is i’m feeling it real i think we become complicated because when we talk about consciousness and why i’m such a proponent of it i think very globally all of us humans spend way too much time in our thinking mind and allowing our mind to color our daily experiences which leads us to a whole muddled ball of feelings that we can’t differentiate whether it’s ego-based feeling or or thought-based feeling or old narrative-based feeling or old trauma induced feeling or intuition so it’s very complicated and i do get

(41:54) this question a lot which is the tool or what we need to develop is i call it shaving away we essentially need to shave away all of those top down feelings every time we’re coloring what’s happening in our current environment with those past narratives is past stories right anytime we’re bringing that in any time we’re having that over activation of our nervous system because it’s we’re just over primed in that fight or flight response possibly for some of us based on trauma this is why

(42:21) again back to this holistic approach without doing that nervous system work to regulate our nervous system we’re always going to be hyperactive yeah it’s not really for us so we’re coloring and we’re having a lot of feel so our goal is to get as grounded and as balanced in our body and to spend more and more time in that balanced grounded place more often than not that then we can if we’re so disconnected from our intuition which some of us are because we live in our minds literally that makes all of our

(42:53) decisions for us so some of us have to rebuild the connection and or some of us have to learn to trust that connection so as we get more and more connected to the intuition and we can differentiate oh i’m stressed out now because i’m doing that old worst case scenario thinking i do this is not a real stress right that’s different from oh this person i’m around has given me a vibe that doesn’t sit comfortably with me maybe i should exit this exchange that’s more intuitive i assure you like

(43:21) i said we came here with that we’re not leaving and i say this as well because i’m concerned that i hear often well if i just view life as it is and everyone is just okay and i accept everything am i going this is understandable am i going to be open for abuse or violation or am i going to lose my sense and walk into something that is actually threatening if i’m just throwing up peace sign and my answer is always saying no absolutely not your intuition is still going to scream and yell in those moments and you’re just going

(43:50) to be a bit clearer now to answer your question differentiate and say oh no this is actually that deeper intuitive system putting on my breaks maybe i should listen to it you articulated that wonderfully thank you um i know you also specialize in boundaries um why do some of us struggle so much with boundaries and then why do some people push back on boundaries so much yeah absolutely so the reason i talk so often about boundaries before i say to you that i think they’re an incredibly important step of healing

(44:22) is because i believe this is another universal a lot of us weren’t model boundaries at all not healthy ones yes particularly in our emotional worlds what do i mean when i say that a lot of us have gotten either direct or indirect messaging starting from a very young age that’s at some aspect of us our personality what how we’re showing up in the world what we’re doing or we’re not doing affects someone else emotionally which yes objectively listeners i say yeah that’s true like dependency yeah the

(44:54) more consistent we get that you know so even language like oh don’t do don’t be loud that’ll yell don’t do that bomb will consistently we hear that type of message what we’re actually hearing is some version of i am responsible for someone else’s feelings wow and some of us hear that a lot more than others so the reason i’m talking about it and you say one you know i don’t know what you called me an expert in it but i come from any completely enmeshed emotionally meshed codependent household family the feeling

(45:25) of one my mother in particular dictated the feeling of all and everything orbited around how mom was feeling my mom was feeling good everyone was okay and mom wasn’t feeling good everyone worried about how i was feeling and it was nothing outward so mom my mom did not erupt you know when she was but it was just ever present with similar messaging what to do or not to do to make sure so before i knew it i started to show up in my relationships in that emotionally codependent way and i share that often because i think a lot of us

(45:53) have that version of it’s beyond we think of codependency we think a lot of just like oh i need someone to do something with or help me feel better it’s that emotional and sometimes it’ll feel like you know roller coasters in a relationship walking on eggshells it’s doing good i’m great when it’s not doing good i’m not great and i think that’s really probably um so first and foremost uh we have to get real clear with ourself when we talk about boundaries again i’m going to

(46:18) simplify the steps as i say um so to answer your question i think we all struggle with boundaries in some way so now as an adult it’s our job to put up shifts and changes in some of these dynamics we have to start to show up differently in our relationships if we want our relationships to change yeah it’s our tendency i believe back in this react go hand in hand a bit is to say oh no you change and then i won’t have to get mad or sad or whatever right but i don’t believe that’s empowered i think our

(46:47) goal is if we want the relationship to change it’s our responsibility to change it which to answer your next question really simply people don’t like expectations violated especially in those longer term relationships we come to know and we have a role now that we play and typically it’s probably pretty consistent across all relationships with how we show up so when we decide to not show up in that way anymore to not show up at all whatever our boundary is or not to talk about that topic any boundaries look different for each of us

(47:14) depending on the relationship that person is likely going to react in some way at minimum they’re just going to be surprised right and it’s going to take a little bit of re-navigating a new dynamic and at the more difficult extreme it’s not going to go over well we’re going to get some version of reactivity emotional reactivity so the three steps going back to that very simplified the first step is to get clear within ourself if we are someone who struggles with boundaries obviously identify that we do struggle and we need

(47:44) a little bit we need to change the way we’re showing up and to get clear on what changes that might need to be and that’s a process because we don’t know a lot of us weren’t modeled these type of boundaries if any in relationships so we might not be sure suggestions i give i actually did a whole podcast with uh melissa hartwick up the whole 30 on boundaries so exploring for a bit more information if you guys are interested but for exploring you know what feels good what feels bad find the relationship where you feel kind of okay

(48:12) what looks different there that can help you to find boundaries second step enact them communicate this objective language is always going to be a great way to communicate not throwing out you did and you’re crazy and you know that’s not going to help communicating at a time where you’re not emotionally reactive so i’m not going to throw up the new boundary in the middle of an argument but that doesn’t prevent the third step then which is maintaining the boundary despite whatever version of

(48:42) pushback it is it’s not gonna prevent the pushback you can wait for the calmest day ever and word it in the most palpable way or so you think ever and depending on the type of relationship or the person on the other side you still might get a reaction and that’s why i say maintenance i actually put that as a step because it’s hard and i know for me what would then happen is the feel bad i feel so guilty i feel terrible sometimes the person is telling me all three yeah they’re telling me all the reasons why i should

(49:09) feel that way they’re strengthening my reason i’m selfish so maintaining it is just as hard and if not harder and is again the way i view it our responsibility yeah um we have a magic respecting your boundary because we know we only have ten more minutes with you we have a magic map question uh patricia asks i would love to start her free program she calls future self journaling can you have her discuss the benefits of it absolutely so um get yourself journaling for everyone out there how to get it it is actually

(49:41) comes free when you join my mailing list and i believe on my link tree so a nice and easy way to get it so what future self journaling is it’s something i developed so i am not a person who’s ever journaled in my life so a bit of background when i started to go on my own healing journey i started to think about ways that i could use a journaling um a daily journaling habit which for me would be new to to focus on change because i think a lot of times and i think there’s still a place for this type of journaling in our healing

(50:08) journeys which is thinking about our past getting our words out maybe getting emotions down free free you know it’s free speaking if you will you know free writing what happened during the day there’s a place for that but i was really interested in similar to the shift i was having in my therapy practice if i just keep talking about how things work or are i’m not really giving myself much space to think about how things could be and i found that a limit so i i made a prompt that i now released called future

(50:36) self journaling prompts um as a way to use a daily journaling habit so this is how it’s helpful to a just consistently remind myself that i’m working toward change because remember those two steps i said first consciousness and then change so without being daily conscious to the fact that oh right i’m working on this new habit i want to break or i want to do this new thing or i want to think this new way over time if we’re not reminding ourselves daily to put it really simply we’re going to go right back into that

(51:05) old pattern and we’re not going to remember to make the changes so the habit of writing the habit of writing new future thoughts our mind this is what’s beautiful about our mind it does not know the difference between real or it’s imagined so while you’re sitting there and writing this new way of being and maybe you have new affirmations you know where you’re someone who thinks a lot of us think this i’m not enough and you’re writing you are enough you’re actually firing up some new pathways and with the more

(51:34) consistent there’s that word again repetition we actually can retrain we can lie down a new program using the computer analogy in our subconscious but not without that consistent repetition so while you’re journaling you’re firing up you’re laying down some neural pathways which then like i said equips you for later on the day beginning to practice and the most i’ve now released this you know to anyone and everyone who’s interested in journaling in this way and the most impactful piece of it that i’m

(52:03) seeing people respond to is that daily consciousness the fact that each day they’re working toward a change equips them to see then more changes throughout their day which is really cool so anyone listening it’s free it comes right to your inbox if you sign up for that email list i mean like i said i think there’s a link on my link tray but it’s a it’s a great it’s a tool so like i call all things this is not magic yeah it’s not a magic journal you don’t get it poof writing bang or that person right it

(52:28) just equips you to begin to make daily changes which will get you to be that new person you still got to do the work yeah all right there’s a few short questions we’d like to ask everyone who comes on the show so first off if you could hug your younger self right now what would you say uh i would probably say that she’s safe because i think for me there was a lot of aspects of feeling really big feelings with not many people around and one of my like i shared earlier um one of my major anxieties as a child was bad

(53:02) things happening and i don’t i actually know i’m gonna amend that not that i don’t think i know that my caregivers around me had little idea that all of that was even happening or a concern in my life so i was very alone in that so if i could have had someone even adult me now bugging me and just reminding me that i’m safe i think that would have gone a really long way for me how old were you in that how as long as i can yeah as long as i can remember so i have very few memories actual kind of picture based memories of

(53:36) my childhood because i believe i spent so much time not feeling safe enough dissociate it from two big feelings that’s how i coped with them um but from what i put together timeline wise actually my sister who’s chronically ill she’s 15 years older than me she had a pretty major surgery though i don’t remember this at all right where i was around three and i know i was there because i went with my parents we had to travel out of state it was a very long intensive surgery so i think i was there for a

(54:05) long time i don’t have much detail memory but i’m sure that was probably a first really traumatic experience for me and not feeling safe and probably not having my parents resources because they were caring for my sister at the time so it might have even surpassed that i mean if you really want to go into it my mom was very nervous with her pregnancy with me she was 42 when she had me and this was back when we were expecting me to have a diagnosis of down syndrome or something you know so if we really want to go into

(54:34) it if you’re a believer in things being transmitted you know in utero i actually would say before i was even a person on the planet that i did not feel safe because my mom was probably a washing horse and not navigate worried about me and my sister who’s chronically on the background i mean yeah if we really want to answer that question honestly i think when i was a little nugget of you know like [ __ ] man if you could have the whole world read one book which would it be oh whole world reading one book so the

(55:06) book that always just comes to mind is because i think it’s so amazing and beautiful uh and it’s very much in alignment with the way i think about energy is the untethered soul by michael singer i just it’s so good that’s a good one yeah it’s a good one um if you could whisper one phrase to everyone on the planet what would it be you are enough because when i referenced that earlier it comes to mind so frequently because we all have some version of that and it doesn’t mean that we didn’t get accolades for

(55:34) some aspects of ourselves right i i do like i said earlier i do not believe a lot of us were seen and heard just for being the authentic being that we are that is enough period at the end and i think we all are desperately desperate we all need to hear it for that we need to put it on our mirrors everybody you know what i mean and then believe it in time that’s the next step of hearing it and then coming to actually believe that yeah i also feel like a lot of us are born into uh circumstance that our parents were trying to heal

(56:03) something in their own relationship and we were supposed to be the mending thing and so now and and we’re not we’re not going to be able to do that for them and so that starts us already off in this place of word not enough yeah i wanted to ask you super quick um i am really sensitive to what i put in my body and when i cut out caffeine i did notice a dramatic um difference in my anxiety but i am currently on antibiotics for a uti because i took a long celibacy and then broke it um but the antibiotics ever since i got on them

(56:37) i’ve just been a puddle of emotions i’ve just been crying non-stop and i’m curious how long it takes to heal your gut from antibiotics real quick yeah absolutely so the issue with antibiotics in particular is it’s killed all of your bacteria good and bad and we now know because the gut we used to think the brain was the source of our neurotransmitters you know are the ones that the chemicals associated with emotion we now know it’s our gut and we now know that though that microbiome the bacteria in our gut

(57:05) actually helps us to create those and so it could be a result your emotionality or reactivity could be a result of just a depleted meaning you have a blank slate on the one hand so with that said it takes as long as your gut it’s not that it’s damaged per se it’s just imbalanced bacteria-wise now so i don’t know if you have probiotics in your life but i would get them in your life and as soon as it’s replenished you’ll likely be find that stabilization come back awesome thank you so much um

(57:37) where can our listeners find you on the internet and yes absolutely so my my main hub though i have a few different hubs and i’m ever evolving growing more but my business the instagram account at the dot holistic psychologist so pretty much anything going on i run through there uh the email list and link i have a link tree which is fairly new so it helps people navigate around and get what they need including signing up on that email list i do have a youtube channel which is you know very new still actually just put a video out

(58:11) yesterday and the volume wasn’t the best but it’s a work in progress it’s there a video goes up every sunday uh it’s a holistic psychologist but video won’t go up on there unless i’ve told you a video is going up on there through my instagram as well so i always direct people to instagram i have a website yourholisticpsychologist.

(58:27) com but all of it gets navigated quite easily as i make it through the instagram account yeah we’re huge fans of your grandma your instagram has been really really healing for me definitely instrumental i really appreciate you both saying that mercedes and jade thank you thank you so much for being on with us you’re incredible and i hope we get you on again sometime because we got many more questions i love talking about this so i can talk about it all the time so i am not arguing i do love i love the mind i’ve always loved it now that i

(58:59) know that there’s more of us in the mind i think it’s just incredible and having lived the journey and how much change is possible i’m just so passionate that these tools get out there so hearing that the two of you and everyone that’s been impacted means the world to me and i won’t stop well we appreciate your work and thank you so much for being a light of course thank you all right cool so you’re we look at that one minutes to spare oh all right email you some videos when we get this

(59:28) up and going and um awesome thank you so much love it of course thank you both have a good day bye bye all right okay wow i feel like it was a whirlwind of knowledge i was trying to absorb and figure out what else i need to know before she’s gone i know even though i could just go look at her i had so many questions after all of her answers but i was like move on yeah don’t do it um it was pretty magical our own practice and boundaries for sure i know seriously respecting other people i know what uh what’s your magic trick today oh

(1:00:08) okay my magic trick is to stop using overdramatic language to describe your current emotions this is something i am terribly guilty of doing myself and it’s because when we use extreme language or i think it’s because when we ex when i use extreme language it incites a larger response from whoever i’m talking to so i feel like with the rise of social media and texting all those things uh came the rise of inauthentic emotional language because we aren’t getting deep connection through a text or a comment you know

(1:00:43) we’re just seeing the words on a screen with no micro expressions or energy to go along with it and so um the reason i think using overly dramatic language isn’t the healthiest option is because it may lead to a difficulty expressing or communicating when something is actually dire and where dramatic language might actually be necessary and i know this might seem like a silly or unnecessary effort to make in your life but think about it and let it resonate if it makes sense for you so if you want to try it with me instead of

(1:01:19) saying things like i hate that or that’s the worst or even saying things like on the positive end like she’s the best or that’s crazy or um i’m crying or i’m dead you know when we talk about laughing on a text or something i might say oh my god dead or uh you’re so crazy or oh my god you’re killing me and if any of those things are real descriptions then it’s okay but let’s do they’re not going to be so um if you can use language that’s actually in line with what you’re describing i

(1:01:54) think it’ll help us all to to better understand each other in a sense um and if you really want to challenge yourself with this then you could even reply to people’s texts with voice notes or videos when you want to show someone you know that you actually are having emotion in your response um if they’re if they’re if they’re just like simple voice i’m like why didn’t you just text that but i actually love voice notes when they are um you know something that involves a little bit of vulnerability and intimacy

(1:02:27) yeah i think too it depends on the person you’re sending it to you know um i don’t know you need to be sending like your boss a voice right all the time but when it’s a friend and you’re not able to see that friend because you’re such a busy single mom and you get to have that voice memo it’s almost like yeah you know it’s like a little mini conversation without yeah having to be in the same spot yeah that’s it i’m gonna try it let you know how it turns out okay i’ll try it with you okay um so

(1:02:54) mine is um just a little simple but something a lot of us probably don’t think about is um just like adult coloring coloring mandalas to be more specific so mandalas as a form of meditation are actually entering medicine as a healing tool it um there’s an increasing body of clinical trials that suggest that it reduces stress that it combats depression that it reduces pain it lowers blood pressure i mean the list goes on and it also they even say that it boosts the immune system and stimulates the release of melatonin you

(1:03:26) know which helps us which um you know slows cell aging and promotes sleep so um they also say that it can help children deal with emotions and cope with illness so in my mind i think of my inner child that it can be soothing for my inner child um there are a couple of um cancer centers that even offer mandala workshops because of its healing benefits and uh there was also i was reading about how you know people who try to quit smoking they take up knitting because they’re trying to keep their hands busy and like their minds occupied and um it

(1:04:01) helps relieve stress well this is even more powerful coloring mandalas because of all the other things that go into it but i know for me it helps me clear my mind because you’re you’re just you’re not thinking you’re you know yeah focus on the page um it helps you to focus on the present and just achieve more mindfulness and you are unplugging from technology while you’re doing it you know so it promotes creation over consumption um and you know it also sparks creativity so um those those are all the reasons why i

(1:04:37) would recommend coloring mandalas i i don’t know if you remember when we first started this show i was working on publishing my own adult coloring book where you are coloring basically your moods based off a color grid and then we started the show and i did not do that that is something that i really really want to do because even even just drawing out the designs for people of color was so meditative for me yeah um so yeah so try it out if you i mean you can print one out offline or you can buy one on amazon

(1:05:10) um if mandalas doesn’t really resonate with you which you can look up all the healing benefits of even mandalas but if that doesn’t resonate with you there are tons of adult coloring books of like really cool looking animals and stuff like that so yeah my mom colors mandalas a lot actually and she has them hung all over her office yeah and it’s even fun i mean this might sound like so goofy i don’t know who’s listening and going what what the hell are y’all still talking about coloring mandalas but

(1:05:38) um not just the point of coloring it but then you get to like have this little piece yeah you know you get to have this little piece of art that you get to put on your wall or whatever and with my mom like she has them all over her her wall in her office and so you know i’ll go in there and i’ll see the new ones that she’s done and i’ll pick you know we’ll talk about why this one’s our favorite or why we like the colors and the scheme and you know it just adds to i don’t know it’s

(1:06:03) just something you did too so yeah somehow all of those things are beneficial i like that a lot um and speaking of buying a coloring book on amazon [Laughter] before we sign off i wanted to remind our magic mobbers that we’re doing a little giveaway uh basically all you have to do is leave us a rating and review on your podcast app you can do it right now while you’re listening to the show actually and once you’ve written your review just snapshot it post it on your instagram and tag our instagram which is at the magic hour

(1:06:35) spelled m-a-j-i-c so that we’ll see it and we’ll be picking a couple winners each month to get a hundred dollar amazon gift card yeah because we love you all right magic moppers thank you so much for tuning in and taking this journey with us if this episode held some magic for you please share it with your friends and family this one means so much to us and don’t forget to join us on our instagram page at the magic hour and let us know what your favorite episodes have been so far we appreciate all your feedback and want to know what

(1:07:08) is currently lighting you up yes and by the way we release a new episode every monday so you can catch us again next week or go listen to some of our podcast episodes our past episodes in our podcast library now we will meet you there until then be a light big thank you to at rayton royal for our intro jam and to john aaron garza from real in motion productions for producing the show stay magical friends um in your magic trick you said something you said they increased cell aging was that accurate it’s like

(1:07:44) wait do we want that hormone no i said slow they slow cell aging okay good it increases melatonin which slows cell aging okay hopefully that’s what was going on and cell aging i was like wait should be and slow cell aging but if not i’ll edit it out yeah um but uh let me hit stop um i still have not gotten