How Doing ‘The Work’ Could Change Your Life

In recent years, the influence of the health and wellness community has taken off in unprecedented ways on social media. 

Therapists and psychologists have become wildly popular influencers online, increasingly able to share their brand of healing with millions of more people than has been possible with traditional media. 

Since 2018, Dr. Nicole LePera has become one of the most followed therapists on Instagram under the name “The Holistic Psychologist.”

She calls her approach to therapy is a self-healing journey, one that she says almost anyone can begin on their own.

“Just as much as our mental world is sending messages down to our bodies, our physical bodies are sending messages up to our mental worlds. Our nervous system…plays a core, evolutionary-driven role in our bodies sensory-based experiences.” –Dr. Nicole LePera, The Holistic Psychologist 

“The large reason why so many of us can’t create change is that we’re not honoring the fact that we’re all connected to a body that for many of us is in a state of physiological dysregulation,” LePera says. 

She says that dysregulation keeps us stuck in habits and patterns typically aimed at coping. “For many years the gold standard in therapy has been cognitive behavioral therapy, this idea that if I begin to think differently then I begin to create different experiences in my life,” LePera says. “What I saw time and again [in clinical settings] was that state of disempowerment, quite universally, is that inability for thought alone to create the change that so many of us are looking for.” 

Listen: Dr. Nicole LePera talks about her therapeutic approach. 

“Just as much as our mental world is sending messages down to our bodies, our physical bodies are sending messages up to our mental worlds. Our nervous system…plays a core, evolutionary-driven role in our bodies sensory-based experiences,” she says.

LePera’s new book is called “How to Do The Work.” It’s her first on the The New York Times bestseller list.