[DISCLAIMER: Due to a couple of technical glitches, the eagle-eared among you might notice the audio in the main interview portion of this episode isn’t quite the usual standard. I’ve done my very best to rectify this in the edit, and I hope it doesn’t take away from your listening experience of this otherwise brilliant episode! Francesca]This week’s guest is Dr Nicole LePera, whom you might be more familiar with as the Holistic Psychologist – the handle of her somewhat insanely popular Instagram account. She’s also the author of multiple books, including her New York bestseller How To Do The Work, and her latest title, a workbook called How To Meet Your Self. With fans including Elizabeth Day, Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Mel Robbins, Nicole’s popularity is justified – with her succinct but hard-hitting social media posts bringing therapeutic insight out of the expensive and often inaccessible clinical space and in front of the 9 million people who follow her on social media. We discuss, among other things:The practical challenge of alone time when you’re in a throuple, or three-person relationship, as Nicole is [5:40]How Nicole developed a fearful relationship with being alone in childhood [8:10]How your body can go into a ‘threat state’ when you’re alone [10:45]Nicole’s experience of struggling with being physically alone in her early twenties [15:05]How to practically teach yourself to cope better with alone time through Nicole’s five-minute exercise[18:16]Can you learn to be alone through therapy? [20:51]How to avoid the addictive trap of ‘self-help’ [26:51]Why Nicole is passionate about mental health advice being widely accessible via social media [33:31]Practical advice for engaging with self-help content sensibly [37:08]Why Nicole’s favourite alone time involves nudity (not like that!] [41:18]You can find links to Dr Nicole Lepera’s latest workbook on howtomeetyourself.com. Subscribe to my weekly email newsletter at francescaspecter.substack.com to follow my personal writing plus podcast bonus content. You can also order my book, Alonement: How To Be Alone and Absolutely Own It, which is based on this very podcast, now from Amazon,  Waterstones and Bookshop.org. Thank you so much to WestLab for sponsoring this season of the podcast. Visit westlabsalts.co.uk/products/dead-sea-salt and quote the code ALONEMENT15 for 15% off when you spend £10 or more, excludes subscriptions,T&Cs apply. Code expires 31st August 2023.Twitter:@ChezSpecter @theholisticpsychInstagram:@ChezSpecter @the.holistic.psychologist With a one-off payment of £5, you can listen to the Alonement podcast ad-free. https://plus.acast.com/s/alonement.

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