4: Invisible Inheritance | Walking Through Part 3 - How to Break the Cycle (And Heal)

Dr. Nicole Thaxton, in episode four of the Legacy Work limited series, previews part three (“Breaking the Cycle”) of her upcoming book Invisible Inheritance, two weeks ahead of launch, and invites listeners to an April 21 launch party in Roswell, Georgia. She argues that cycle-breaking begins internally—through the nervous system—because insight alone doesn’t stop reactive patterns. She distinguishes control (anxiety-driven outcome management that brings temporary relief) from regulation (staying connected to yourself amid uncertainty), and shares that she stopped saying “I have anxiety,” reframing it as an experience rather than an identity. Healing is described as a sustainable, imperfect practice: “sinking down” into the body, pausing mid-pattern, setting boundaries as self-connection rather than controlling others, cultivating self-compassion, and emphasizing repair over perfection. She closes with reflections about book launch, journaling prompts, and a story about giving signed books to a follower and her mom at a farmer’s market.

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• Episode Transcript

  Disclaimer: Transcripts are AI Generated.

  [00:00:00] I've been sitting with this tension lately. We talk a lot about breaking cycles, changing patterns, doing the work. But what I don't think we say enough is that breaking cycles doesn't often start with what you do differently. Maybe in your relationships, your coping. Again, all the focus being on what we do differently, but instead, I think that breaking cycles starts with what's happening inside of you because you can have all the insight in the world.

  As we said in the last episode, you can understand your pattern. You can name where those patterns come from. You can even predict when they're going to show up and how they're going to show up and still find yourself reacting in the exact same ways, the same ways that you don't want to react, and that's the part that can feel so defeating on the healing journey, especially if you're someone who is very self-aware, who's very thoughtful.

  Who's already doing a lot of internal work. You've been in therapy for years and years and [00:01:00] years, so if you've ever had the thought, I know better. So why am I still doing this? This episode is for you because today I wanna talk about part three of my upcoming book, invisible Inheritance, and what it actually looks like to begin breaking the cycle.

  Not perfectly, not all at once, but in a way that's sustainable, real and rooted in how your nervous system works and how healing works in real time. If you've been listening to this limited series podcast Legacy Work, I am Dr. Nicole Thaxton. Thank you for being here for episode four. In the past several episodes, we've walked through the first.

  Few sections of my upcoming book, and today we are gonna walk through part three, which is called Breaking the Cycle. So the book is really building to this section of how do We Heal, the section starts out, the very first chapter is the First Step to Healing. So we're [00:02:00] gonna talk about some of the themes in this section today.

  As I am recording, we are two weeks away from book launch, two weeks. I can't even wrap my head around that. And not only is this book launching into the world in two weeks, but we're also having a fantastic launch party. That myself and my team are planning to meet in person in Roswell, Georgia on April 21st.

  I would love for you to join me there if you're free and available that night, and tickets are available on my website, nicole thaxton.com. But let's dig into part three. One of the biggest shifts I've had to make in my life and also in the work I do with clients is understanding the difference between.

  Regulation, emotion regulation, and I call this in the book, creating a calm, emotional legacy, but understanding the difference between regulation and control. Because here's the thing, anxiety [00:03:00] loves control, and you know this. Control looks like trying to manage outcomes, overthinking conversations, overthinking.

  That text that you sent three days ago replaying things in your mind, rereading your messages over again, trying to get everything just right. Your communication, your relationships, so nothing goes wrong and it makes sense. Control is your nervous system's way of trying to create safety. But here's the problem with this.

  Control doesn't actually create safety. It creates temporary relief. Regulation, on the other hand, is different. Regulation, is your ability to stay connected to yourself even when things feel uncertain, uncomfortable, out of control, or imperfect. Regulation is not about making everything in your life, calm and sin.

  And I write about this in the book, but it's about learning how to be with yourself, learning how to remain grounded when things aren't grounded and okay. And that is a [00:04:00] very different kind of work that this book is asking you to step into. So why does healing start with the nervous system? And before we even get into the nervous system, I say in the book that the first step to healing is this chapter. Okay. Is an essay that I wrote for, I posted this online years ago and it's one of my most viral posts on Instagram still to this day. And I write about how I quit saying I have anxiety. And that's where this section starts. So before we get to regulation, before we get to nervous system, before we get to re-parenting or inner child work or any of these other things, This is such a good section. I love, I love this part, part three, but I write about how I stopped saying I have anxiety and it really was that word have that I started analyzing. And saying, you know what? This has been an identity that I've carried around for way too long. I have anxiety, so I can't do [00:05:00] this.

  I have anxiety, so of course I'm gonna struggle with this. a lot of people ask me, what do you say? So I do not say I have anxiety anymore, but I will say I experience anxiety some days more than others. Or anxiety is something I have wrestled with at times and other times it has been my superpower. I have a lot of different ways that I talk about anxiety now, but I don't say I have anxiety, and for me it really starts with the identity.

  It also starts with your body, and this is where a lot of this section goes. Because when we talk about anxiety, and especially if you listen to the last episode, your nervous system is constantly scanning. It's asking, am I safe? Am I okay? Do I need to protect myself? And if your system has learned, if your body has learned over time in relationships generationally that the world is unpredictable or overwhelming.

  You're gonna feel that before you can even think your way out of it. Before you can change [00:06:00] your thoughts or change your mind or say affirmations, your body's gonna feel that. And this again, is why Insight Alone isn't enough, and we talked about that last episode. You can know that you're safe logically, and still feel highly activated.

  A story that I often share related to this. Came after an abusive relationship that I was in in my early twenties. I write about this relationship briefly in the book, But after this relationship, I knew that I was in a safe place.

  I knew I had gotten out of this relationship. I knew. My relationships around me, the people around me were stable and healthy, but my body for many, many years felt very activated because of the way this relationship had created so much dysregulation and so much anxiety. the work becomes, how do I help my body experience calm, not just.

  Intellectually understanding my [00:07:00] anxiety, which so many of us, especially anxious achievers wanna do in therapy. We wanna intellectualize our healing, but we have to sink down. And that is the chapter that I wrote in this section called The Knowing. And I really don't wanna ruin this chapter for you. If you have not read the book yet.

  If you have not pre-ordered. This chapter is one of my favorites that I wrote, so I won't spoil too much. But when I say sinking down into the knowing, that's what I'm referencing. And this can be really simple things. It can be slowing your breath pausing before you react to something or even react to your anxiety.

  Letting yourself feel anxious without immediately needing to fix it or cope with it or jump out of it. Grounding into your body instead of escaping into your mind, or distraction, or other healthy or unhealthy coping strategies. Again, this isn't supposed to be a checklist, but this is a way of relating to [00:08:00] yourself differently when you're feeling anxious.

  Another piece of breaking the cycle that I think it's misunderstood is this idea that healing means I have to never feel anxious again. Okay? Because that's not what the healing journey is about. And I write about this all throughout the book, but healing looks more like this. It looks like noticing when you've been activated.

  Or dysregulated, realizing that you've reacted from an old pattern that you no longer want, or in the book I call these ways of being, an old way of being and then coming back to repair, and I wrote a chapter in part four called Repair, repair, repair. Again. As a means of repairing with others and creating a new emotional legacy, which is part four.

  So I'm skipping ahead, but I'm talking about repairing with yourself because what actually changes patterns over time. What helps you heal is not [00:09:00] perfection, is not zero anxiety or always getting it right, but it's repair. It's those moments when you pause and you say, this actually wasn't how I wanna show up right now.

  Let me try that again. Let me come back to this conversation differently. Let me handle this emotion differently. And the same thing goes for boundaries. So I write in part three about growing compassion for yourself. I write about values and understanding what your values are, which values simply put are what matters most to me.

  That's what values are and living into your values. I write about exploring your unmet needs and what those were when you were younger. There are chapters on inner child work, re-parenting permissions. Not explaining yourself so much. Okay. Self trust, boundary setting. And here's the thing I wanna say here about boundaries.

  Boundaries aren't about controlling other people. Boundaries are [00:10:00] about staying connected to yourself. So boundaries are about saying, this is what I need to feel safe. This is what I am available for. This is where I need to step back. This is what's going to be best for my mental health in this situation.

  And doing that without needing everyone to understand. Everything that you're doing all the time or even agree with you, because I write for most of us anxious achievers, that's really challenging. We want everyone to understand, we over explain. We need people to be on our side. We think, well, if they just knew this and this and this, then they would get it.

  we really don't need people to agree with us and underneath all of that, we have to have a lot of self-compassion. Because if you're trying to break generational patterns with the same pressure and the same self-criticism that created them, then you're just recreating a cycle in a different form.

  So we have to have compassion for ourself. We have to have what I call gentle practices in the book. And [00:11:00] these are similar to coping strategies, these gentle ways that we can be with ourself. I write a chapter on less doing and more being cause it's not always about doing more. Sometimes it's about doing less.

  we wanna be gentle with ourselves in the process. Another conversation that I've had around this section, this part three, is what quote, doing the work actually looks like. I think doing the work has become one of those phrases that sounds really good and almost sort of therapy jargon, but it doesn't always feel very clear.

  here's what I think doing the work looks like. Very simply put, it's catching yourself mid pattern. So is this an inherited pattern? Is this my inherited anxiety? Is this an old way of being that I don't wanna hold onto anymore? Noticing that urge for those old ways of being. We talked about those in the last episode, so I won't get into that too much.

  But that urge to control, the urge to [00:12:00] fix to over-function, to control others. Noticing those. And then pausing, even if it's just for like two seconds and choosing a different response. That's what doing the work looks like in real time. It looks like letting something be unfinished, letting yourself rest even when rest has not been allowed historically, or not been or felt safe.

  Allowing someone to be disappointed in you. Sitting with discomfort, sitting with anxiety, and not immediately escaping it with scrolling or numbing or avoiding. It also looks like trying again, apologizing. It's okay to get it wrong, right? It looks like taking up space, being too much. I write chapters about both of these things this chapter be too much.

  I tell a story about my husband and I'm getting ready for church one morning. I remember this morning, like it was yesterday, and this was several years ago, but I was wearing this [00:13:00] flowy orange skirt. I had this printed green top. My nails, you know, were super funky colors and I'm getting ready for church, and I look at rj.

  And I say, is this just too much? Like nobody at church dresses like this, okay, they don't look like this. I just feel like I'm way too much. And what RJ said to me, I wrote it down, you know, all of the stories in this book are stories that happened, and at the time, they meant so much to me, or they shifted something in my brain pattern that I wrote them down.

  In what I've called my book journal, which I talked about. I think in episode one I talked about my book journal, and I wrote this story down because RJ looked at me and he's like, you are too much. Like that's you and you need to stop fighting that. Like just be you. And he said it like that, just so off the cuff.

  And I write in the book that RJ gives me permission to be me. He gives me permission to be too much. And that's what doing the work looks like. Okay. Being too [00:14:00] much, being willing to be seen as a work in progress, not just in completion. I posted something online today on social media today about just trying, just showing up as a beginner, being okay, being seen as a beginner.

  All of that is healing work. And most importantly, doing all of this imperfectly over and over and over and over again. Okay. It's just small shifts, lifelong work of healing. I'm getting ahead of myself, but that's where the book's going. for today, maybe you're reflecting on some of your own patterns right now.

  Maybe you're reading the book, maybe you finished the book. I don't know where you're at as you're listening to this. But what does healing look like for you beyond just feeling less anxious? I encourage you to write that. I encourage you to journal that. Get a vision in your head for that. What does healing look like for me beyond just feeling less anxious?

  Where am I trying to control instead of ground instead of coming back to center? The knowing, what am I trying to control in my life right now? And [00:15:00] what would it look like to interrupt a pattern? What would that look like for me to interrupt a pattern, an anxious pattern? I want you to ask yourself those questions today as you're listening, and especially if you're reading the book as we wrap up.

  I wanna leave you with this. You don't have to rush. Breaking the cycle. You don't have to get it perfect. You don't have to prove to yourself or to anyone else that you're healing. I say this a lot in therapy, but healing isn't performative. I think especially because of social media. A lot of our world today is very performative.

  I think about, and I follow a lot of younger people, and it's like when I was in college, when I was a young adult going through. A lot of traumatic things in my life. In my early twenties, thank God I did not have social media at the time, right? Because these days these young folks have so much pressure on them to post everything, to make everything look so beautiful.

  Everything is so performative now with social media, but healing, your healing journey is not performative. It's not always linear. It's not always [00:16:00] pretty. Actually, most of the time it's not pretty at all, but it is relational. And it's very important to think about the way that you're speaking to yourself when you're struggling, the way that you ground after you've reacted a way that you don't wanna react.

  And it's the way that you allow yourself just to be human throughout the healing If you're someone who's doing this work, you're noticing patterns, you're asking questions, you're reading the book, you're digging in. Just know that you're already interrupting the cycle. Okay? Even if it doesn't feel like it yet, you are.

  The healing work is already already taking place, and I hope that some of the stories in this section, breaking the si cycle, oh my gosh, there's so many good ones. Um, doing hard things, character building. One of my favorite chapters in the book, mermaid Glitter. Classic. I think when my stepdaughter Avery, she was one of the early, got one of the early copies of the book and she's looking at the table of contents and she's like, you have a chapter called Mermaid glitter.

  She thought that was fun. So these are some really [00:17:00] good stories and good chapters. But guys, we are two weeks out from this book coming into the world. We're two weeks out. I can't even believe that. What we talked about today is the heart of this book. Not just understanding anxiety, which is great, but learning how to relate to yourself differently within it and learning how to break that cycle in part four, which we will explore, unpack in our next episode, is creating a new emotional legacy.

  How do we just flip the script forever, right? But if this episode resonated with you. I'd love for you to keep listening to continue the conversation. You can either listen to the earlier episodes in the miniseries if you haven't already. You can still pre-order the book from my website, nicole axton.com.

  If you're local. I would love to see you in person at the launch event on April 21st, seven to 9:00 PM in Roswell, Georgia. The information for all of this can be found on my website, but more than anything, I [00:18:00] hope this episode today gives you some permission to go at this healing journey slowly, to stay in the work, to trust that change is happening, even in the smallest moments.

  And truly, thank you for supporting this work. Whether you're listening to this episode, you've bought the book, you're sharing the book, it means. So much to me, and I'll share this last story before we wrap up. I took my girls to the farmer's market this weekend. We love the farmer's market and I took a few signed book copies with me.

  I haven't shared this story anywhere yet. You're hearing it here first I was praying, I was thinking God. I know you're gonna reveal to me in some way who needs this book today. And I honestly thought it was gonna be like a mother daughter pair or I thought somebody's gonna be wearing like purple or like have some mental health swag on and like it was just gonna be become clear to me.

  I need to give these signed books away. So I brought a few copies. We are at the farmer's market for a while. And [00:19:00] literally nothing. Nothing is coming to me at all. And we're leaving and I'm praying as we're exiting surely they're here. You put it on my heart to bring these books.

  Still nothing like apps. I was getting nothing. Okay? I'm passing like dozens and dozens of people. I have my girls with me. I get up to the parking deck and I'm thinking. Okay. I'm just not supposed to give these books out today and I'll be darn. This young super cute gal comes up to me, she's with her mom.

  She was so sweet. She's like, I really don't mean to be a stalker. I remember she said that. ' cause it was so funny. If you follow me on social, you know, I ran into. Connor Tomlinson's mom and sister from Love on the Spectrum. One of my favorite Netflix shows a few weeks ago, and that was, it was me. That was so me.

  I was like, I promise I'm not a stalker. I have to say hi. I love the show. But anyway, this girl, this sweet girl, she comes up to me and says the same thing, and she's like, are you Nicole Axton? I'm like, yes. And her and her mom are like, oh my gosh, we follow you, blah, blah, blah. Well, [00:20:00] immediately we had this wonderful conversation, but I'm like, Hey, I've been praying about who I'm supposed to give these books to and I wanna give you guys some signed books.

  And they were just overjoyed and thrilled, and it was the most sweet, genuine, uplifting conversation for me. What an encouragement, you know, that I just, I know that this book is supposed to land in the right hands. I've said that the entire process of writing, of publishing, of editing, of launching, and to know that we're two weeks away, I don't think my brain is fully comprehending it yet.

  I think it's gonna take me actually a while to process this. seeing you. who have pre-ordered this book, seeing you send me text messages and dms of you reading the book with your kids and reading the book with your parents, I really can't quite wrap my head around around it. All I can say is thank you and I really hope we can celebrate together in two weeks in Roswell.

  Celebrate this book Coming to be as I was about to record this episode. Jenny, who's gonna be interviewing me [00:21:00] that evening, sent me all of the interview questions to start prepping, and it's gonna be a fantastic evening, a fantastic conversation around this book, and I'm looking forward to meeting all of you and celebrating Invisible Inheritance.

  Thanks for being here. I'll see you next episode.

• Want to Go Deeper?

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