The Parts You Hide May Hold the Key to Your Healing

Welcome back to another episode of the Clear the Screen podcast. I am Melissa Deally

and I am Billy Admi, and this is where anxiety ends and abundance begins. We are super excited to have our guest today, Doctor Maria Elena Lukedis. Did I say that right? Yeah, Hi, welcome.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Thanks for having me.

Well, we're very excited to have you here as a guest on the show, and I would love to introduce you to the audience. Dr. Maria Elena is a clinical psychologist, meditation teacher, and one of the early practitioners working at the forefront of psychedelic assisted therapy in Australia. Based in Sydney, she has spent nearly three decades in psychology, building a career that spans community mental health, adoption services, early psychosis intervention, private practice, and now one of the most closely watched emerging areas in mental health care. Her interest in suffering was never purely academic; it began early, shaped by difficult home life, and I'm going to stop reading here, Dr. Maria Elena, because I would actually love to ask you to just share that story in your own words that took you from that difficult childhood into the work that you do now.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: So, I think like many people who are interested or seekers of truth or spirituality, you know, philosophy even definitely psychology being you know a convergence of some of those things could at the root of psychology is trying to understand this human existential crisis that we all face: suffering, the healing of suffering, flourishing, what that means, happiness, and many people interested in that obviously do come from places that you know they they struggle to you find peace. I definitely grew up in a household where there wasn't a lot of peace. There was what we call that constant walking on eggshells. A lot of constant daily anxiety, a lot of constant daily threat. There were lots many arguments. You know, so always in a hyper vigilant state, and you know, always feeling like you know things were on the edge of crisis. So you know that feeling. I think it's for people who've gone through it. They know what I'm talking about. It's almost like you're always at the precipice of a cliff, and maybe you didn't fall today, but it's still very risky. And so there isn't really a sense of ever, you know, going from maybe a crisis moment where everything kind of returns to a baseline safe. There was no baseline safe. The safe was that precipice of the cliff, and so there is a sense of, you know, trauma that that engages. Even though sometimes trauma is heavily focused on specific events, we we should also see trauma as something that is persistent stress as something that creates that same level of trauma, and so I was very high functioning. I was quite lucky to be someone who adapted well to school, performed extremely well, and and I was able to kind of find some real, you know, strength and resilience and safety for me. You know, my defense mechanism was that I could perform well at school, do well, get high grades, and so of course there was this sense that my future would be bright. You know, so the the culture

around us, especially in terms of intelligence, and I think that's going to change now with AI. But it's an interesting kind of anxiety that's creeping into the social wall because we're not going to be able to measure ourselves against each other based on IQ, which is just another genetic gift, really. And and but I had this gift, and so the the sense was that you know I was part of this group that would one day be able to you know get a good job, whatever that meant, you know, meaning probably you know higher pay, and so I was able to feel that I had this future that I had to run towards. So it became quite a perfectionist, high performer, high achiever, very hyper independent, which can be quite common. And so psychology for me was something that I found because I was interested in healing. I was interested in looking at others as well and trying to not just healing for myself, but I think because much of what I had suffered was because I had you know two parents in a household who were out of their depth with adult life, and so both of them as players, and it was really interesting because I could remember really feeling as a child, and you know, no disrespect to my parents because I think as children we often think this, but I kind of looked back and thought they don't have any common sense, and I'm on my. Because I could see from just by being in that in their circle that the way that they made decisions, the way that they emoted their emotional dysregulation seemed to actually be quite unhealthy, and and that also gave me an interest in you know why is it that they're unhealthy?

So my journey is one in which, yeah, by virtue of also maybe being not judgmental in a hostile way, but being able to kind of also in this circle of you know growing up in a difficult family, also observing the dysfunction and as an outsider, constantly being able to see how those dynamics were quite unhealthy, and so there was already this kind of observational skill that I had been developing naturally that lent itself to this huge interest in then psychology, and also my love of novels as well was about understanding characters, the themes, what things mean, and so I'm a meaning junkie in some ways. I've always been super interested in this sense of ontological truth, ontological kind of experiencing, meaning making, and also I think it's also the the same well from which my spirituality and my spiritual beliefs spring as well.

I love you know how you've shared that journey and the awareness that you had along the way as such a young child that came out of necessity for your own survival mechanism and then into thriving, and the fact that you could see that you had a future that you could run towards, even if what you were living in in the moment you already knew wasn't ideal and was unhealthy, etc. And also, you know, you recognizing that your parents were where they were at, and no disrespect to them, and they were doing the best they could with the resources they had, and they were just not as well resourced to be the parents that you truly needed them to be, and from that place you found your way into healing yourself, and then taking that work into healing others. And the interest in psychology was what that was drawing you into healing yourself, and so when you first got into it, did you also recognize that that this was how you could heal yourself, or was it just more that interest in the topic in general and the knowledge and wanting that information?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: The psychology is a study of humans, and I was human, and it wasn't about healing myself as a project. and And I think you know something that I really want your listeners to maybe take on board is that there is no perfecting the self. It's not a project that begins and ends. It's an act of love. And so healing the self and how long did you heal yourself is almost like, like you know, how long do you love your child for? I mean, it's not a question we ask. We don't have a child and say, "So how many days do I need to love this child in order for me to be finished? It's right, you know, and so absolutely, healing is an act of love and an act of service. And when we truly love someone else, we're never tired of getting to know them. We're never tired of hearing from them and listening to them, and you know, finding out about them and watching their evolution and helping them through the ups and downs of their journey. And if we loved ourselves with that same love, yes, it would be a very similar experience. So, of course, the things I was reading about in psychology and studying, and the tools and the skills and the theories were things, of course, that naturally I would do as well. In the same way that you know someone who's reading about abundance or you know creating you know a mindset shift and how helpful that can be is going to see opportunities within their own self-talk, where they can insert new paradigms and try things out and experiment and try things on for themselves and see how things go. So absolutely, I that journey. And still, if if you see my summer reading list, it's not quite summer yet. I'm in Australia and it's not quite summer, but my summer reading list, people like, oh, you know, did you get some books for the holidays? I said yes, and they're all nonfiction, some type of spirituality, psychology, you know, book because I'm that's that's my passion. I love I love learning about about things like

that.

I love that, Doctor Maria Lena, because I know once I started getting into this rabbit hole, it's like the more you learn, the more you realize you have no idea, right?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Right, and you're thirsty for that.

Exactly, it's like this insatiable curiosity. Like I just want to learn more, and I want to learn more, and and we really don't understand what our capacity is in this beautiful, you know, we. Think we have one mind, but we actually have the three minds, and you know this is a lot what we teach in our academy about you know there's lots of stuff happening underneath you know in our unconscious our you know programming and all that patterning. So you know I want to ask you like I know we have our way of teaching this, but for in in your practice, you know when we see people on the outside holding it all together, right? You know, what's the first thing when someone says like, "How you doing? Oh, I'm great, right? But really, that doesn't mean, or they say, "I'm fine, or you know, "Not bad, except you know, it looks like they're kind of keeping it together on the outside, but really underneath, we know like they're this. I always call it like that internal battle, like the your little the little monkey mind that's constantly being like, "Well, are you good enough? Are you this or all that kind of stuff? So, what do you feel like? What's tending to be happening beneath the surface for for the people that you work with?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Well, I think it's happening for the people I work with and the people that I don't work with on this.

Well, everybody, yes, we know it's it's with everybody for your particular clients in the way that you work,

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: and what I I notice in myself, in others, in my friends, in my clients, because again, it's ubiquitous. Is this sense of shadowing? It's you know we have shadow parts, and I've recently finished a book called No Part Left Behind, because what I often say is that my clients come to me for small acts of suicide, and what I mean by that, and not to you know trigger anyone, is that they come to kill off parts of themselves that they believe are unpalatable for human consumption. You know, when you move into a home, and some taps say unpalatable for human consumption.

Yeah,

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: and so it's kind of I think when I first saw that I'm like, yeah. Sometimes I feel like that about who I am. That in order for me to be accepted, loved, approved of, worthy, safe, safe, you know, I need to become someone who is palatable for human consumption. That as I am, in the way that I am, or that there are certain parts of me that if I allow or run amok and take over, and that deep down the person I am is not good enough, and I see this most actually in in in communities that have spent many decades working on themselves and learning, and you know one spiritual bypass is a really common one, and one of the ones that I think blocks abundance the most is this exiling parts of yourself to use the internal family systems kind of nomenclature in the way that they explain this phenomena. But there are certain aspects of ourselves, whether it is that we have some fears or some negative belief systems, or we have certain personality traits, or we have certain needs. Sometimes they're not even negative things. Actually, you know, they're actually really helpful and things that would assist us to have healthy and fulfilling lives and relationships. But we have some programming from our early experiences that potentially asking or requesting or allowing these needs to be expressed is going to land us in some type of social rejection, some type of exile, and so before that part is able to cause its damage, we kind of you know keep it locked away and hidden, and then you know we often fool ourselves as well. You know, we we get out in the morning. We put our coats on. We put our lipstick on. We take our bag, and we also make sure that you know all of our parts that are going to be seen are the parts that we have carefully curated for the world. But deep down, there is this growing unease that maybe someone gets too close. If there's intimacy, if there's you know closeness, or if it's a short fuse day, that it all falls apart, and

then we have a great deal of shame, shame for being ourselves, shame for being you know true to ourselves. Like these parts come up, and they're embarrassing because someone once a long time ago labeled them as not great. Now, it's interesting when I talk about this to make that clear distinction and discernment between behaviors that we may enact or patterns of defenses that we may enact that aren't healthy and aren't necessarily what we truly want, versus this aspect of just self and selfing, which is our greatest expression of source energy. I think that's some language you girls would understand.

Absolutely, absolutely, and we in our trainings again we help people bring those parts back together as well. And so you know, nine times out of 10, it's outside the awareness. Every once in a while, someone will talk about the part of me that wants this or the part of me that wants that. However, when we go deeper, those parts that have formed are completely outside people's awareness. As you said, they go back to some conversation that happened in those early years of life, and the past. And then we've carried them with us all of this time, and and bringing it back together is such a a beautiful integration technique that we use. And

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: yeah,

often

and

there's tears. There's the emotional release of it because it's so profound to unstick those parts from the nervous system and bring them together, so they're not blockages anymore.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: That's right, and that sense of you know, you know the the no part left behind is that all part welcome here. Yes, that all parts are loved and lovable and working to expand our own compassion and love to no longer judge, and this for people with extreme trauma, can be really difficult because there is so much disgust and anger within the self, and these parts, especially if they're related to really, you know, difficult moments of abuse in life. And I think we can understand that that's a very difficult process for some. It's not just you know liking certain personality traits, but having to integrate into ourselves you know all the parts that we have exiled that remind us potentially or are related to some of the most devastating moments of our life, but it is beautiful work. It is a work of remembering, of bringing back into membership, and of true self love. It's ending the war within.

Yeah, and and we you know we say that every part served a purpose, right? They're defense mechanisms, and so you know, we we need those parts to literally sometimes just survive, right? Especially as children,

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: there's that level of parts work, right? Which is one where you're looking at them as defense mechanisms and behaviors, and behaviors are actually part of us. It's what what what is underneath, like you're saying, is that real part underneath that defense behavior, which is always coming from a place of actual love, and so this is actually really ironic: is that all parts come from love; they are source, you know, imprints, and so we can't actually. There is nothing once we uncover with enough understanding. There is nothing not to like or excuse, or there is no reasoning. No reasoning is needed because there is no fault in that space. And on the level of behaviors, we just look at these things as not actual character. It's not actually part of you that behaviors. It's like if if a fire starts, whether I scream and shout is actually my adrenaline. It's it's not me choosing that. It's not actually an expression of me. It's an instantaneous kind of shock response, knee jerk response. These are behavioral kind of things that I think we need to loosen our attachment to, as as they define us, which is important. Sometimes it's just imprinting from parents or from what we saw early in life. We have these imprints, and you know, people who were you know separated at birth who are identical twins will often say that some of their behaviors are even you know there was a really interesting study. Some of their behaviors are genetic, and one of the studies revealed that the way that they butted their toast was really the same, which was a really interesting. Like they would butter it in a way that all their family members had said was weird. And how is that something that you inherit, right, through genes? And yet here we are, you know. And there's these almost beautiful kind of moments. I've got to say, like one of the things that the psychedelic work in, you know, has really revealed is is something about the nature of

suffering, and the way that I say it's revealing that is that when you know the people who have the best responses to this psychedelic treatment, and it's it in Australia at least it can only be used for people who have had no no outcomes with either medications or traditional therapies, and they're what we call treatment resistant. So these are people with extremely chronic presentations with not much improvement over decades. And for those that have improvements, and seven out of 10 will have an improvement with the psychedelic therapies. have improvements because they talk about feeling much more soul within now, feeling less disintegrated, less angry at themselves, less shame, and in some ways we might say a greater degree of self-love and self-acceptance. So it's revealing that all this time, you know, it's not these, you know, it wasn't the trauma, it wasn't necessarily the events, it's not the genetics, it's potentially how we feel about ourselves, sort of how integrated or disintegrated we are, that predicts our mental health, our. Sense of fulfillment, our sense of you know resilience and strength, and so there's something in this that teaches us that you know what you guys have you know come up with in in your course, but also you know this sense of being disintegrated on the inside, no, not loving the self, not having love completely within us, unconditionally, is something that is causing our distress and our suffering, and that the way out of that suffering might be finding peace within, which means making peace with what we experience, with how we experience what we experience, and to maybe honor that unique way of coming into contact with our reality.

Yeah, another way that we you know describe what you're just talking about is is coming back into alignment with you know your soul's purpose, right? And a lot of the times these these you know unresolved emotions or limiting beliefs that we have that create the this disconnect gets us out of alignment, and I know alignment is kind of like a buzzword out there, but we don't really understand what it means. And for us, we say, "Well, when you align all three minds-your conscious, your unconscious, and your higher self-are all working towards your highest and best path forward, life feels good, right? You wake up feeling good, and there's not this internal chatter. And like for me, I you know because I I have a very similar upbringing to you, where you know I had a lot of trauma in my childhood, and you know I've been through my own quite quite a journey as well. And when you can look back on all of it with gratitude, because you know because that happened, I learned this. Because this happened, I learned that. Because that happened, it changed my course here, and it led me to who I am today, the work that I'm doing, and feeling so fulfilled and on purpose that it's like full gratitude for it. Even though in the moment it felt like trauma, and I, you know, we call that victim island, right? When you're sitting and you're using that as a label, because I was born into this family, I can't do this. Because this happened, I can't do that. Where now, when you're over here in Solution City and you know that, oh my gosh, well if that didn't happen, I wanted to learn the resilience. I wouldn't learn the strength. You know, me being a police officer for 20 years, I learned so much. And at the core of it, I realized it was because I needed power. I felt powerless growing up, right? And now I I didn't feel that anymore. I've released that. You know, one of our modalities, timeline therapy, helps release the release it at the root, and now I'm back to

doing what I love, which is teaching, which I went to school for, and so I love that you know sometimes we have this like strong urge to like fix ourselves, and you know, and that's the programming that oh something's wrong with me, I need to go to the doctor to fix me, right? And I I know you you use this word that it is just it's it's just a remembering, right? Because we we forgot who we are, right? And we created these limiting beliefs because of whatever happened, and then it's just a memory that oh, actually no, I'm not that. I am powerful. I am worthy. I am loved. All these things, and you know. So I wanted to ask you, like, where? What have you noticed about where that approach helps, where like you know we don't actually need to be fixed; we just need to remember, and then how how to actually you can deepen that like without having to get too much into the struggle of it.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Well, I talk about faith.

Yeah,

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: I mean for me that's a leap of faith, and you know we we're probably going to end up in the same destination anyway. We can get there with a lot of suffering, or we like you know in a in a crisis moment. So before you know how it's going to work out, before you're in Solution City, or you can reflect back in hindsight and see how all the pieces fell together, but in the moment, we can't see that. You know, in the moment, in that crossroad where things are falling apart, or it feels like nothing's nothing's working, and you are in suffering, there is a sense of, you know, having that faith that something about this suffering, even if you can't see it, will be okay. That the resources that you need will eventually come to you, or the or the pathway that it's it's you know going to push you into is eventually going to be right for you. It's a question of of having some faith and being able to do that. And with patients or with people I work with that don't quite have a lot of that faith. We reflect back on past moments, so we don't make that faith something that they just have to have faith in. It's like that sense of have you been at a crossroads like this, and you didn't know how you would get away or get ahead, and and what happened, and so we're kind of showing that somehow these crossroads occur all the time, and somehow we keep pushing through. And in those moments, we could go, "It's catastrophizing. It's all going to be horrible, or going, "You know what? I don't know how it's going to turn out, but let me just have faith. And so, you know, the wings of the dove of enlightenment is will and grace, and. Will is that ability to move forward and know what it is that we're supposed to do on a day-to-day basis? It's that chop would carry water, if you know that story, or what I like to, you know, call is doing my job and not God's. You know, knowing, you know, a lot of the time people say, you know, what's the cause of suffering

for a lot of people? I said, for most people, it's that we're really, really busy doing God's job, and we're not spending time doing ours. The dishes are undone; we haven't made our bed in the morning, so we're not focusing on the minutiae of the day-to-day life, which there is enough to keep us busy and centered. And we're focusing on taking care of stuff that we actually can't take care of. How will it work out? How can I make sure I succeed? These are luck things, you know. So willfulness to be able to do what we need to do just for today, and the grace to know that everything else is a gift one way or the other. And grace doesn't mean acceptance or surrender in the way that in English it means that because it comes from the Greek word charis, and chari means to be gifted. So it means that all of these things that happen to us are to have that faith that they are gifts. That this is the path that something within this is for our higher good, and that takes faith.

We love that, and it's totally in alignment what we with what we teach as well. In that everything is happening for us always, and in the moment, it might not feel like it. How at all we can get through that crossroads by asking the questions of ourselves: What am I supposed to learn here? How is this happening for me? You know what's on the other side, and that's the faith that you're talking to. We may not have that answer in the moment. However, to be asking that question just releases us from being over here on Victim Island. Of oh, woe is me. This is happening to me, and I have no responsibility, and there's nothing I can do about it. And so I love your explanation of that, and it's absolutely beautiful. And as you said, it's hard for people to who are in the moment to understand that. You know, if you just say, "Well, just ask how it's happening for you, and then go do that. You know, go learn that, etc. Versus yeah, how they've already come through difficult,

yeah.

So and

just can hold on to that and know they can do it again. Yeah, that's up. That's.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: I mean, it's really that's exactly right because in the moment sometimes it's just too hot, and with a lot of suffering, it can just feel really demoralizing, even, and you know, can feel very uncompassionate to just keep asking. Well, what are you learning? What's supposed to teach you? Because it doesn't feel like a loving lesson yet. That it's almost like that that phase needs to go, and it's like you know, in the past you've been here, and somehow you got through. Maybe this is the same as all of those other times. So having that experiential, not just that blind faith, and then once they move a little bit past that energy, you know, you can see the light start coming on, and they're able to potentially have those questions asked of themselves with that insight. And yes, it's beautiful to move people into a space of faith and to see, you know, and and we see, you know, that's kind of what resilience is, is it? You know, that sense of, yeah, feeling loved and supported, and that there is a guidance out there that you can trust, rely on. It's a beautiful experience of love.

Yeah, I love all of that. And you were mentioning, you know, this is obviously all inner work, right? Nobody else can tell them. It all of it has to come from within, and so you obviously have your own practice. And I don't know how old you were when you started doing your inner work and getting into meditation. However, I would love for you to share a little bit about that and how you got started and the impact that it has had on your life.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: I was a weird kid,

weren't we all? The misfits, right?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: It was like I was weird, so actually spiritually, I was weird as well. Like I would, I always had a sense of talking. Like actually, when I was young, I had a very rich spiritual life. So that inner work started super early, and it was in this ability to have access to wisdom that definitely I shouldn't have been able to access at that age, and that you know what later became kind of more of a clear sense of channeling, and you know so when I was younger, it just felt like some inner knowing, you know, this sense of inner knowing and having a lot of faith in that inner knowing because it was it always turned out to be quite right, you know, even weird things that I might suspect. I'm like, why would I think this person would do this or that, or and then lo and behold, it would happen, right? So there's was you know even in in high school, I'm sure people thought I had cheated, but I would be able to guess the essay topics for my English papers and prepare essays before big exams, and for me, you know, I was like, I dismissed that. I and I thought that's definitely not channeling because I just thought it was logic. Like, you know, if you there's only a certain number of ways they can ask something about something, and then they've only

studied a finite number of subjects during that class that year.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Yeah, there's only a finite, which is probably true, but you know, somewhere I think later on I was like, I, I, I was way too uncannily write the exact guy for that to be a little bit, you know. And it was interesting because I never thought it was channeling back then. I just thought I was an educated guess, and well, and then that might also be true. So let's hold that lightly. So my inner work began super early, and it's still there and constant. And I love it. It's the best work there is. And the more I love myself, meaning you know this space of no part left behind, the more I'm able to see all my parts as being expressions of you know source energy, like you know something that's pure and alive in the world, and you know the same as everybody else's, and and that sense of you know not being worse or better, or you know not having to be any better than anybody else, is also that need that's that's kind of no longer there. I'm able to see myself in an honesty and a rawness that I don't think I could before. I was still too sensitive to criticism because shame was always at the surface. I can be a lot more clearer with myself on the things that I've done wrong, especially as a parent in the places that matter most to me, you know. I think, and I know how honest I can be with myself in a non, you know, deprecating way that I can have what I call empathic guilt, not shame. And empathic guilt is this ability to, when you have hurt someone or when you've acted in a way that isn't, you know, in the best interest of someone else, or and it doesn't have to mean because I was bad, but of course, you know, I have the best of intentions and things are tough and all of that. But I did wrongly, and being able to take on in honesty to be able to see that pain that caused someone else, and to appropriately have a sense of feeling deeply saddened by those actions, without it being shame-inducing, it's a beautiful and important space because from

shame we can't change, because shame forces us into shadowing, so we flicker between. Oh, I'm so ashamed, but we want to shadow that part, and it comes out and controls us even more. And so, this ability to actually work with these aspects of me, because no one's going to get in trouble within me. I'm not going to exile any part, and so we can actually work with those parts that might sometimes have a lot of fear or a lot of you know stress or anger or in the moments get overwhelmed without shame, without without that type of restriction and prohibition that forces them into the underworld where they're going to, you know, create quite a large underworld kind of, you know, enterprise like the gangsters. You know, they're going to bootleg with those same behaviors and sell them on the side, and you're not going to know what's going on. So it's definitely been something that I feel is a lifelong journey, and started quite young. I love all of that, and just the journey that you've been on, and the awareness that you have, and the love that you have for yourself. And as you share this, you know the listeners knowing that all of this is possible for them as well, and it

all starts with the inner work, and so I would love for you to be able to share, Dr. Maria Elena. If listeners want to know how can they work with you, how do they get hold of you, and share, you know, whatever you would like in terms of socials and offerings, etc.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Yes, so I am on Instagram. I've only you know just kind of started that that journey. It's Dr. Maria Eleanor underscore Lakidis, and I'm sure you'll have it in the show notes. And also, people really want to get to know more about my practices and the way that I work. I've got a book that I've written, No Part Left Behind. Ending the war within, and that should be available around October or November of this year. And if people jump onto my website and join our mailing list, they will get the first opportunities to, you know, grab that book. But also on there, we also have information around upcoming courses, especially around you know mindfulness and meditation and spirituality, which encompass some of these aspects that we've been talking about. So that's the best way to find out more about me: my website or my socials.

Beautiful, thank you, and we'll make sure we have that book information in the show notes as well.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: I really want to thank both of you for your time and also the work you're doing in the world and and this academy that you've you've built it's really really necessary and I really want to thank you for the work you both are doing.

Thank you, Dr. Maria Lina. Yeah, as I love that you know, there's so many of us now, and that's what I feel like. A lot of us light workers, it took me some time to take that that title on, right? But really, you know, I've loved what you. I just want to go back to what you said about you know we were we're doing weird, right? And now we know why we were weird when we were little because we're not like following. You know, we're like the black sheep. You know, I call it the rainbow sheep, right? Like we're going this way when the rest of the sheep are going that way, and we look weird because people are like, "Why are you going that way? It's because we have this that voice is louder in us saying, "No, go go in this direction. It's not where you're meant to be. And that's what I really love. That you know, we're we're getting to have these kind of conversations with people, and because I mean, I just started my journey three years ago. Even though I've been on a personal development journey, my spiritual journey, really just started as I got into this work, understanding how our mind works, and I love that you know, if you would have you know three years ago said, "Hey, what's the higher self? I would have been like, "What are you talking about? I don't know this stuff, right? And now here we are having these beautiful conversations about really identifying who who we are, what we're here, what we're meant to do how we're meant to make an impact in the world, and I love that you know we're connecting all over the world. I think that's a blessing of the of the pandemic too that we it got us to connect worldwide. Whereas Zoom was never a thing for me. I never had an online presence. I you know podcasting. I mean none of this right. So I think it's just it's such an exciting time. So thank you for the work that you are doing too, and I would love to, you know, collaborate. We we believe in collaboration. That there's, you know, lots of everybody's

got their gifts, and we're all meant to touch the people that we're meant to touch. And so, you know, we can always work together instead of, you know, separately because we're never meant to do this alone. So, thank you again for the work that you're doing as well.

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Well, thank you. It's it's it's a pleasure, and definitely let's collaborate. I would love that. Sure.

Thank you so much, Dr. Maria Elena. And as we wrap this episode, are there any last words of wisdom that you would like to share with the audience today?

Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides: Oh, just to love yourselves as if your life depended on it, because it does. Yeah,

it sure does. I love that.

And so, in a line, I love to ask people: Do you talk to yourself as if you loved yourself? Or the other way of saying that is: If you talk to other people the way you talk to yourself, would you have any friends?

Probably not. Just

bringing that into awareness for people, and they kind of go, "Oh my goodness, you're right. So yes,

loverness is the first piece for sure. Exactly.

Thank you so much, Dr. Marianne. I feel like we could do like a three-hour episode with you, or we don't want to lose the audience. So thank you so much for being here, and thank you to the audience who tunes in each week with your interest in learning about your mind, learning about your own self-growth and development. Thank you for being here. And if this episode resonates with you, and you know someone else that needs to hear it, please share it with them.