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A few key insights from Chapter 1:

1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a standardized approach based on the theory that our thoughts affect and cause our emotions and behaviors. CBT works to identify the thought processes that cause troubled behaviors. However, Dr. Nicole LePera found that her patients were more complex than CBT could account for.

2. Holistic psychology looks at all aspects of a person, including their biological and sociocultural backgrounds. LePera found this extremely enlightening when looking at substance-abuse patients. She recognized their addiction included cycles of emotions, like always avoiding or seeking out certain emotions when dealing with trauma.

3. When LePera opened her own holistic psychology practice, she immediately began to see a pattern in her clients. All of them had underlying physical symptoms along with their own psychological issues. LePera found the connection startling, yet it was deemed “unscientific” by mainstream Western medicine.

4. Since the twentieth century, mainstream Western medicine has believed in genetic determinism, which states that our genes, along with any subsequent health problems, are determined at birth. It seemed extremely fatalistic to LePera, as all she could do for her patients was recommend them to psychiatrists for drug therapy.