Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine my guest today is Dr Becky Kennedy Dr Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist and one of the world's foremost experts in parent child relationships now you may or may not have children if you do today's episode is absolutely for you if you don't well you were once a child perhaps you're even still a child today's episode also will have valuable knowledge and tools that you can apply to your life today Dr Becky Kennedy teaches us an immense number of extremely valuable tools for the workplace for romantic relationships for family relationships of all types not just parent child relationships and of course also for parent child relationships we discuss themes that have not been discussed previously on the hubman Lab podcast topics such as guilt which Dr Becky Kennedy offers a completely unique perspective on one that I've never heard before and that frankly I don't think anyone has heard before in fact she distinguishes between what most people think is guilt and an entirely different set of emotions and offers you very useful practical tools for when you experience guilt and how to work with guilt we also extensively discuss frustration or what she calls frustration tolerance frustration tolerance is an extremely important theme for everybody to understand and apply in their lives because frustration tolerance as Dr Becky Kennedy so aply points out is Central to the learning process of anything at every age if you can understand this concept and you apply some of the very simple rules and tools that Dr Kennedy explains during the podcast I assure you you can learn many more things much more quickly and with much greater satisfaction if not during the process certainly at the end when you master that learning and those are just a few of the themes that we discussed during today's episode again whether or not you have children I assure you that today's episode is going to be immensely beneficial for all of your relationships you will notice during today's episode that our studio backdrop is different you will notice that for once I was not wearing this particular style of shirt the reason for that is that this episode was recorded during the LA fires what was initially called the Palisades fire and then spread to multiple fires throughout LA County so we were not able to access our normal studio so I want to express extreme gratitude to Rich Ro our good friend in the podcasting space who allowed us to use his podcast Studio which is where I'm seated now and where I held the discussion with Dr Becky Kennedy first off our entire team our homes and our studio are fine I can assure you of that but most importantly our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people who have lost their homes lost pets and sadly there have been fatalities during the LA fires so our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and we hope everyone remains safe before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme today's episode does include sponsors and now for my discussion with Dr Becky Kennedy Dr Becky Kennedy welcome back I'm so happy to be here grateful to Rich R for Lending us his Studio under the duress of fires in Los Angeles I'm praying that his home is okay um it's unclear at this moment but in any event let's talk about emotions both theory and practice and if we can place it in the context of parenting that would be great but I'm certain that this has a broader theme that pertains to everybody so I love the theory of emotions or how we would theoretically respond to something but then there's the reality so as a parent let's say um you have a stance in your home and in your family that it's okay to be safe sad like sadness is normal it happens it passes Etc but let's say you're feeling particularly sad about something do you express that and show that in front of your kids because I've also heard that young kids in particular younger than eight or nine perhaps shouldn't be aware that their parents are experiencing say extreme sadness because it can be scary to them where they might feel like their world is destabilizing and then um we ALS hear a lot about kids feeling like they had to parent the parents and then this whole thing becomes pretty complicated so while there's no perfect world where um one knows what to do every single time how do you look at this business of modeling emotions and also encouraging kids to be able to experience and express their emotions yeah and I think everything I'm about to share applies you know in the workplace right like can of Boss be you know really upset in front of the person they manage management right so it's all the same stuff so I guess zooming out as a start emotions are normal emotions are unstoppable you can't not feel sad just because you have your 5-year-old in the room right and I think the other thing that kind of forms my perspective is it's really hard to not show someone that you're sad like you might think you're doing that well but kids are extra perceptive they are actually built to be more per receptive than we are because their survival depends on adults so they have to always notice is my adult around is my adult okay so they really attune to what's going on for us right and so I think the kind of question is less do I show my emotions to my kid or not and it's more okay if I'm sad my kid is going to notice what do I do then and as a principle one of the things I think about often is information doesn't scare kids as much as the absence of information scares kids so let's say there's let's say there's something really awful I don't know as a parent you're your family member someone died of cancer I don't know there's something really horrible that you just found out right there's wildfires right now let's say you evacuated and you found out your house burned down you're sad your child is going to notice that and you want your child to notice that you don't want your kid to be a teenager and adult who goes around the world unable to pick up on emotional cues from other people that that that's not adaptive and so the patterns we set with our kids when they're young inform their view of the world when they're older and so here I am let's say it's the situation of somebody dying and I'm upset first of all as a parent tell yourself it's not my kid seeing me sad that's going to destabilize them it's seeing me sad and me making up a bogus story or denying it because then my kid goes pretty sure my mom was upset oh she's not oh she's pretending like nothing happened oh she looks sad but she's saying she's not sad that is really upsetting it would be like hearing your boss say oh yeah 20% layoffs what are we doing I don't know oh hi everything's great how are you like what is happening scary what you'd want is your boss say you just heard something you were right to hear that we are about to go through a really tough time I'm stressed about it that's why I yelled you might be stressed here's what I know this is going to be hard and we're going to get through it together now all of a sudden that emotional experience has a container it has a story humans need Stories We like stories and so often we think it's the emotions that dis regulate a kid it's the lack of a story to explain it so let's say this really did happen people always say to me okay but Dr Becky like my kid is four I'm going to say that their aunt died they don't even know cancer right we don't have a better alternative I can't even tell you how many parents I've seen whose kids have all of these issues because of the madeup stories I just said she went to sleep for a while 6 months later my kid has a lot of trouble sleeping through the night yeah they haven't seen their aunt who went to sleep one time you know creates a huge issue no matter what bogus story you make up kids can handle the truth and they can handle the truth when it's told to them from a loving trusted adult it's kind of like me and you someone can tell us a hard truth but it's from someone you feel safe with and that you feel like also believes in you and says it honestly it might be hard but it doesn't feel awful so it's about saying to your kid you saw me crying one of my favorite kind of sentences to say to kids around this cuz I think it really builds their confidence it's just you were right to notice that I was crying and I'm feeling sad and look you saw that I'm going to tell you why making this up a Aunt Sally died do you know what dying means dying is when someone's body stops working then I'd pause right this one to be a monologue I'll see how my kid responds I might add I'm not dying kids actually really need to hear that in hard times I'm not dying no one else is dying I'm safe and you know what I'm sad and I'm still your strong mom who can take care of you that sets the stage for such resilience and is kind of the opposite of everything's fine my kid keeps seeing me crying they keep hearing words they're not used to hearing die cancer Aunt Sally funeral whatever it is that situation is what makes kids feel really really uncomfortable and unsafe so it's the absence of information that causes the harm yeah and it's the lack of coherence between what they're observing and feeling and kind of this like open loop um if I kind of place it in neuroscienc terms I feel like the brain does think in the terms of in terms of stories stories have a beginning middle and an end and they kind of want to know where where they are in that story that's exactly right and the terms I would use for to match your terms are um coherent narrative what is therapy why does therapy help people it's interesting therapy doesn't change what happened to you therapy doesn't change your past therapy does not take away the pain but the pain was never the thing that really got in our way it was the pain plus a lack of a coherent narrative and support and so early on when kids have Painful experiences from witnessing you or something else giving them a coherent narrative is what they need and without that the way I think about it is they have what I call unformulated experience it's just affect an experience that kind of free floats in their body unformulated that tends to later show up as triggers right and kind of other things in adulthood and so yeah that's what we want to try to avoid when we can I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors wealthfront I've been using wealthfront for for my savings and my investing for nearly a decade and I absolutely love it every 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offer with a 100 day risk-free trial free shipping and free returns you can experience this game-changing cookware with zero risk I can't help but put this Neuroscience lens on this cuz I find it so interesting that what you're basically saying if I understand correctly is that until we can place things into a story which is really a sense of beginning middle and end a sense of time it just reverberates in US I mean I think I can't help myself you know we we've I don't want to give the impression we've got fires burning all around us in terms of this building but with some distance between us and the fires that's actually true and I think one of the things that's so uh destabilizing for kids and adults in this this kind of circumstance is that we don't know how this is going to work out we just don't and of course none of us have a crystal ball uh we can't peer into the future yeah but it's the not knowing that you know really extends our brain resources and I can imagine that for a kid seeing their parent upset and then hearing well no I'm okay I'm okay um would create this kind of open loop where then the kid has to worry about it like like when will this come to an end um one question about expressing sadness in front of a a child and if let's say somebody expresses why they're sad is it okay to AC to accept um consolation from the kid because we hear so much that you know we shouldn't have to parent um as children we shouldn't have to parent our parents and this is a big theme especially on social media nowadays like were were you the parent to your parent you know were you the one that took out the trash when someone else should have done it and therefore you took on more responsibilities I don't want kids to think they shouldn't take out the trash but you know what I mean or but if you're calling a parent about a lost job if you're the parent the kid rather that is sort of goet between the parents is sort of acting as therapist we we hear about this a lot a lot and I think a lot of people peer into their past and and say yeah I I did I grew up way too fast yeah so on the other hand I think we would all agree that being a empathic person um teaching our kids that if somebody's crying you walk over to that person perhaps and just say you know do you want me to sit with you or maybe do nothing at all maybe offer a solution maybe not but at least you know provide some sort of support that seems healthy but the basic question is should parents accept consolation from children when the parent is sad or experiencing some other negative emotion I think this is a great question there's a couple things that are coming to mind so first of all all of this is a matter of extent and patterning yes we do not want our kids to feel like it is their job to take care of our emotions it's not a good situation and I think the difference here actually comes down to what the true definition of empathy is to me empathy is noticing someone's feelings and caring about them it's not taking care of them that's a big difference so let's say I'm crying and my kid comes over and this whole situation maybe somebody died and like oh my goodness mom can I give you a hug and do you want me to get you a cup of water okay I just want parents know you don't say no no I do not want you to be a parentified child like like that is so that is so kind yes that would feel great okay that's totally fine I think the line is and every parent just knows this forsel where it might get to oh you know what I love that you're noticing I'm sad and I love that you care about that and I also want to let you know those are my feelings not yours and I am really able to take care of them myself with whoever is a friend um and you're still really allowed to be a kid who can go play who can go have fun who can even not listen to me once in a while when I say it's bath time that's actually your job so let's go do our jobs well and to me that comes down to what empathy is the delineation of like what is a parents job and what is a kids job um but also I think all of this can get misrepresented in this in social media and I don't want parents to think that they always have to chastise their kid for acting in a caring way yeah I feel like kids are as you said before kids are so perceptive about what their parents are experiencing and they'll create or move towards all sorts of um emotional gymnastics in order to work with that years ago I saw I think it was a YouTube video with Jim Carrey who basically revealed that he became funny as a way to make his sick mom laugh that he grew up with a very sick mom which is chronically ill and so he would like throw himself down the stairs and try and make her laugh or do you know he was an incredible like world class physical comic um among other aspects of of Comedy but that his whole career was born out of this childhood tendency to notice that his mom was really hurting and try and basically make her laugh make her feel something good and it you know now I'm thinking about this because it's just incredible the way that kids can pick up on something and then and try and find a solution to it yeah you know I could imagine that for kids who have a sick parent could be a mental um challenges or physical challenges that they've got to notice yes and um in the case of Jim Carrey one could argue whether or not it was adaptive or not adaptive he had this you know meteoric career but um eventually just left it decided that wasn't what what he wanted to do um but leaving that extreme example aside let's say a parent is sick with the flu or is grieving the loss of you know God forbid a spouse or um or or something really major yeah uh at what point does the parent need to say listen I'm really hurting this is bad and I can handle it when that might not actually be true so the question is you know uh how how much information to give kids yeah because you don't want to lie to them on the other hand you don't want them to feel the burden of of needing to worry about a circumstance and I'm framing this in the context of sick parent but I'm also raising this thing of um Financial worries a close friend um who told me that growing up their parent was like constantly dealing with you know moving from one job to the next it was like this issue of whether or not we're going to have enough resources to get through the next year was a constant question and this person is now in their mid-30s and you you can tell it still haunts them and it's completely shaped their relationship to work and finances yeah yeah I mean I think we can we can think about this compared to what would I want from my boss I have a boss who's I don't know going through a really hard time or having a really hard time at home and I kind of notice it I'd probably want my boss to level with me and say kind of again you're right to notice I'm going through a hard time but at what point would it feel like o am I safe in this organization right I I I I think we probably all have a point there and I think it's the same thing with kids kids really do need to feel like they have sturdy parents again I always go back to Pilots because I think airplane examples are so powerful because there's very few times in adulthood that we actually feel like our safety is truly dependent on another adult like 100% when you're a passenger in an airplane you are 100% dependent so it's kind of the closest Dynamic and you can imagine what it would be like if the was saying going through a really hard time who wants to come in and give me you know I don't know you know tell me a nice story like oh my goodness like I okay you're going through a hard time but this is really not feeling great right um and what that means and which is you know kind of even a larger point is if you're a pilot you need to make sure you're really doing a lot of self-care more than the average person because of this outsized responsibility you have this is what I think about parenting and it's why from you know bigger theme Here is this is what gets me out of bed you know every morning so motivated is not just to help parents understand Tantrums or emotions or you know the latest struggle in their house although I actually love that it's to say hold on like we've been really sold like an awful story about what it really means to be a parent and how parenting really first and foremost is a journey of self-care how can I be the sturdiest person possible who do I need in my life when things go poorly so so I don't lean on my young children and give them a responsibility that is not theirs you know I I was just saying to someone the other day that when you have kids all of the unhealed parts of your childhood come right before your eyes they are just triggered over and over and over with your own children like you know oh my kid's whining I can't deal with that oh well whining is probably trickling because it's kind of Representative of helplessness what was it like in my family if I kind of felt helpless was that allowed did I grow up in a you know if you don't stop crying I'll give you something to cry about family okay if I don't resolve that I'm going to act that all out on my children and pass that along so all of kind of these situations where parents are feeling all these different emotions from a trigger from something in their life I I think it goes to what I always tell parents you know you have a first and foremost job of self-care and taking care of yourself that doesn't mean traveling to Europe for the year and leaving your kids alone it means what is going on inside you what skills do you need what networks of support do you need what do you have around you to help you on the hardest journey of your life and the most rewarding one of being a parent so that you don't have to say to your kids you know oh you know can you kind of take care of me Paul kti who came on this podcast to do a a series about mental health not just mental challenges but also mental health which is an interesting Concept in its own right um has been quoted as saying that you know that if you were to list out the hundred most important things for romantic relationships it would be self-care and communication repeated 50 times and I'm thinking about that now because sounds like a pretty good model for pretty much every relationship yes self-care communication and I must say the first time I heard him say that it wasn't on uh my podcast it was on a different podcast sort of surprised I thought self-care first but the way you're framing it um seems to me that if self-care comes first or at least very high on the list of what parents should do it frees up the kids to live and experience life with a lot more ease yeah lot more a lot more peace yeah and to basically unburden them of about 50,000 jobs that's exactly right and I think self-care has has gotten you know misrepresented it doesn't mean getting a manicure every week it could if that does it for you but when I think about self-care and I really think about the work we do with parents at good inside we always say good inside and like our app it's not parenting it's for parents it's for the Journey of what it means to be a parent it's for your own stuff it's for your triggers it's for finally learning how to set boundaries it's about finally learning that it's okay to get your needs met even when they inconvenience others it's learning that your Rel relationships are strong enough that they can get through hard moments where people are upset with you right it's about finally saying to if you need to your mother-in-law we can't have any visitors on Saturday and the reason I'm finally able to do that is because I understand my self value and all this stuff this has nothing to do with the fact that your kid isn't sleeping at night but that is the foundation for intervening in the way you're proud of when your kid is waking you up at 2 in the morning right so that is the self-care it's really like a not just self-care it's self- establishment it's self-growth really I don't know the psychology literature or clinical literature around this but I'm thinking about um speed of emotional shifts in my own experience of Life U I've known moody people um and I've known not as moody people I Define Moody as people that whose moods fluctuate quickly and sometimes spontaneously but this but this idea that um some people are like steady as a rock is a is a great concept but we also know that we need to feel our emotions Express them to some extent and yet there are people where uh if we were to plot this it would look like a high frequency wave where some people are really upset then they're feeling better again they're upset then they're feeling better again I'm not talking about extreme pathology here I'm talking about um you know someone cuts them off in traffic and they're pissed but then they're fine um they're very very happy about something they see so it doesn't always have to be negative but then they're kind of like flat AFF effect and then they're into you know something negative I think that experience of emotions is so far and away different from the experience of emotions um emitted from somebody who you can kind of see the emotion coming it's like a slow swell it's like a it's like a expansion and then a contraction again that you you have time and I feel like I keep coming back to this theme of time perception but anytime we have time or we hear about like in the all the Buddhist Traditions like space like you're trying to create mental space and you know this gap between stimulus and response it all sounds great but with some people you have to really be on your toes or perhaps you disengage and so I've never heard a satisfying answer to this probably because I've never asked it out loud if you're a kid or if you're a parent and somebody is experiencing something let's say they're really angry or really happy you can imagine riding that wave in with them you could also Imagine sitting back from it and some of this is probably what we call temperament but maybe you could talk about this a little bit um in the context of having one or both parents that's kind of a like a high frequency shifts between emotions versus kind of a slow expansion and and um and then settling of emotions because I feel like those are two completely different experiences of Life yeah I mean I think you're speaking to how differently we feel emotions I mean you know I think about one of my kids who I call a deeply feeling kid right so my image is always she's just more porous to the world and so if you think about someone who's more porous that their pores are literally wider a lot more is going to come in and guess what a lot more is going to come out right and she's a kid who by the way you're in a certain area in New York City she's like I can't be here the smell for me I'm wired differently I was like I literally don't smell anything different now does that mean she's wrong no I I actually bet knowing her she smells things and then she lets me know how awful it is and she can't stand on that corner and for me in that moment at least cuz we're probably all volatile in different ways I look steady as a rock right um I have another kid who yeah is pretty steady until he feels like his authority and power is threatened and then you better watch out you know and so in one moment someone might see him as oh wow that kid's really volatile but in probably 90% of other moments he's kind of cool as a cucumber so I also think it's important to categorize kids not as like always one way or another but we all feel emotions differently none of them is wrong or right to me the goal is to not be locked into any one thing that to me rigidity is always the enemy that that's what holds us back in adulthood if we're always one way I can never handle someone cutting me off in traffic because the emotion takes me over I have road rage yeah that's not good that's a very rigid limited way of living life but it's probably also limiting to say I've never really gotten riled up about anything forget road rage but it's kind of amazing to get riled up once in a while and to feel really passionately about something and to feel something enough that you want to go do something about it right so there's no morality on it I think what's tricky I can even say as a parent of three kids is each of my kids I always kind of imagine this if I have all these different parts of me they each need a different part of me to kind of lead like they almost need different lead parents right so my kid who is my deeply feeling kid I know what's so important is that I believe her experience and I better be ready with certain boundaries because she feels things so intensely especially when she was younger I have to step in more often there's more difficult Behavior right my kid who's really really steady I try to sometimes even though it's convenient CU he's so easy you know there's definitely a lot going on in there and sometimes I wonder does he almost feel like all the emotional space is taken up by his siblings and the only thing left for him is kind of steady as a rock and that can lead to a rigidity later in life right so I think these are like Moving Systems so much of how we experience emotions growing up is also dictated by the system and kind of the roles our siblings play um and so I don't know if that kind of gives you enough of an answer um but that's very that's informative yeah I think the thing I really want parents to know is I think we place a lot of morality on it and if we're honest with ourselves we're probably just comparing our kid to how we do things so if you're someone who's pretty steady you're like my kid is crazy they're dramatic right if you're someone who's a little more out there you're not as bothered by that kid and then you have another kid you're like that kid's kind of boring right because they're so flat and so I mean I think this is true in couples too whenever we're fighting we're probably just saying why can't you be more like me when we're triggered by our kid we're like why can't you be more like me right that's probably what are always saying to each other going back to communication but if you take a little different perspective of hold on a second there's no wrong or right way to feel emotions some behaviors are not allowed but all the emotions have information and what might my kid need right now instead of oh my goodness is my kid messed up or why is my kid not just a little bit more like me how useful is it to talk to kids about emotions when they're not happening I mean to me this is something like I I always just say I always phrase it as emotion talk right just knowing that emotions live within you knowing that there's names for them that they're normal that they make sense to me it's like the ultimate leg up in life it's like it gives your kids such resilience because we we can't beat our emotions I feel like we've been trying that for Generations like if I just only didn't feel so angry or so jealous are so sad our emotions are so Primal in our body and I I really do believe emotions they're information that's what they are why would we ever want to not get the information our body is giving us and sometimes it's almost dramatic what happens in an amazing way like so many people I think about so many times of people in a room for therapy they start crying I'm so sorry you're feeling something so intensely that your body is producing water from your your eyes to get your attention like that's that must be really important information why are we saying sorry and as far as we know a a uniquely uh human thing I could be wrong about this but a colleague in uh of mine at Stanford and psychiatrist um Carl daero talked about this um that humans are the only species that we are aware of that sheds tears for sake of emotion yeah other animals they have lacrimal glands they produce you know water so to speak salty water that comes out of their their eye region but uh not as it relates to emotions at least we don't think so so that's a great example like I even think about a conversation I have had with my kids and I like to just have these moments here and there whenever I talk about good conversations with my kids I think people think I have these 45 minute no they're they're usually 10 seconds I say one thing my kids say can I have a snack now and I think that's a great conversation because I know it gets in there do you know that tears have really important information for us be like what what did you say I'm just thinking so many people think tears are bad tears are kind of amazing it's like our body is trying to stop us and it's like asking us to pay attention to something really powerful I just think it's kind of an amazing thing our body does and my kid goes can I have pretzels oh sure I'll get you pretzels that that to me is a win I just want to tell everyone I love it that is a 10 out of 10 I'm bragging to people about that like I had the best conversation because I know this is seeping in mhm because in the moment my kid is crying you think it's going to be helpful when my seven-year-old is crying tears are amazing they're like f you Mom no one wants to hear that my reflex would be to tell them uh the biology of Tears Nome Soo who was on the podcast told us that tears contain hormones that signal to other people phermones excuse me that literally change the biology of the people around you we can actually smell tears we don't realize we're doing it see here I go so you tell I realize you tell a kid I spent enough time with with kids that if you you tell them that they're like whatever but you know when that's a great conversation around the dinner table and again your kids will roll their eyes that kids roll their eyes about everything I always think rolling their eyes or stop is kind of a kid's way of saying there's a lot coming at me on my own person I just need to push it away a little so that on my own time and under my own control I can take it in and we take ey rolls or whatever it is so personally that then we end up getting into a parish go why are you rolling my eyes and we miss this opportunity if we just say nothing then our kid is going to take in what we just said just walk away let the whole process happen you know it's kind of like if your boss comes in and says something like oh look that project really wasn't as good as it you know could have been and I really need these things done and you're like and then imagine you're rolling your eyes at me if your boss just leaves the room you probably think I didn't do that as well as I could I'm going to go work on it right so I feel like not taking the bait is a very important parenting tool but I think those moments with our kids to talk about emotions and to talk about our own especially when it comes to struggle right I one of the things I think a lot about I try to be intentional with my kids especially when they were younger I just think kids are flooded by their parents' capability and it is so hard to learn in environments where someone's capability is so far beyond your own like I'm not a good cook but if I was really learning to cook I I would want to learn from someone from here or there you know burned some garlic or messed up the broccoli and then was was like okay well I guess I could do this next time I'll be like okay but if I'm learning to cook from someone who is whatever celebrity chef I like that's that person's like way too far from me and I almost feel shame so I think about this with our kids and how this relates to emotions where when your kids are younger especially if you just think about the first 10 minutes of their day they're trying to figure out maybe how to brush their teeth how to go to the bathroom how to turn on the sink how to wash their hands they always put their shirt on the wrong way they can't get on their socks there's so many things and you come out dress perfectly and then they're like I can't get out my socks and you go like this okay one two and kind of in those moments I always think that's I'm just kind of saying to my kid I can do everything easily and they don't know our history they don't know we struggled to put on socks for 5 years too I put on my shirt backward you know until College they don't know that and so I think again in these calm moments you have this opportunity to say something like I cannot finish this crossw word puzzle or like I love New York Times games right and it's so fun with my kids now that they're older but my connections was really hard today I just I really struggled with it and I was like oh I can't do it I can't do it and then I took a deep breath and I tried it a little more and you know maybe I said and I did it or or I Didn't Do It Whatever it is and it gives my kid first of all gives my kid an opportunity to just notice that I struggle too it gives my kid again kind of an arc and a story of oh someone I admire so much every kid admires their parents they've had hard times they still have hard times they work through things they burn garlic they can kind of talk themselves through it um that is such a more powerful kind of lesson in Emotion regulation than teaching your kid kind of directly yeah it also seems that um we're here we're not defining the age of the kids but if one presents themselves as um perfect or close to it in any kind of relationship work romantic parenting Etc um sooner or later you're going to fall from grace because they're either going to be looking for the mistake or the moment you make a mistake it's going to be this fracture in the picture that people had of you and I have to say um and I think some people might get irritated or even um dare I say triggered uh by the language I'm about to use but I feel like the real like ninja move in all this is to acknowledge that there are power dynamics between parent and child but then to try and dissolve the power dynamics and I say this in the context of having run a lab for a long time which is very different than raising small children but you have people who are coming into your laboratory they are they if they're your graduate student or postto they're they're staking their whole career on your ability to teach and mentor and a lot is at stake Nothing is for for certain they might not get a job the papers might not work out that you know and so there's just so much tension around it and um and so as a pi as a principal investigator in a lab I I remember feeling that pressure of like it's got to work out and one of the best things that ever happened to me as a graduate student was that my first paper took forever to get accepted and we almost got in and then it didn't get in and then finally it got in such that every paper after that felt like a breeze because it took so damn long the first time and I got to see that my advisor couldn't like make magic happen and fortunate fortunately that's the way the scientific process is supposed to work and I think about this in in the context of parenting like if you if you're seen as Invincible you know we hear about this like people say I thought my dad was Superman I thought my mom was Superwoman you know and then but you can imagine what how disappointing it must be when they discover anything about a lack of capacity or or a break in emotional stability Etc so how does one present themselves as both um powerful in the positive sense of the word yeah such a such a thorny word but powerful in the positive sense of the word but human and vulnerable to making mistakes yeah in a way that you don't give up the essential let's just call it what it is a power Dynamic with your kids so that the kid then doesn't feel they have to parent you I love this topic because it's it's so interesting right now it's kind of review season at good inside because I also I'm the CEO of a company and to me the things I talk about with parenting and my kids and for other people parenting their kids they are the exact same principles exact as leading a team and so when I think about review season and the way we get feedback and the right and back and forth it it brings us all together and I'll explain so the other day I said to my kids I love resolutions I actually do love resolutions right because I love just the opportunity to say what is one small thing I'm like I value and I'm going to hold myself accountable to do what I said to my kids was I want you to come up with one thing just one thing for now and it has to be something like manageable and real that I could do that would really make me a better mom to you you asked your kids this I asked my kids this I actually asked my kids this relatively frequently it's like a review right um because it's something I do at work all the time and what I say at work is cuz often my d report like nothing I said I just want to tell you something I need one thing from you by the end of the day I need it because like I know I know I can get hot I know I can get a little reactive right um I know I'm always go go go and there probably is a moment that you know I need to pause I I I know I know I have a lot of issues so if you don't tell me one thing I don't trust you as much so here's what happened with my kids at that point it was only two of them it just happened the other day my son says my seven-year-old son sometimes when you're trying to get some work done at home and I want to get your attention for something this is what you do Mom one minute one minute one minute and then you still don't give me he's he's clock I'd rather you tell me 5 minutes and then give me your full attention that's literally I I I was just like that is a really good suggestion and I really needed to hear that I can do that this was a couple days ago okay I have to admit two days ago he was trying to show me something and he just goes you're doing it you're not really giving me your attention and I said you're right thank you change is hard I actually do need about 2 minutes is that okay and then you'll I'll put my computer down cuz I'll sometimes look at him and like kind of look you know and he goes okay it it was kind of it was so so beautiful my daughter said at night she goes it's so interesting when you give people this opportunity how generous they can be with you I think it's been true at working home my goes I know when it's my bedtime at night I always want to do one or two extra things I know I always have to get my water Mom it's just how I am that's what she said and you get this rushing voice and you go come on it's bedtime and that's like the last voice I hear before bed and I really don't like that voice and so can you just know that I always need to do those one or two extra things and not use that voice and again I said you know what I wouldn't want to hear that as the last voice you know and I think at night especially is a little digression one I always feel like I'm in a rush I don't I don't know extra two minutes with my kids like my kids are getting older they're not even in my house for that much longer I just have to remind myself I'm not in a rush like this is the best use of my time so I said and that one I've been really good at and so how do we show our kids that we're fallible one way is actually like asking for feedback especially when you have older kids when you have a teenager this is the number one thing that can change things around you know what I'm thinking about it's hard to be a teen and I'm definitely not a perfect parent of a teen I'm sure you have a long list but for right now can you name one thing that I could do that would make me a better parent to you and I want to follow this through cuz what a lot of teens will do or parents will say my teenager tells me something ridiculous they'll say well you know how you make me charge my phone at 900 or 10:00 p.m. out of the room you could let me sleep with my phone which maybe parent like I'm just not going to do that or they'll say you know what you could do you could give me $1,000 every week for an allowance right and so parents will say my kid doesn't take it seriously this is where like to me one of the most important life skills parenting management friendships it doesn't matter is differentiating someone's words on the surface from their needs or their feelings or their fears whatever it is underneath and not responding to the words but kind of cutting under them let's even same I could said the phone thing what would be so great about having your phone just help me understand it I know in my head I'm never going to do it but we don't realize just cuz we're not going to do something someone asks it doesn't mean we don't owe that person the right to try to understand why they want it right so I might just ask questions it might probably end with look I actually hear what you're saying all of your friends are on Instagram until midnight it sounds like you legitimately do miss out on conversations by the time you get to school you feel out of them like I'm not even joking I feel like if I was your age i' feel like that's like basically the worst thing ever I believe you having your phone after X time is just one of my non-negotiables it's actually just cuz I love you so much that I feel like my job is to protect you I wonder if there is some other way that we can figure that out or my kid says $1,000 I might say what would you do with $1,000 oh you go oh you want to go to more concerts oh your friends all get more allowance tell me more no matter what your kid says to you there's information so I think feedback is one I think repair is another way repair is the most important relationship strategy to get good at and I just hope everyone hears the duality in that and realizes what that means because if you're going to get good at repair you have to mess up the only way to repair is to mess up and so if I'm telling you get good at repair I am telling you you have to accomplish step one which is yelling at your kid you have to and you're going to do it anyway I do it but if you then tell yourself wait I'm getting good at repair Step One is messing up I crushed it amazing I'm half the way there then when you repair which is when you take ownership I'm sorry I yelled just like you I'm managing my emotions emotions are really tricky emotions are really hard and do you know what even though you're going to have a leg up on this compared to most people when they're adults cuz you're learning how to regulate emotions you're still going to be practicing that when you're my age that is my responsibility to work on it's not your fault and I love you so powerful I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor ag1 ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic 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asking for feedback which could quickly lead to a list of all the things that you one does wrong as opposed to a request for how one could do better yeah so I think there's an important distinction there and then it seems that the question that uh the parent or who knows the boss or whatever maybe it's with a romantic partner needs to ask themselves is you what is this request really about yeah like what's underneath it I'm just paraphrasing essentially what you said and what's it really about is it a request for more autonomy for more social connection with other people and then one starts to realize it certainly in this um example that you gave of uh a child asking for more time with their phone later at night is that it actually has nothing to do with your relationship to them it's really about their relationship to their friends yeah could be and the fact that they might feel as if they're missing out yeah and um that leads me to another question which is what if you as the parent partner boss Etc keep your phone close to you until mid midnight and they know that yeah so one of the worst things that I believe anyone can say is you know do as I say not as I do it's just it's just such an a like blatantly arrogant stance of you're supposed to do what I say because I say so but I'm not going to do it because I don't want to um and yet there are times like in parent child relationships or boss employee relationships where you're telling somebody to do something and you yourself are not going to do it or no longer do it or choose not to do it and in reality you don't have to and maybe there's a good reason why you don't or don't have to that's the nature of that's why I use these uh words um power dynamics which which everyone hears and goes oh boy here we go but but it is an issue of power dynamics you have more power than than the kid so what you're doing is you're giving the kid power to express where they want more agency I like the word maybe agency more than power yeah um did you grant your son the uh the right to use his phone later into the evening my son my son not to pry into your personal my son did not ask me that and he knows that our phone rules are non-negotiable I didn't mean to pry into your into your family Dynamics but that if that's a rule you would never give it to them but I think so many times and then we'll get back to Power we shouldn't be afraid to learn more I I I actually just think that's what it is our kid says all my friends get this that's not true why don't you just learn more oh they do tell it's like learning more about what someone says doesn't mean you ever have to change your boundary most of conflict is about a lack of understanding anyway when you learn more you're trying to understand understand your kid understand you're someone wants a raise and you think it's ridiculous you can learn more tell tell tell me what's been going on what have you been doing like learning more about someone's position does not weaken your position and I think that's really really important in any form of leadership now in terms of the power dynamics there is something about the word power that like you know is that weird yeah I mean I think the way I think about it and what we do at good Insight a lot in terms of our leadership and parenting style I don't use the word power but think it's about embodying your Authority parents have authority Pilots have authority bosses have authority because they're the ones kind of who have the job of setting up the whole system for success that's their job right my job isn't to make my kid happy my job is to help create the conditions for my kid to be like a real functioning confident buil that's what I believe right a pilot job is definitely not to keep passengers happy it's to get everyone safely on the ground a boss's job is not to keep everyone happy is to set up the conditions for health and success of the business right now if you know that's your job it's no one else's job but the CEO I mean to some degree all the management but that is their job and so there's a difference where if the CEO believes a job needs to be done a certain way it's not that they have power it's just their role involves having that Authority and if someone else disagrees it's up to them to say you can keep the job or not it's just a diff have different roles so and I actually think owning that very outright it's actually something I recently said at work in a review around something I really wanted and kind of owned like in my role as a CEO like that is under my role to decide this is important and now we have to figure it out let's see I would love some input on how we're going to get this done same thing for a kid one of the lines I said over and over and over to my kid when they younger and I see so many good inside parents tell me that their kids reflect back to them later is my number one job is to keep you safe so what does that mean that kind of relates to power it can mean why am I not letting my kid I don't know jump up and down on our kitchen counter it's not cuz I'm pissed that my kid isn't listening I'm not letting them jump up and down on my kitchen counter where there's a light above their head because my number one job is to keep my kid safe is that power I mean I guess I think it's Authority how would I embody that Authority I would say it looks hard for you to get down I'm about to pick you up and put you on the floor because I have authority right we get to this phone discussion let's say and I really do believe that the phone has to be charged out of the room at a certain time I'm going to understand I'm going to understand I'm going to listen hopefully I'm connected to my kid and they feel respected by Me In A Million Ways and it might lead to me saying look my number one job still is to keep you safe and that really means making decisions that I really believe are good for you shortterm and long term even if you're upset with me this is one of those times and so I love you this might be a point of conflict I know we're going to get through this and that is my role as a parent and it comes from a place of wanting to protect you and and I think when you embody your Authority in that way kids never say thank you and they will roll their eyes and kids always feel loved and protected Ed they really do I hear it from my kids you know and maybe this this is so true sometimes things happen with my kids and I'm like no one's going to even believe this but I was walking with my seven-year-old the other day and I said what does it mean to be a good parent what does it really mean I'm curious really thought he goes means you're kind of strict and I said what do you me strict CU you have certain rules that you think matter and he goes but it also means like you also have to be loving and fun my heart like hurts hearing like myself say this like in a good way hurting like they know I think kids know and maybe he says that because that's what we are but I think kids know and I can't even tell you how many kids I used to work with and teens especially the pain of their P of their parents not embodying their Authority was so clear they knew that they shouldn't be out at a certain time they knew that they were hanging out with kids who were like bad news and their parents had no idea and they felt unanchored like they really really knew not that their parents weren't exerting power that word isn't their parents weren't embodying their appropriate authority to protect their kids I had something come to mind which is not a a phrase that I've ever used before or heard before um but what comes to mind is kind of um statements of stance yes I feel like statements of stance in parent child relationships families workplace romantic relationships Etc are great when they're about actions or about sort of overriding themes like no matter what I'm trying to keep you safe I might not get everything right but like that is like non-negotiable internally and I'm going to try and make it non-negotiable externally like it's a statement that stands about actions like um or you know keeping you healthy and safe is my number one priority th those are facts those are things that one can really say and believe and and you know until the end of time be trying to uh incorporate into one's Behavior but I feel like statements of stance about emotions are very dangerous like um we don't yell in this house um you know uh it's okay to cry right there's always a caveat of course it's okay to cry right um but there are times when crying is less appropriate there's times when um yelling might be appropriate uh there's times when um emotions need to be expressed or not expressed in a particular way because I look I don't think I'm alone in thinking that you know the kid tantruming in the um in a public environment is an embarrassing thing for them for their parent for people around and it's not the end of the world right it's a tantrum for goodness sake right like uh people will survive but I feel like statements of stance about emotions kind of hold us to this standard that we'll never be able to meet but that statements of stance about action are you know until we fail and you know hope we don't yeah um we can say things like you know my job is always to keep you safe I'm always going to try and make the best decision for you and for your sister right for instance but I think that many people I'm not just speaking from my own experience but in talking to friends and um and others that they grew up in homes where like there were these philosophies these like statements of stance and the moment that things didn't match that statement of stance like the whole concept of what parents and children are supposed to be about just kind of started to dissolve and it creates that underlying fear like do they even really know what they're doing yeah or maybe they don't know what they're doing but maybe they're trying so in any case it's um it's just something that maybe we could um yeah talk about for a moment I have some reaction to that I think I mean I kind of think you're talking about values and principles right and so I think there are in my house to be honest it's not like we have some wall of like these are our family values that's I mean some SE yeah that's not on the refrigerator not organized enough to to do that but if I thought about a couple that come to mind like my job is to keep my kids safe by the way safe does not mean they're never in a situation without risk that's not what I mean um you know but in general that's his own form of danger exactly the minimization of risk is also not safe right so but my job is to keep you safe I'm not going to let you do things that you know endanger yourself for others so that's one another principle I think about is um I will always tell you the truth even if it's uncomfortable like you can always count on me for that we call that kind of I call that truth over Comfort right so if my kid says to me how are babies made that that value is useful right um another thing is like all feelings are allowed not all behaviors are okay right stuff like that what about we we don't swear in this house so what I was about to say and then you're on the phone and then you scre up and then the kid goes you swear to me what's very different is these kind of rigidities around Behavior we don't swear swearing is a behavior we don't cry in public Behavior we don't tantrum here that's a behavior behaviors all the time are a manifestation of feelings that overpower skills so saying we don't do certain behaviors it to me it it doesn't even make l I sense well what if I'm in a situation where I have a really intense emotion and don't have the skill to manage it we don't that's the behavior is going to happen and then I feel like a bad person they're very that's very different than values around intention I want to be truthful with my kids even if things are uncomfortable I might fumble around with the words right I might even sometimes lie because I didn't do that value in action but what I can come back to is okay nobody lives their values 100% of the time so I think we're talking about actually something core to what we think about a good inside which is I'm a good person with values who is totally imperfect and sometimes acts in ways I'm not proud of both are true when families have values that are very behavior-based what ends up happening in the kids is they start to equate certain behaviors with morality these are good behaviors that make me loved in my family and these are bad behaviors that kind of make me feel like I'm not the right part of my family and they even make me wonder like am I lovable am I good inside after all right am I worthy that that's not good because whenever we tie Behavior to Identity that's shame and we've tried to motivate kids with shame for for hundreds and hundreds of years and it and it and it does not work and causes a lot of problems I think another one which is interesting especially as my kids get older I said this to my teen recently this is really tricky one of my jobs as always has been to create guidelines and rules with you you know it's always going to be kind of collaborative some because of my authority will be directive that I believe are going to keep you safe and I think this really relates to a phone I want to tell you another part of my job that might sound contradictory but I actually think we just need to hold them both at once another part of my job is to be there for you when you inevitably go against those guidelines and I want you to know that we have rules around what can and cannot be done online and I'll say serly and like if you do kind of become part of a really inappropriate text conversation if there is bullying if you do come across some images online that make you feel really uncomfortable and you're like I shouldn't have seen that like you're not getting in trouble with me I'm not going to throw you a party like I I will be there for you to help you through those moments those things sound contradictory and in our family we know two things can be true and those are both true right to me that that's really important thing for a teenager to know let's talk about guilt and shame yes I've heard some kind of catch phrasy stuff not from you but like oh you know guilt is about the thing you did and shame is a feeling about who we are and you know I while I'm not against those sort of um 1990s early 2000s kind of psychology isms I feel like they're not very useful in the same way that hearing that there's a gap between stimulus and response and if you identify that Gap well then goodness you're going to be the kind of person that can feel feel stressed but not be reactive you're going to be responsive not reactive that's just a bunch of words that doesn't here I'm a biologist so I'll just say doesn't take into account the fact that the biology of stress changes your perception of time and a whole bunch of other things that basically make that gap between stimulus and response much much smaller and I think once people understand that they go oh so like the the kitchen refrigerator magnet or the poster on the wall that says you know like there's a gap between stimulus and response it was supposed to save me but it didn't of course not like we're just in different states of mind at different times so how do you define no pressure here but um but how do you define guilt versus shame right and what about guilt and shame great two of my favorite topics I have a couple different ways of defining things I I I I'm like you to me I I like defining things in ways that are very concrete and very usable that's all and if there's multiple ways of doing that that's great so the way I think about guilt this will probably set us off in a direction about what is not guilt also is guilt is a feeling I have when I act out of alignment with my values and in that way guilt is a really useful feeling real useful because it makes me reflect on wait I didn't act in line with my values I wonder why what would I have had to do differently what got in my way wow I'm so glad I have that information from my body to have this deeply uncomfortable feeling to set in that process right so if I yell at my kid I'm going to feel guilty right I I I think about a time when my kid told me you know I lied to you I did take that eraser from that kid in school and I feel really guilty and I said first all I'm so glad you told me that I'm I'm so glad you're feeling guilty that's the right way to feel now there must have been something so hard about seeing something so shiny and fun that you don't have I totally get that and you're right that's not in your values to take it so that's a useful feeling that feeling is going to help you not do something like that again let's figure out what you can do not just to say sorry this is what parents miss you know what's going to happen another time you're going to see something else pretty cool someone's cubby and you know what most people think I'm going to take that you're going to have the thought again I would too what can you do the next time you have that thought right all of this comes because of guilt useful feeling guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values now Tam meil is one of the most misunderstood feelings because what you hear all the time and you'll hear how much it kind of conflicts with this definition is something like this I haven't seen my friends in years there's finally a dinner but it would require me not to put my kid down to sleep you know and I'm talking to someone I'd say okay well I'm guessing you're not leaving your kid alone yeah my husband or my mom someone who's a totally safe adult but Becky I told my kid and she was clinging to me like no Mommy I needed to be you I need to be you and so I'm not going to dinner do you know what I'm going to say Andrew because I feel so guilty this is right oh someone asked me to be in the PTA meeting and I'm so busy I can't but I can't do it because I feel so guilty okay again I'm just curious is like well it sounds like you really want to go to dinner with your friends she like oh I do all I do as parent these days I literally haven't seen these friends in years they're in town and he said tell me about your friendships that's me you do I value my yes I know that I'm kind of more than just someone who puts down my kid for bed and I love doing that but but this matters too so I said this is really interesting you really value your friendships your life right now feels out of balance and that your friendships that part of your burner of your stove is like really low okay okay and you're not going because you feel guilty I just want to share an idea guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values it seems like going to dinner would be in line with your values and almost it's like yeah that's true so what is this feeling and here's what I think the feeling is I call it not guilt just because I haven't figured out a more sophisticated term but here's what I think is happening a lot of us especially women when we were growing up we learned to notice every everyone's feelings around us and we learned that our value really and our worth really and we were kind of best and good girls when we took care of everyone else's feelings except for our own I think so many young girls especially become expert at what people need of them by becoming distant from what they need for themselves the picture I get in my mind is sort of like having anteni cast in every direction that's right except perhaps at the exclusion of of paying attention to theeni that are inward exactly and we're and we are um you know attentional resources are finite I mean we we just don't have the capacity to right like respond to other people's emotions and feel at the same time to the same degree that we would if we just concentrated on theirs or our emotions that's just a fact of how humans work yeah and kids are are oriented by attachment they have to learn with their families how do I become the most lovable safest version of myself so I have a friend who it's true I remember her even in middle school I can't come my dad's traveling and my mom really needs me to stay home and watch a movie with her right and I I know this mom well it's like oh you don't love me you don't right I mean this was so she became expert at always noticing other people's emotions and not only noticing them taking the emotions from them kind of like taking them into their body and almost metabolizing them for them that's not guilt that is taking someone else's emotions and taking them into your body at the expense of taking care of your own needs and so I have a visual for this because I think it's really powerful where let's say it's the situation where a mom is saying I really want to go out to dinner but I feel so guilty first thing is just powerful to say that is not guilt it is something else and it is real and it is powerful but it is not guilt what is happening I'm on one side of a tennis court like me and you Andrew but let's say it's a tennis court and you're on the other side or even This and like in between instead of Anette it's like a glass table over here I am here in my desire to go out with my friends because I do value my friendships okay over there is you're upset about it and let's say instead you're my daughter like no no don't go no one else can put me to bed that is definitely hard to deal with but that is your daughter's feelings those are not your feelings those are your daughter's feelings and some of us SL a lot of us have developed this tendency where we're on this court and all of a sudden all those feelings from your side somehow go through that wall and they come to your side and you call it guilt it is not guilt and to me one of the most liberating things and this actually relates to empathy as I always say is to give that feeling back to its rightful owner because what that means is if I really give it back now I have a boundary that's my kids's feeling that's not mine and I can now actually empathize people said no I was empathizing I wasn't going out no no no no that's not empathy you weren't going out with your friends because you couldn't handle the distress in your body you just made your Fe daughter's feelings your own you just engaged in someone something almost selfish this has nothing to do with your daughter in those situations that's why we say weird things to our four-year-old like don't you want Mommy to have friends I feel like Four's like why are you asking me that question it's like a pilot being like don't you want me to make an emergency landing like if you need to make an emergency landing don't ask me for permission because once I give it back to my daughter I can do this I can say you really wish I would put you to bed tonight you're right it feels so different when Grandma does it oh it does I'm going out it's okay if you're upset I'll be back and I'll kiss you and I'll see you in the morning and then this next part is so important when you walk out I don't want any person having any illusion that the daughter is going to be like yes you go girl no she is going to scream that's okay going back to the boundary you're allowed to take care of your needs and other people are allowed to be inconvenienced and upset by it it doesn't mean your needs are wrong it doesn't mean their feelings are wrong and it definitely doesn't mean you feel guilty I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors element element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need but nothing you don't that means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium all in the correct ratios but no sugar proper hydration is 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snoring if you'd like to try an eights Sleep mattress cover go to 8sleep.com huberman to save up to $350 off their pod 4 ultra eight sleep currently ships in the USA Canada UK select countries in the EU and Australia again that's eights sleep.com huberman wow I say wow because um I think the lens that you're looking at guilt through and the way you're defining it is so very different than the way it's been discussed ever and I think this is a super super important topic um so I'd like to lathe into it a little bit more in some ways the way that I think many people experience guilt at least according to your definition which um by the way I love um it's when we've act out of alignment with our values um versus feeling pressure like I think about I mean Lord knows I don't have the best reputation as getting uh having a short text uh response latency um it's variable sometimes I'm quick on the draw and other times I'm like oh goodness it'll be days or weeks I mean over the holidays I was spooling through it I would respond to people like a week later and um you know I do my best but but I do often feel um quote unquote guilty about not being as responsive in text to a number of people because I care about them yeah I value them yeah um but I get overwhelmed by text messaging very easily to the point where I have to put my phones out of the room when I work etc so the way I experience a bunch of text messages coming in is as pressure yeah that then I feel guilty I'm not trying to make this about me but no I want to let's go into this I have a lot to say I feel quote unquote guilty but do I really feel but what's interesting is you know I believe in cognitive dissonance and then what I notice is that then my brain tries to bridge that Gap I come up with these like justifications with like well when I text people and they don't respond for like two weeks I don't get upset which is true unless it's in a particular sort of right category of circumstances so how come the way they view this whole dynamic is not the same as the way I view this Dynamic okay maybe this is a more male Centric view as opposed to feeling porous like I feel their they upset but I will say you know In fairness to um all the chromosomes and their Arrangements I do feel bad yeah like it sucks I love these people and they're reaching out to say whatever happy New Year or something and I'm feeling pressure as opposed to feeling yeah how wonderful it is to have people in my life so here here here this is such a beautiful example where I I'd ask myself or I'd ask you to ask yourself okay I already you already named one of your values which is interesting I really value my relationships you said that okay that's one value and I think this is I'm G to ask you this question do you value quick responses all the time from you on text message is that a value of yours from me or to me from you do I value always responding to people on text right away the truth is if I'm really honest yeah I hate um shallow exchange of any kind except maybe a fist bump to somebody you just kind of feel some kinship with on the street and you have that connect and you just give them the fist bump great but I like more in-depth lengthy connection like three-h hour long conversation three hour long conversations or drop a friend came by the other day for um New Year's he was on my list of people that and yes I made a list of people that I want to deep in my friendship with in the in the New Year came by we had a 2hour lunch we chatted and and I feel like it was awesome and worth a million single line text messages and I'm also the kind of person where like I'm good to not see him for a while not because I'm tired of him but because I also have other friends and things to do right so I'm more of a depth not breadth kind of guy this is to me this is such a powerful process and then after this I kind of want to link it back to how I've actually told my kids about why I do go out to dinner with friends right so you're like I value deep relationships I value relationships I value deep relationship but and with I'm if I'm honest with myself responding to someone right away that's actually not my value but again we can hold multiple things at once that doesn't mean I don't care about those people I just laid out all my values what I think is so powerful as a not guilt diffuser is naming this directly to the people so doesn't have to be on text but you're see person X and you know I'm never that good I just want to tell you I I really value our friendship I really value these times we have together something I just also want to get off my chest is going back and forth quickly on text that's not something that's easy for me that I do very often and so you might text me and it might take me a while and I I just wanted to name that to you right now look someone else always has the right to say well that's interesting that doesn't work for me one of my top values with friends is someone who's always getting back and forth to me that's actually great great now we know okay what are we going to do about that that's fine you know where someone stands and the reason I relate this to the situation with going to dinner is I remember early on when my daughter said why do you have to go to dinner with friends or why do you and Dad this was it why do you and Dad go to dinner without us I know the couple you're going out with you both have kids why can't you bring us right and this is where we say we feel guilt but we don't cuz I'm like time out she's feeling this feeling not me and also I don't need her permission or approval that's the real parentified thing we like go to our seven-year-old and we're like don't you want me to have adult conversations again not it's not an atypical response I've heard parents do that like don't you want me to have a social life but you know what it is it is asking your kid to do your job for you again can you imagine a pilot say do you think we should make it an emergency landing it you'd be that's how a kid feels when they're asked that they're like why are you asking me that here's what I said to my daughter in that situation I really did I want to tell you something I love being your mom I I really do it's one of the most important things in my life I also really like being married to dad and I really like the times we have when it's just us and other adults that's really important I remember saying this maybe I was really trying to Double Down we actually we we had that before you guys were here you like what yeah um and so one of the reasons I want to be honest with you why do we go to dinner without you it's not so much we go to dinner without you we think of it as going to dinner with each other and just adults is that something we really enjoy it's really important to us it's a really important part of us and that's why like being really vocal about your values as opposed to looking to your child unconsciously to give you permission to have those values if you want to use power that's a power that's a power move and it's amazing this is true in any time in life the more you can locate someone the more you respect their boundaries I I use that word a lot and know like locate I'm sure you know people in your life like can I locate them you kind of know who they are you know what they value and you respect them right when you can't locate someone you feel very uneasy around them you're kind of like where are you who are you what do you stand for and as you can see with my daughter it was a I wasn't saying something mean I I was saying something true and so I think with the friendships and when you say is this guilty it's like well maybe my step and my action is just actually being honest with this person I'm not very good at responding right away I want to let you know I deeply care about our friendship I'm not very good at responding to kind of small talk over text and I just wanted to let you know that so you didn't misinterpret it like I I wonder what would happen I wonder if people would kind of respond really positively I love it and I I can't help but recall when I was a kid um after dinner my dad would sometimes take a walk by himself now granted he's a physicist and he was he's a theoretical physicist so he's like all his experiments were in his head and he did work on paper too but um so he would take these walks and occasionally I'd see him coming back from these walk and um he'd be smoking a cigar something he doesn't do anymore unfortunately um I'm grateful that he's very real boss he was actually a guest on the podcast recently talked about science and um life Etc and one of the things that I remember thinking and still to this day think and feel is it's kind of awesome how he takes this walk and he looked like so happy with the cigar and his thoughts and he' walked and I wanted to be on those walks with him he was very very busy in fact I wanted a lot more time from him than I got it's kind of interesting cuz now it's often times that I'm the busier one um the table's turn kids um but in all seriousness I didn't think of it as self-care but it was so clear that that was his time yeah that was absolutely his time and I knew when I could and should join for things and when I didn't and so when you say the more you can locate someone the more you respect their values I feel like Bells go off it's like exactly that and there are other examples of my mom Etc but it's kind of interesting when we see somebody adult or child like really in their element of their thing yes it's almost like we love them for it and through it and and it fills us I think in with a with a healthy sense of of safety like they're right there kind of like the pilot flying the plane really well like actually we don't really want to know about the pilot I want to hear the thing at the beginning where about take off I actually don't like it when we're landing and they say we'll be on the ground in just a few moments I'm like we're at 10,000 ft can we make it a little bit longer than that but you get the point which is that I don't want to hear from the pilot I just want the pilot to fly the plane you want the pilot to do their job and again in these you know I think I have so many pilot metaphors around sturdy leadership and I think it really is such a metaphor for how we teach people the skills they need to parent because again no one becomes a pilot overnight it's no one becomes a CEO overnight no one becomes a lawyer overnight or a professional basketball player you know I think we actually lawed CEOs these days who say I don't know how to do leadership as well as I'd want to I'm getting executive coach you all want to work for that person right the amazing athletes in the world get amazing coaches and they go to amazing training camps because they're amazing right and so I just somehow with parenting it's like the last area where people think I should become an amazing parent overnight I shouldn't have to invest in skills or education even people who invest in skills and education for every other area of their life that they probably care about less there's so much shame we've internalize that we should be able to do it naturally and you do become a parent overnight you become a parent over you do I'll remember my graduate adviser had two kids while I was uh working in the lab saying that there were all these books back then about pregnancy and she was like it's wild there are all these things of what you should eat and shouldn't eat and how you should you and your partner and how you should prepare for the birth and all this and then they like and then at the hospital they're like here and you're like uh now granted that was in you know the early 2000 that's still what it is and they're like what do you need and they go you need a car seat to leave the hospital which by the way you definitely need that that's all like just a car seat like how am I supposed to manage this because the thing I want parents to know because again there's just so much shame and maybe we should talk about shame right is um the only thing that comes naturally when it comes to Parenting is how you were parented that comes naturally that lives in your bones that lives in your circuits and and there might be some people who say amazing I have the greatest privilege in the world then what will come naturally is exactly what I value and what I want to do I would say more often people would say some version of definitely not what I want to do or parts I'll take Parts I want to do differently and to me it's kind of like if you were brought up speaking English and you really want to speak Mandarin or you want to speak Mandarin half the time to your kid and someone said are you going to learn Mandarin na naturally I feel like someone say how how does one learn Mandarin naturally you would I don't know you'd probably sign up for you know do a lingo you'd find an app or something or a course and you'd then practice and practice and you'd be able to make progress because you actually learn something new and so I just think big picture like parents are they're so underere equipped and set up to feel and this is I think has to do with shame that when my kids are struggling or when I'm yelling a lot it means something is wrong with me or something is wrong with my kid I feel like these days in almost every area if a CEO is saying I feel like I'm struggling is it my fault or my employees fault they probably say I don't know who there's probably people around who can help me who can teach me why why do I keep yelling right and same thing with almost every other field and to me more than like if there's any Legacy I get to leave in this world it's not even the approach itself even though I think our approach to Parenting is very different um I I just want parents to know like there is no shame in investing in learning and growing um in parenting and to look at that like they probably look at every other area of their life I assure you that your legacy extends uh far beyond that but includes it as well you've had a tremendous impact and continue to I mean it wasn't long ago that um you know the power dynamics of parent child relationships were you know you do what I say and I'm the parent you're the kid and like that kind of thing and I grew up in a different era I'm 49 now and I've been wanting to I'm 49 now so that I can actually say something with with having had some experience when things were truly very different they were just so different yeah was like you took what you got and you worked with it and you know things are so different thanks to um your part um in all of this and one thing I I do want to return to because I realize I took us off um off track with it is this idea of um kids but perhaps adults as well feeling or thinking they feel someone else's feelings taking that on yeah this difference between uh real guilt and gosh it's really hard to come up with a word for it I at one moment I thought well maybe it's faog guilt but no you're not pretending you're actually feeling something um which feels like guilt smells like guilt tastes like guilt someone said codependence I I I don't know that much about that word but something like that what's a um yeah it's a it's a whole landscape exactly it's a whole landscape but you know one practice that I'm familiar with um that I know exists in a a couple of different Realms of let's call it modern psychology uh tools is this idea of um creating a frame separation so like after you come together with somebody say to like do therapy um or something or you've had sort of an emotional um bind or entanglement doesn't have to be negative um that one way that you can uh learn over time to differentiate their needs and wants from your needs and wants is this idea of in your head I know it sounds kind of corny but there's a neuroscientific basis for this at least to my of in your head you say for like if we had just done this like we had some resonance around something maybe an argument okay like Dr Becky and I got into a fight that in order to really be able to move away from that and and see it clearly how much of that was yours how much of that was mine there's this idea that you you tell yourself okay what are five ways in which you and I are clearly distinct entities so you say and I know this folks might chuckle at this but you say like okay I'm a man you're a woman I live in California you Dr Becky lives in New York mhm um you could even make it like first person you say like or third person rather you could say I Andrew hberman I'm wearing you know a black shirt and a black um overshirt and Dr Becky is wearing black and white okay so some people might think like what's the use of that but to me as a neuroscientist whoever came up with that and it wasn't me is nothing short of brilliant because the brain organizes emotions in these broader schemas of physical objects and physical distance and distance in time and that's the way that we can differentiate between ourselves and everything around us and there's a whole discussion to be had about this but so it's something that um I've been playing with a little bit um because I don't claim to be this Ultra empath um or anything but I think uh it's um clear that sometimes we take in our thoughts and feelings about what other people are feeling sometimes accurate sometimes not and it can become very difficult whether or not someone's a one of these um I guess you call it deeply feeling deeply feeling deeply feeling kids um or not I mean anytime you get into an emotional resonance good or bad yeah I think it's uh we're porous we're porous and that's part of what makes humans so beautiful but yeah I found that practice to be very useful even if it's just in my own head like they're over there and I'm over here but not even necessarily pushing off them but thinking like oh like I'm me and you're you and there are a bunch of ways in which we differ in time and space and you and I I think the nervous system comes to understand that as a felt thing as opposed to just a statement like hey like you own your emotions all own mine that's just a statement um is this any of this I've never heard of that but I love that and and it it is in parallel I think with so many of the things I teach parents so even the idea of locating someone to me like my version of people in my life that I know and love even if I don't agree with anything they say that I can locate they're like an egg with a a shell they have a shell there's like a there's a boundary we're really talking about boundaries we all have different levels of porousness to the external world and I think if you know and there's there's pros and cons of both like I really mean this I am not terribly porous to other people's experiences I really have solid boundaries there are definitely moments in my closest relationships because what people will say to me okay like I know these are my feelings and not yours like we're in a close relationship like can you be here a little bit more with me and that is true like that is what I want to do right and sometimes it can be a little distancing right and a little separate people on the other end of that Spectrum if they know I'm very porous I tend to to me one of the ways of also thinking about it I think i gaze in before i gaze out and I think a lot of people gaze out before they gaze in right they spend a lot of time in other people's brains and less time in their own right what do they think of me what do they think right um if that's what's going on for you then the shell to your egg isn't always intact and so there's a spill over it's like whose feelings are whose's whose thoughts are who's I'm spending so much time worried about what that person thinks of me I almost like what am I what do I what do I think right and so the exercise you're naming is actually just a resetting of a boundary right is and things that are absurdly concrete are necessary for the most Primal parts of our brain to actually understand my name is Becky Kennedy to me what I say I don't usually say that I'll say my feet are on the ground when I do a grounding exercise everyone in our community knows this I my hand is always on my heart I think there's some amount of having contact with your body my hand is on my heart sometimes I used to do this with clients especially after an emotional experience going like this name five things in the room is probably another way there's a red clock I'm wearing a white shirt they're very very very basic as a way of kind of coming back into your body two mantras that I find help parents a lot actually make me think about this exercise one is I am the pilot not the turbulence in our kids turbulent moments when they are that turbulence what so easily happens is we merge into that with them and then it's no wonder our kids can't calm down our episodes last forever cuz we're just turbulence and turbulence together right so I'm the pilot not the turbulence also one day I'm going to do a partnership with some some airplane company because I feel like airplanes are just so beautiful because the the pilot gets a cockpit they get a boundary like it's right that's what parents need so that's one and the other one when your kids are upset or after there's an argument some people get very disregulated just knowing someone's upset with them right which is again kind of whose feelings are whose I find one of the most effective mantras and again these sound cheesy it's just I'm safe this isn't an emergency I can cope with this because our body if you tend to be porous you get activated just by other people being activated even though it wasn't your feeling in the first place and your body actually needs the reminder that you're safe to not kind of add add to that turbulence I love it can we talk about projection for a second one of the things that drives me insane people close to me know this because of this issue of porousness versus non-porous is when people tell me how I feel and so I've talked to a few very qualified psychiatrists about this and it's called projection like you sometimes it's if in Anger it's aacu ative projection like you think I'm crazy someone will say like you think I'm crazy or um you're upset with me or something like that I feel like projection is um one of the kind of um litmus tests of how porous we are because in theory somebody should be able to tell us that we feel whatever and if we first look inside and by the way I love this concept of do you first look inside or outside do you listen to what's inside or outside first when something kind of AR Rises and emotionally outs emotionally outside you love love love that it's a something I'll have to explore um but if we don't do that then you could see how projection would be very effective and I'm not accusing anyone of using this in any kind of diabolical way I think people just do it because it worked and they're doing it because they've always done it but if somebody says you know like like you don't care about me as a friend or you know telling someone how they feel is so very different than telling someone how we feel duh right it's kind of obvious and yet once you start watching for projection you see it all the time yeah not just at you but like in between people right like you know like I know this stresses you out but you know people start doing it all the time it's very interesting to see how people kind of divide into a couple different groups on this maybe two or more groups in terms of whether or not it affects them and if it gets in their head or somehow they're like no it's ridiculous I don't I don't feel that way and for me it's very context specific but i' love your thoughts on um projection both towards kids and from kids so all right I'm going to I'm going to respond to that and you just cut me off if you're like Becky that's not the direction I want you to go in because I guess MGI which is I call most generous interpretation is to me the like embodiment of not what I do all the time definitely not because I'm imperfect but what I think is just a useful framework to try to employ as much as possible because the idea of what is the most generous interpretation of someone's Behavior like projection counteracts are very natural human tendency which is just what is the least generous interpretation right we all come up with the least generous interpretation of people's behavior all the time and it's just quick it's easy and I think it's CU in our brain if we see something bad or annoying it's just easy to think that that's the whole right so I can't even tell you how many times every parent I know will say my kid doesn't listen they hit all the elevator buttons they hit other people and and then I said and I know what you're thinking they're a sociopath they're like that's literally what I'm thinking I was like I know I have that thought too well no when I was a kid I used to push every button in the elevator right does that mean I'm a sociopath no it means you are a good kid who has not yet learned the skills to regulate urges that's all it means that would be the most generous in you just want no I'm kidding you just want to push them I'm joking I'm joking I have a kid like that too he wants things for himself and he derives a lot of Joy from things those types of kids are going to do things okay that's my resilient Rebel um okay but projection why am I bringing that up so what's my most generous interpretation of why this projection would happen why would a kid say you're mad at me or you know I can see how mad you are at me or why would someone even say in adulthood um you seem really really stressed out right again the gazing in versus gazing out I think it comes back to in our childhoods I mean that's what often a lot comes back to were we taught that we have an emotional life that lives inside of us then were we taught how to understand that emotional life then were we taught how to manage and cope with that whole emotional life most people were not so it becomes this very very complicated conundrum the emotional life is happening inside me again like you can't beat it it's happening our feelings can't get rid of them and they're very powerful they're Sensations but if your framework is was always you're getting punished you're getting ridiculed you're being a baby then you you develop a very conflictual relationship with your feelings like I they can't be real they almost can't be mine that's really they can't be mine people like this often blame other people a lot for things they never did when they're really frustrated and upset cuz it's almost like this can't be mine so like who did this feeling to me you know there's in the world a lot of that in the world who did this feeling to me who put this in me right um it's it's so fragile and so sad almost um and and so you know toxic um but projection in a way is the only way that I can understand my emotional life is by imagining you having an emotional life I don't know like a a lot of these things I hear myself say this I I like Mell I was like oh that's what a vulnerable way to go about the world what an awful way to live in your body that you're so overwhelmed and almost um so self- abandoning of the information in your body that it must be someone else's you know so that's so that's what projection is right so what do we do when we see it right um I don't know what's an example right like you're so stressed out you've been so stressed and you're thinking maybe you're thinking a partnership like I feel like you're you're the one who stressed right never helps In the Heat of a moment to be right I I've tried it a million times I don't know about you to be right in an AR be right to be right in a heated moment when you're like I'm going to be right not if you want an effect effective outcome no no but it's a very hard urge to resist it took me many years to learn but someone taught it to me in one hour uh I feel very grateful that that she taught me this that she didn't tell me to do it but I just realized if you just like I don't have any word other than just like soften yes if you just kind of like um imagine becoming more like a noodle than a like a rigid bar of iron I just like and I actually I I think of um the way that like my he always comes up but my this Bulldog Mastiff Costello was like super lazy the contract with him was he would protect me with his entire life but if my life wasn't on the line Noodle and I remember just thinking like if I just go there yeah then the basic contract of like I care about you I'll protect you with my life is still there so I guess I learned it from my Bulldog but it sort of played out in a in a romantic relationship and it was just really beautiful it was one of the best things I learned um that from the two of them yeah um is that I just like literally like physically soft often then like everything becomes apparent somehow for me it allows me to get back into my own eggshell y but still have Optics out now that's me I realize it's it you know and that doesn't mean in the In the Heat of the Moment I'm not like feeling like I want to be reactive right but for me a physical change to my body self-directed physical change to my body is what just kind of like changed everything yeah and and I think you know this is so true in relationships definitely at work and definitely in parenting is you don't have to represent everything you believe in like a given moment like we're not so fragile like to be like no and you're projecting like I have time like I this is this is a heated moment I can kind of chill out you're so stressed and I think I'm not I think there's projection I might say like oh I am who cares just like get through the moment right and then maybe after if it feels important I say feel like this thing happens sometimes where when you're stressed you say I'm stressed I don't know like like let's talk about this that that's when that happens I think this is really true with kids too right has happened the other day and in some ways it's the same strategy which I jokingly on Instagram called do nothing with the capital D and a capital N because so many times in hard situations especially when you're accused of something that's not true people will say to parents oh so you're just going to do nothing well I'm like take away the just like doing nothing nothing in a heated moment is a very sophisticated technique because really what you're saying is you're doing nothing on the outside and you're being a adult and managing your feelings on the inside Amen to that versus doing nothing on the inside and just yelling or reacting on the outside so the other day my son came to me before school my youngest and he goes my sweatshirt's still dirty and I was like oh man he go you promised me you would wash my sweatshirt before coool between us he never he never asked me that okay and here's my fork in the road it's like we all know what it would be easier and what I by by the way I wanted to say back to him 99% of me was about to go you never asked me and then he said I did no you didn't and now you're lying to me and all of a sudden it's like okay you know what he was saying to me I wish my sweatshirt was clean that's what he was saying that's what we're all saying and I'm so upset about it the feeling is so big that it's like too overwhelming in this moment as a 7-year-old to be mine so like I kind of have to make it your fault to try to make sense of it so what did I do in the moment I literally did nothing what I you promised me you watch my sweatshirt and I went like this I kind of was just like looking at him like I knew what it was like to want something and not be able to have it and he's like you did in the moment I go I did that sweatshirt is dirty he really wanted it to be clean just kind of he's like I really did I was like that's the worst not joking then he at the End by five minutes later I didn't say anything he got another sweatshirt we moved on I didn't say I wasn't going to like ruin the moment by being like see you could cope or you never asked me but I think in both these moment whether someone saying you're stressed or my kids accusing me I think about this a lot in parenting I don't have to prove my parenting in a moment I don't have to prove it to my kid I don't have to prove it cuz my mother-in-law is watching like I trust myself way more than I trust one single moment to represent everything about me and I think when we can gain a little bit of that confidence we have a lot more freedom to just be effective and to also know there's a moment moment to do nothing and then if something's a chronic issue if my son's chronically blaming me when things are less heated I'm going to say to him you know something in you know a calm moment there super important and novel approaches to things that I think um everybody deals with um kids in the picture or not I um my audience sometimes gets angry with me when I um ask very long extended questions but um could I just share with you something learned uh about an experiment because I thinke um it blew my mind it won't take long um there's a Imaging experiment so you put people in a scanner they image their brain see which areas are active fmri there's a really wild experiment where they bring people in for the scan they don't tell them why they're there and they tell them they're going to be paid $30 and they set out um three $10 bills maybe you know this experiment I don't know and then they go into the scanner and then um they come out and then the researcher leaves and there's a discussion etc etc and um at some point one of the $10 bills is removed by the by the researcher and people are told at the end of the experiment um you took one of the $10 bills and they're like no I didn't because they didn't nobody says you're right but then they reimage them and they compare that to a condition in other subjects where people actually did a little sneaky steal during a money game and the same areas of the brain light up that we think are associated with guilt in other words if somebody is told that they did something even if they know they didn't there are aspects of brain circuitry that reflect a quote unquote feeling of guilt it's like it introduces this question about reality and so they can know with 100% certainty you can know with 100% certainty that you did not do something and yet it starts to introduce these questions about how you gauge reality simply because somebody you just met a few minutes earlier yes in a position of authority they're the researcher you're the subject Etc told you that you did it I think this has huge implications for parent child relationships for romantic relationships workplace relationships for um real bias in the outside world you can imagine if you're told your whole life that like you're a piece of garbage or that you're part of a bad group or something like this like I'm not trying to get political here like you could come to believe that at a level that is biological even if cognitively doesn't make sense so this is where I think about this like challenging um boundary between knowing what we know being a container staying in our frame you know pick your favorite lingo around this and the fact that words and the emotions of other people really do um have the capacity to rewire us on the inside you know a question I'd have about that study I'd be really curious if there was variation among subjects where some people that guilt part lit up a lot more okay so you reminded me so so this is the wild part okay the distribution of kind of like uh people who have this by the way folks there aren't single brain areas for whole emotions but let's just for sake of Simplicity here that have the guilt area activated even when they didn't take the money yes the entire population of subjects doesn't experience that to the same degree you have these people who for whom it's very high amplitude response and others who aren't now I don't recall and I need to go back and look at the study if it divided according to male female because earlier you said that this tendency um I would bet a million dollars that if I got to know those people the people who really light up have a lot of focus on gazing out and determining their inner Reality by what other people think about them and the people who did not light up as much are the people who gaze in and have a deep sense of themselves even in the face of kind of a lack of validation or even in the face of criticism I would bet my money on that psychological kind of is that a moderator or a mediator I don't know you would tell me so I'd be very curious about that great well I have no skin in the game like I didn't run this study and I'll go back and check it out it's a collection of studies and I hadn't known about this I mean I read the Neuroscience literature but I hadn't known about this I find it like a complete yes of course on the one hand and also super surprising on the other and just oh so cool yeah um in the sense that it's informative and it's making me think that some people really need to do the work of paying more attention to other people's emotions and feeling them a little bit more and other people probably need to do the exact opposite that's exactly right and to me like I always I say this people I manage I said like I think about this in general with adults like I think such a empowering thing as an adult is just to know where you are in any given scale so for me as a leader I'm always gas I'm like go go go we can do this we can get this accomplished I'm probably like pretty far in that and given that I know it's really important for me to have people around me who sometimes say like whoa let's look at this first right um I also know that sometimes if I do have a like maybe I should slow this down I should like really listen to that cuz that's like not right but knowing where I am on a scale is important I I I talk about someone in that I manage who she really needs to be more direct with the people she manages just like you know like sometimes ask questions when she really wants statements and can have a little higher standard and I think it's it's helpful to know where she is in that scale because remember saying like I want you to go as far as you can toward the other direction without being disrespectful because it's almost impossible to do that right and so I think for adults to know let's say i gaze in or I more gaze out neither is better or Worse probably again mental health and resilience is about having just a lack of rigidity and so to say what is my starting point like anyone listening what is my starting point there's no morality it's literally not better or worse it just gives me information about which direction to experiment with and I like to make this a concrete experiment right so let's say you are someone who tends to gaze out before you gaze in and you're always like I can't do this thing I want to do because it would incon someone I told this story the other day on my Instagram and people went bananas about it I was at the airport and I got a cup of coffee in the morning um and I like my coffee with just like a really little bit of milk right and and I I know to specify it if I'm asking someone else so I went to the counter and I said hey can I get a medium coffee not black just a little little bit of milk pretty close to Black sure no problem I go I wait in the line then it's on the counter I pick it up Becky and it's like light as can be I got back online I brought the coffee and I said hey h i' asked for this I know there's a lot of people probably got lost could you asked for this you know darker could you pour out a good amount of this and then refill it with coffee the person you know who knows if it could have gone differently different day should oh right no problem here you go this happens with things that are so much bigger than coffee but the coffee example is such a good one because what I'm doing in that moment is I'm saying I'm allowed to have my coffee the way I wanted it and asked for it even if it's awkward or inconveniences the other person now can people be on the opposite extreme and can someone hear this and be like I probably need to do a little bit less of my own needs that's what I'm saying you have to know where you are but what I have found at least with moms is the idea of O you know I asked for milk and this is whole milk or I always I used to give my clients this experiment who had this struggle I said I want you at the grocery store after basically done checking out to say oh you know what I actually don't need those paper towels I can't even tell you people are like I can't do that I can't like return it like oh my goodness it like a panic attack and the Panic the Panic feeling is that would be a completely new circuit that would be me saying I'm willing to do something to meet my own needs I actually don't need that paper towel even though it could get an iral or inconvenience temporarily someone else those little experiments and it might be the opposite it might be saying to my partner tonight you know what we always sit down and talk about my work and I actually did have a stressful day but you know what I want to hear about your day you go first that that's also an experiment and for someone who's on that extreme they're going to also have a panic attack they're going to be like this is deeply uncomfortable but just knowing where you are in the Spectrum gives you the information you need to get a little bit of balance yeah I think there's clearly a distribution and um whether or not it's too whether not it's a binary distribution or it's kind of like a normal distribution I I don't know but there's clearly variance here from one person to the next and probably even depending on how well rested we are and all the rest but I do think that we do kind of fall into phenotypes of yeah prone to um reacting to other people's emotions without hearing and listening to and responding to ours first like truly ours first versus people who are just really out there I I realized it's very different than any other kind of relationship but when I first went from being a postto to having my own laboratory the chair in my department my chairman in one department anyway he said you know you should get a great big desk that's like really thick I was like yeah like why I mean I get it you don't want to be sitting like right next to your employees or something but like why so that and he goes so that when they cry you won't feel like you need to cry or take care of them you'll just slide the kleenex across the desk and I was like are you kidding he was like no and then uh years later um I looked back and I realized I understood what he was saying I mean he didn't know me at all but he was just saying probably something about himself which is people are going to come into your office they're going to cry it does happen and you're going to need need to be the boss which is to be supportive and empathic but like you can't get pulled into it because they might be crying about something they don't like about the lab or about something not happening the way they want it I mean who could imagine any other reason to cry in your your boss's office but maybe they have a family issue and you know you have to remember you're the boss and I thought oh that's interesting I ended up with a dust that was kind of medium in in in width but I think that nowadays there's a lot more um kind of bleeding of Ro and um you know it used to be that everyone got really dressed up for work now dressing down is like common in certain circumstances and not others I think that there's a lot of um kind of lack of clarity about here we go again you know power and authority and and but also kind of staying in our own frame versus taking on someone else's frame yeah um you know I have a friend who runs a pretty large business and he did the same experiment that you did of asking people um you know how he could do better but first he unfortunately made the mistake of asking people how they felt about being there and they ended up with making one of these emotion clouds where they took everyone filled out a thing and wrote what the most dominant emotions were and then he told this story like call me late at night he sits down and they're going to present this as data in front of everybody and this emotion Cloud comes up and the biggest bubble in the middle just says stress and he was mortified right but he learned that they all feel really really really stressed that sort of exercise would never have happened 10 15 years ago yeah it's like yeah like I won't say what profession he's in for sake of privacy but like it's a profession where stress is part of the process and you don't kind of get the certificate at the end so to speak if you don't experience stress but this actually relates to what we started with in a way I'm going to circle it back there which is and CU I hear this a lot you know H kind of some kids these days they they don't they don't know how to tolerate stress or they're always overwhelmed but part of it is again maybe this is my MGI maybe they haven't been told the right story about stress or anxiety it this came up with my kids the other day my older son had his first basketball game um of the season and he goes oh I'm really nervous feeling a little anxious and it's just so interesting like the way we respond we respond in little ways to our kids in these moments form like the way they and end up thinking about those feelings later on I said well of course you're nervous n being nervous means you care you really care about basketball right and obviously we've had many conversations about What feelings mean but it was so interesting I watched him go yeah yeah I do care kind of in that little sentence being nervous means you care I mean think about it you're never nervous about anything you don't care about right if being nervous means I care I have a story to understand it I now inherently feel like the feeling is normal I'm almost I'm almost like proud you know like yeah I do care right my relationship with that feeling is going to be so different than if my parents like why are you nervous there's nothing to be nervous about or oh you're nervous oh does that mean you're not going to play well oh my goodness are you're going to miss your foul shots like I mean so in the first right my kid feels like being nervous is wrong so I just set them up to feel like they're feeling the wrong feeling when they're feeling nervous going on and the second I'm layering on my anxiety to their nervousness not a great combo but the stories we tell matter so in the workplace you're stressed yeah you know actually this makes me think maybe not right now when more time it'll be really helpful to talk about what what is stress why do we feel stress how do we talk to ourselves when we feel stressed does anyone here know the way you talk to yourself when you're stressed has the power to make stress feel a little smaller or a little bigger that's really interesting I wonder do anyone here use a session should we do something in the workplace about how to deal with stress because you're right this is a stressful job and and this is where I don't think about power but Authority and I want to own that and let you know that stress comes along with this type of job I'm making this up and this is why you get paid pretty well and this is why you know whatever else could be true but one of my jobs is not just being honest but actually helping everyone develop the best skills that maybe no one ever taught them before to manage stress let me know if that's of Interest I just think about that like the whole mood just changed you kind of own your Authority and you own the story and I think whether you're talking about being a CEO or being a parent it's actually all the same that makes sense I have a rule which is if my pulse rate goes above a certain limit I my thumbs stop working meaning I won't allow myself to text I don't I don't talk on the phone I'll just I'll go in the bathroom and just sit for a second if I have to but that's rare typically I just I'm like I have a rule my heart rate goes up my thumbs don't work what do you do I just do nothing I follow the do nothing thing I just wait I mean I I also have a rule which is unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of me um it usually can wait drives people crazy but they thank me later like unless somebody's literally hemorrhaging like I can pause my response um because I'm going kind of like move fast get things done kind a person and actually it was taught to me by a chairman of a major university in your home city of New York City he said um there's always more time and I said that's ridiculous he said unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of you there's always more time going back to my daughter it's it's one of the mantras that's been really helpful for me as someone who again just knowing myself I always like to go go go I get so much pleasure probably identity value from doing things and so a byproduct of that is I always kind of feel like I'm in a rush because my body craves movement and checking things off but being in a rush is never terribly helpful in close relationships no one likes to feel like come on you get to the end of the story or you it's not good so sometimes I think efficiency and relationship building are like antithetical I amen a thousand times over no I I don't think we can be efficient in relationships it it's like efficiency and other things is beautiful um well it's a unitary experience being efficient in relation and so like when I can be in efficiency a lot mode a lot and it's something that I have to really think when I'm going home to my closest relationships and it's interesting now that I work so much more than I used to it's almost reinforcing the efficiency mode so I I really know I to you know my own therapy like really work on like that's not a value of mine all the time at work maybe sometimes even there sometimes you got to get out of it to connect to people right and so that is something again where like knowing where I am on that scale asking people to call me out oh Mom you're rushing me at night Becky I want to tell you the whole story I'm not just trying to give you the tldr I want the experience of telling you the story I'm like right I'm doing that thing yeah slowing down is rarely a mistake I guess I guess occasionally but uh rarely a mistake it's really true I'd like to talk a little bit about technology I know this is a a growing interest of yours i' I've been thinking a little bit um based on our earlier discussion about s of people who are in their own container or or sensing what's going on inside them prior to paying attention to and sensing what's going on in other people because clearly both are important I don't like this idea that it's like one or the other but with the Advent of text messaging so here I'm not going to talk about social media this is not about social media uh with text messaging is this first of all this is the first time in human evolution that humans have written with their thumbs um that's weird um been kind of quirky uh reflection but the other one is this is the first time in human evolution meaning very recently that we are aware of what's going on with so many other people and we expected to at least know it and perhaps even respond to it I mean if you it's just I know people younger than 30 are probably going wait no it's always been this way but it wasn't always this way clearly our brain has adapted to this new format but it did not evolve in this format whereby you're getting on a plane and you look at your phone and you are aware of the movements and requests and um maybe kind statements Etc from other people we're tethered in so many ways and that means that our brain is really Tethered to the states of others their emotional states their physical states where they are you said and I'll keep repeating it because I love it so much the more you can locate somebody uh the more it reflects their values so being able to locate somebody in space and time and understand how bounded they are or not to their own emotions or yours fantastic but the fact that you have 10 people in your phone that are that you're aware of you're not even supposed to be aware of 10 people at once except the 10 people perhaps around you on the you know boarding a plane yeah um so we're being forced to navigate a new landcape with all this yes um after this conversation folds we'll look at our phones you couldn't have that many I guarantee one thing no matter how many text messages or few text messages you have it's far more conversations if if you will than you could possibly have by phone at once yep so in the old days you left messages and you'd get on the phone when you could not saying we go back to that but I think we might be asking ourselves to do something that is impossibly hard and maybe even bad for us yeah I don't know how um apocalyptic you want me to get about this um but I think I actually you know my husband and I were talking about phones and text and social media and AI um and I brought up something to him he's like I don't think I in all the arguments I've heard I haven't heard that where I feel like we're changing in a dramatic way um our basic evolutionary drive around attachment in a way where attachment has always been the primary evolutionary Drive of humans and with all the different technological shifts there have been cuz people say oh there's been this there been this what's never been shifted is kind of the nature really of onetoone human attachment we're entering into something really new where let's even say text messages 20 at once 10 at once our bodies like will always crave what's immediately gratifying over what is longterm good for us it's just it's and I the way another way I think about it is our bodies will always choose convenience and ease and gratification over what's good for us long term so you they about all these pings coming in it's a lot of information this text that text this text this text and what you're doing in your circuitry and over time evolutionarily is getting used to the multiplicity of relationships the multiplicity of information it's just more gratifying than oneon-one to the point that one-on-one conversation over text or even in person is going to have so much more of a gap than it ever has been in terms of how slow how low stem and how boring and awkward it is compared to especially for kids who get this early the constant information flow and gratification and stimulation I think that's going to have a profound impact not right away but over time then if you add in social media and then if you add in AI I mean on the way humans just are even able to relate to each other so yes I think like this advancement in technology and what's happening I think there's always been a trade-off always between how short-term gratifying something is and how long-term good something is for us because the things that are really good for humans longterm are the things that involve humans to tolerate frustration I would say that is the most important skill I think for kids to learn but the world more than ever it is built now with insanely low frustration tolerance cuz we're bu for so much information so much consumption and so much media gratification this is actually I think the thing that isn't talked about with technology it's why parenting has changed it's why so much of parenting is about making kids happy and their lives easy because there's never been a generation of parents like my generation where our lives are just so much easier we have so much less tolerance for our kids Tantrums because we're on our phones wanting our life to be easier so we stop the Tantrum we make their life easier we make them anxious we make them fragile because of our lowered frustration tolerance so I don't know where we're Landing here but and by the way I text like I'm not like a purist here you know I I'm a realist I live in the world you know um but I I think it's profound how it's changing human interaction and expectations and gratification and my colleague Anna lmy who wrote dopamine Nation right cited some data that uh humans have more free time now across socioeconomic groups more free time for everybody than ever before more expectation of immediate gratification and it's not just the text that we're getting it's um for some people the text that they're not getting they're thinking about the people that they haven't heard back from Etc I mean like you the number of tethers right exactly like the number the number of tethers is just um is just astonishing um I had a conversation with somebody recently that popped to mind where it was a little bit it was like a low friction one that ended in a really good place where I said you know the problem is you know what I was talking about there's a little bit of an age Gap and I said you know the problem is you think slow is low like what I was saying was I like to just chill this is something I haven't done enough of in my life because I'm pretty ambitious person and always have been since I was little um about everything but I've learned that like slow isn't low like I love just like sitting down and like hanging out with the dog or just it's like slowing down and it used to feel like slow was low it used to feel like oh nothing's happening or this is depressing or it's boring and I think in recent years that became more and more the case as I got more and more pulled into technology and then I did a little bit of a technology distancing experiment if you will I have this wooden box that someone made for me and I put my phones in there and it's so amazing how once you put the phone in a different container it like completely changes the relationship to it I don't get it but any anyway again physical barriers to make to take emotional steps always a good idea um and I just realized like slow isn't low like slow is awesome so I totally agree that the circuits of our brain have now adapted to expect immediate gratification I like to think and maybe this is a um a false um wish but I like to think that there are components of our brain that are hardwired enough through tens or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that might be able to recognize and appreciate the slow moments and not feel like slow is low meaning slow is depressing um but I do think that if one is weaned in uh raised in an environment where you expect things quickly well then you know it's going to feel like the horse and cart compared to the car at some level I do agree and I think for parents who have you young kids I think these are such powerful and empowering things to think about when your kids are young because I think it's easy to think well okay so I'll deal with this when my kid gets a phone it's the circuits surround even how your kid will use the phone how much you're going to be able to set boundaries with your kid when they get a phone all these have to do with the patterns early on right so if we go back to slow is good frustration and frustration tolerance is the name of the game it requires a lot of inconvenient moments that matter so so much for how not only your kid learns to tolerate the frustration inherent in life but I think this is really important how your kid learns to feel capable kids only develop capability from watching themselves get through hard things they don't develop capability by being successful ever in some ways it builds up this pressure and a fragility if that's been the only thing they have and when we think about this whole generation who's so anxious kind of so fragile I really believe the antidote to anxiety is capability and we I'll give an example like we steal our kids capability all the time when they're young in the name of short-term convenience for everyone so here's an example like my I remember this day my oldest who's now 13 was like three and he was really into puzzles when he was three puzzles are like really hard right he was working on it something like I can't do it you know the classic wine which I just want everyone to know like no part of me is like I love that sound no like nobody likes whining okay but to me those are our like bang for our buck moments you know they're not our easy moments they're our bang for our buck my kid is going to learn something about how to deal with situations they don't think they're capable of completing that is such an important lesson and I have a fork in the road I can I can either do the puzzle for him which gives me short-term convenience stops the Meltdown but beyond frustration tolerance like one of the things I really remember thinking when my my kid was young is if I do it for him I'm stealing his capability because if he can get through this and kind of get to the point where he says I did a puzzle I didn't think I could do that's incredible so I I I remember this cuz it's it it felt so he's still whine but there are these moments as a parent and this is what like to help parents with our wins are not based on our kids' reactions our wins happen when you just know there's this amazing feeling you have of a parent I know that was important I know it and I remember saying to him with this puzzle situation sweetie I'm not going to do the puzzle for you and I I want to tell you why the feeling you get when you think you can't do something kind of take a deep breath maybe take a break maybe even the next day watch yourself do that that thing is literally the best feeling in the world it is the best feeling it becomes addictive and I will not take that feeling away from you because I believe you're going to get it I could cry like and one of the things I I feel like people hear the story like okay back great you know I do not do that all the time sometimes I finish the puzzle but when we think about what we want for our kids later in life it might be no I'm not getting you a phone yet how a kid reacts to to that situation it's not just about a phone it's kind of well have you always just done the thing for me have you always just given me what I want do I have any ability to feel like I can tolerate frustration and wait and figure things out that all layers into how kids react not getting a phone how kids approach hard math problems how kids do or do not sit down to start their English essay that is difficult to do and all that stuff you can start building those skills in the teenage years don't get me wrong but the the leg up your kid has at 14 when they've been basically building those life and academic skills from the start and they've built their identity around capability like that's what I want to give every parent and every kid in the world yeah it's awesome you know I said it last time we spoke I'll say it again you know if you're if you're thinking of adopting I'm I'm be happy to uh put myself up for adoption it's such a beautiful um philosophy and stance to take around effort and frustration I mean uh again this isn't about my life but I feel so blessed that came up in science where things take forever you can work two years on a project and then discover you do the right control experiment and you like we got nothing like like literally we have nothing yeah um there wasn't and there still isn't a tendency to publish what are called negative results which aren't bad results but where you basically got nothing you can find a flaw and the the reagents you're using you got nothing you're starting again Y and to have that so you know a few few times and to have some papers take two three four years to get accepted other papers 6 months I'll tell you the six months feels really short but these days we we get so much immediate gratification yes the other day I was staying at a hotel and um I ordered food in I don't do it that often I was like I really want like a poke ball there's that Pokeball place I ordered it was there in 11 minutes I was like whoa like this is so wild I was like I got to be careful not because I'll overeat pokeballs you can only have so many Pokeballs but it's like you just it's there convenience it's so you know it's it's incredible I remember and sad and scary and exciting and and all the things you know so I think having variable um durations of effort reward uh in one's life and being able to see where like the latency is very short yes social media but you know other things that where you have longer duration effort to reward um contingencies I'm sounding kind of this like nerd speak but I've gone on records before and I'll say again that you know dopamine that is achieved without effort preceding it is just be really careful doesn't matter if it's amphetamine cocaine social media or anything else um you get used to the schedule that's right and and I think we need to be able to tolerate and enjoy and lean into and Savor variable schedules of effort and reward it's so interesting to say that I have two thoughts that number one when I think about the puzzle situation that's like f eort cuz effort effort effort struggle deep breath effort effort nope that's not it effort effort and then you get the dopamine that circuit I just always think that is such a benefit to my kid later in life it's kind of the opposite of you know which we all do sometimes but if it's the only circuit being on your iPad all the time as a little kid and the no effort all the dopamine well I think about it as a a friend used to call it years ago birthday money there's one time each year okay maybe because of the holidays when you're supposed to get presents just for being you it's called your birthday right or if you're a kid you know or whatever holidays are where we celebrate kids by giving um presents or we celebrate each other but every other day you're not supposed to get rewards necessarily just because not just for being you the the rewards are out there in life and appreciating things I'm not trying to be too stoic here but there's only one day each year where you get literally presence just for being you the other stuff is supposed to require effort yeah and struggle I think you know it's really interesting my my second um had a lot of speech issues when she was younger and I kind of noticed it like at a certain age you're supposed to be building sounds and words and she was replacing like as soon as she had a new sound she lost one and just had a sense something was going on she had a pretty serious speech araxia she had to go to speech therapy um 3 days a week right for probably a year she now you wouldn't know but it was interesting I remember at that time my older one probably five maybe she was two or three and six and I remember someone saying to me like oh about my daughter like oh poor her kind of you know it's like a lot and and I don't think I said this but it's so interesting I remember thinking she's way better off than my son if I'm going to worry about one of my kids right now which I'm not worried about either I'd worry about my son his early years were so linear so without struggle like she's going to have an early experience of struggling working hard she won't remember it with her words but that circuitry which are our important Memories the ones we don't remember with our words the ones that our bodies remember she has such an early experience with watching herself struggle and get to the other side like I would wish that for every child and so I I also think I I want to also share that story because I think parents who have kids who have those early issues it's so easy like oh I actually think it's really empowering to do a complete 180 to be like wait I'm not going to fix this right away I'm going to support my child I'm going to let them know I believe in them I'm going to let them know I see a version of them that's going to get through this they're going to still struggle and that is actually going to be like the best foundation and almost like the best leg up yeah I have a friend very very successful um who told me that he wasn't until you know until he was in his 40s that he had like kind of a major um difficult life a major business disappointment and it almost crushed him like you know but he had never had that before yeah he had been so successful uccessful over and over again you know it was fun for me to talk to my dad recently on the podcast because we haven't had a conversation like that ever um and we were talking about sort of mistakes that one makes and um in the context of you know work etc and he said still ringing in my ears he said well you know those those humiliations are actually good for us he called them humiliations I was like really I was like yeah you know they they humble us and they keep us um thoughtful about what we're doing next I was like yeah but it was kind of wild to hear that um I don't know why I need to hear it externally because I know it's true I knew it was true but yeah it's not just making mistakes like sometimes listen I'm fully against bullying where I understand how that can be very destructive but like there are going to be times when we're going to feel humiliated and to be able to bounce back from that is pretty awesome I I actually think that builds character strength I do yeah and I think you know this is like a a great lead into parenting I hear this all the time where someone will say I don't know if my kid's being bullied but like they're you know they were told you can't play basketball with us you're the worst basketball player in the grade something like that right where the way I work with parents right is again assuming this isn't chronic I don't think Step One is calling the school I don't think Step One is calling the other parent right if you zoom out you're right like I don't think a kid's going to be called the water basball player you know over and over in the course of the next couple decades but they will be called some something they'll be left out or even if nothing happens you know what's going to happen they're going to feel less then in a group like probably a million times I do right still so we have this almost opportunity of like okay well what skills would be useful when my kid is 18 and 30 and actually the struggle again is my opportunity I was think my kids are in my home for 18 years I sounds like sick and I don't know if I really mean this but I'm going to say it like I almost hope they have all the variations of struggles they're going to have later on cuz then at least I can kind of get in it with them and like build some skills and help them see that they can manage and then I feel like those bumps are going to happen right I I guess it is like Pilots don't they when they have simulations there's no way they simulate perfect flights and say you're ready to fly they simulate all the issues so that a pilot can learn the right controls and then they're really prepared they don't take away the issues right no I I I love the analogy of flying because I you know I I'll never forget driving in really thick fog for the first time this happens if you grow grow up in the Bay Area just being able to see one reflector at a time and being terrified now like driving in fog never feels great but I've been there it's like it's a familiar feeling and um yeah I've been thinking a lot these days about um this whole thing about proficiency and and uh our our expectation of kids now noway you know that we have been told for a long time that we need to guard against kids feeling terrible about themselves on the other hand we want them to be proficient and what you're really talking about here if I understand correctly is proficiency at Being Human at being really good at certain things less good at others I can also tell you know any any kid because I was this kid like in in a group of musicians I'm the least proficient I mean you really just don't talk about wanting someone to do nothing I'm best off not even playing the triangle okay like just doing nothing would be the best thing I could do to any musical effort it's just but I realized that at some point even though every kid in my school played an instrument they had like the youth Symphony and all that kind of stuff because it was also a time when I could just kind of relax like you don't have to be certainly best at everything but I also believe that in order to really find what you're kind of quote unquote meant for you have to try a bunch of things and find out what you're never going to even approach partially skilled at you still have to try I guess that's the point so on the one hand I guess I'm saying do nothing on the other hand I'm saying you still have to try I guess you have to try to find out that you're really as bad at music as I found out I am maybe or I think we're also talking I'm good with it I'm good with it I love music but I don't need to play it but I think then what you're saying is you're able to separate your identity from any Behavior being bad at music doesn't mean you're a bad person and I think anyone hears that they're like obviously but we conflate those two things 90% of the time right that's why we really care about winning at Scrabble is like to some degree we think it means we're smart and everyone's like you know versus I'm probably the same level of smart whether I win at Scrabble or lose at Scrabble right and to me that's what confidence is it's not feeling like you're the best at something it's feeling like it's okay to be you when you're not the best at something right it's feeling at home with yourself and to me feeling at home with yourself is first of all it's an amazing internal motivator because you get to also figure out what you're really passionate about right um and yeah learning to participate in things and even have joy in things that you're not great at again these are things I think our kids really can learn not from lessons not from a textbook not really from a teacher they learn it from what we model it's actually interesting we play a ton of board games in my family and I'm just I think they're like the antidote to everything on the screen so we have a million board games I'm the resident if anyone ever needs a recommendation what's your your favorite board game to play as a family okay I Love Sushi go God don't know it but I'll check out go party is the better version it's actually a really great adult game too it's very strategic we play code names we play a lot of word games we Play Boggle we play Ghost we play Scrabble um we play rumy Q um but the game I was going to say that we also play a lot of that I love is categories okay so have you ever played that yeah that's a fun game I whatever part of the brain is good at generating a lot of different things from a single letter is must be very small in my brain I am so bad at categories I mean my kids are all pretty quick I lose to everyone my my seven-year-old included I'm horrible it actually is a game I suggest often I'm like let's play categories and I think there like that's actually so powerful for our kids I mean I think a lot of us if we look back we think like is one of the reasons my parents didn't really play with me or do things is like they felt like they weren't good at it you know like probably right to demonstrate to your kid I can choose something I can have joy in something I can want to do something that I'm not good at that is again going to be more powerful to your kid than sitting down and saying this is what we think is going to help kids it's okay to do things that you're not good at you and I know that's like logical words in the brain that's not an experience they're building or internalizing kids learn from stories from experiences and so I think that's one way in terms of how do I help my kids be confident but also just be at home with themselves and do things are not best stat probably the best way to do that is to model it over and over to your kids I love it we're back to uh Theory versus practice yes I'm big on practice maybe on both I feel like as long as there are kids and adults that seem I want to emphasize seem to do everything well you know the athlete academic you know musician uh Dan you know good dancer like as long as you know Charming with other people as as long as those people exist or seem to exist we're going to have to all overcome our sense that you know we should be at least partially good at a wide variety of things maybe not everything do you think those people exist no I know they don't exist I I know that there are people that apparently are like that um they're fakers well well I don't know you know I will say that I you know and and this is I don't get paid to say uh positive things about the University I work for um or not but the I will say occasionally I'll um meet a student from Stanford and I'm like goodness gracious like these this kid right can apparently do everything like they're an athlete and they're a musician they have all these things they they there are those people and I will say um but this is important the pressure that the perception of those people creates on them without fail brings them to immense challenge in their life if not then later I've seen it every single time I know because I grew up in the town where I'm now a professor and I went to school with many people who ended up there or or you know other places like that and of course there are people like that in every environment they are outliers they tend to be very Salient we tend to to notice them and um they create this you know false internal pressure this is the reason I raise it it and I want to say it's not like they eventually you know fail and dissolve into a puddle of their own Tears like hopefully they're resilient and they push forward in life and some of them do amazing things and some of them do less amazing things but the point is that there are people among our species that seem to do many many things very very well and I think when we hold ourselves to that standard um we uh we suffer and we hold ourselves back I think that I believe I just have a central belief that we all do have some unique gifts that we're meant to bring to our life and to the world and it shows up in different forms and one of the worst things we can do in trying to find that and express it is trying to be really good at everything uh I just think that's the most poisonous idea in the um American mindset that we're supposed to be really good at everything on the other hand I personally believe that we should try a variety of things so that we experience frustration and fail and eventually find what it is that is um you know we're quote unquote meant to do I do um but I feel also very fortunate that I was never really pushed to be excellent at everything yeah I have terrible hand eye coordination but I'm pretty good at sports with my feet but when I say pretty good I mean passable yeah so I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional athlete very very young so I think we have to know that we have to play games with our hands and our feet in order to figure that out yeah and I guess you know we were talking about this maybe before we started but I don't know I'm trying to think why this is but I tend I tend not to put anyone on a pedestal m I feel like and maybe part of it is in part of my private practice for years I saw maybe I saw the Stanford grads who are then living in New York and they weren't literally from Stanford but I have all these late 20y olds and they're pedigree like all look the same top of their class ivy league Goldman Sachs this MBA and like so many of them had the same like insane anxiety and emptiness I I still remember the way one of them described how they felt and she was brilliant with her words and she said I walk around and it's like when I'm with people and doing things and at work it's like there's a ton of color when I'm alone I feel like I am an empty room with white walls oh goodness that's very sad very sad very sad it actually has a a happy ending which is really um or has a Nuance ending but but happy ending where um she feel like it's actually I was actually saying this to a friend cuz I actually relates my own childhood I feel like I've you know grown a lot had my therapy and I feel like when I was younger I was really hard driving and really like sowhat people pleasing and me and my friend who are both like that were like that have kids who aren't really like that they and they're they're amazing kids and they do so well and they have this internal confidence but sometimes we joke we're like but there's nothing that will drive you like feeling not good enough there's nothing that drives you like feeling like every test score defines your self worth and it's so sick right because we're almost like conflicted with our kids like they they're they're all great kids they're responsible but they they almost have a little bit more inner contentment right um but I think about that young woman I saw and how at work she felt amazing until didn't happen until she was 28 she didn't get the promotion she thought she was getting and then I mean she had never failed before and it's not only the never failure when your internal sense of self is built outside in which you actually can do if you have a lot of accomplishments it works for a while but as soon as that stops working if you have nothing you feel like in an empty room with white walls what's really compelling about you know the therapy over the course of number of years is I is I still remember over covid we were then then zooming and she had had her own place um and she actually went through this process and she she was very artistic of of painting the walls in her actual room talking about making something concrete and like kind of in the way that she was was feeling a lot more lit up in inside out instead of outside in it's great um but I just think I guess I know myself too and maybe maybe this is part of why I try not to put people on a pedestal maybe it's as I'm talking people are like oh Becky gets it right with her kids and she's doing this and like whatever I can share like that that is that is part of my story I also yell at my kids I also feel like sometimes I'm on my phone too much I feel like my life is out of balance I don't get to see my friends nearly the way I used to they probably often are like Where's Becky why is she not you know not only was Ling to text but remembering my birthday or whatever I forget and that doesn't feel good to me because I used to do more of that and so no one no one has it all figured out like humans I think it's are remarkably complicated remarkably imperfect we all have parts of us that feel really good and we maybe some of us play up those parts more than others and we all have parts of us that that feel confusing maybe have some shame feel you know I don't know just more complicated and so at least want to get that out there about myself oh I really appreciate you sharing and I I want to be clear um if if I was at all unclear that I I certainly don't hold up these um uh Ultra performers in all domains on a pedestal I I think um they're in a very precarious place inside and outside they've essentially given up all their power and agency to one incoming failure and maybe they never experience it and they get to the end without having know but what what a terrible way to live anyway I I've always looked up since I was little too people that really um took a unique path I've always found that um they yes accomplish tremendous things and and they have um interesting sometimes painful flaws like I I'm a huge fan of of the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sachs very very incredible man very complicated life you know if you read his books his autobiography which I highly recommend everybody um do if you're interested in science um and just animals and and a a a life uniquely lived he's a really good example and there a bunch of other examples that are meaningful to me um certainly not somebody who you know he couldn't do an experiment to save his life he was um moved out of multiple universities and places you know a very very complicated character had a methamphetamine addiction um was a closet homosexual it came out later in life and was then long periods of time on his own and anyway had a great relationship later in life um very interesting um person uh became that way and found his Passion by realizing how terrible he was at certain things including certain branches of medicine so I think that trying many things and being really realistic about whether or not something's for us or not but uh is the key but then I guess the question becomes and this must be so hard from the perspective of parenting but also just in terms of guiding ourselves through life is you know how much friction do we experience before we say you know what like I'm not a musician and I'm cool with that I love music but I'm going to put my efforts into these other things and you know this thing comes more easily for me that you know I do think we have a lot of natural tendencies and I feel like especially in the United States there's been this complicated relationship with parenting and education whereby we we don't want to push people to their own you know like suffering and demise but we also have to avoid not pushing them because then they don't ever find what they are proficient in and they don't learn that overcoming friction thing um so it's It's Tricky I do believe everyone has a unique expression of themselves in life whatever that is doesn't have to be in professional life but you to try a lot of different things and you know how at what point you uh you bail out I mean I've had few in my lab but I've spoken to graduate students in posto where I had to say you know what I actually had this conversation with the post I was like you know what you're a really good scientist you're never going to be a professor let's get you a job in biotech and they were like they thought their whole life they were going to be a professor like you're not and the data are the following which point to that and it's kind of devastating but then years later they thank me or they thanked me in that case yeah a few others probably curs me but so how do you know when to keep pushing your kid to even engage in something like maybe they're the kid that always is picked last for the team but you know they should play sports so I guess my first reaction is I'm I'm reacting to the word pushing cuz I'm not not sure that's the like the verb I would think about because I think the idea of pushing your kid even like how much do I push there's there's a lot about us there is like is that my I guess I grew up in a town where a lot of kids got pushed oh I mean I grew up in a town where every kid got pushed so maybe that's why I know something about it right I mean I think we see this all the time and it goes back to actually what side of the tennis court like whose feelings are who's like is this my unlived dreams as a athlete in my youth or is this actually about my kid soccer skills you know I think parents watching their kids playing sports is a prime example of am I living out my unfulfilled dreams and projecting that onto my daughter or does my daughter like soccer and like how can I really differentiate those right I think actually though making it back to that a lot of this actually goes back to frustration tolerance and why it matters so much to me like my approach to teaching frustration tolerance which is like a Hidden Gem we have here at good inside I really want I I want to be in every school I think it needs to be in every school and I want to describe it to you okay so I I literally have this graph it's helpful and I know you like to write things down to to make it concrete we're like point one is not knowing how to do something okay and point two which is very far away is let's say knowing how to do it or being very proficient this could be soccer I think a good example is reading okay like you everybody starts out not knowing how to read and let's say not everybody but a large a lot of people learn how to read the fr the the the space between not knowing and knowing I call the Learning space it has a name and it's helpful to know where you are in a map and the learning space has one feeling that you're supposed to have frustration that is the feeling you're supposed to have and we have this idea that we sh from not knowing to knowing like this it's because of those damn Star Wars movies and oh no actually Star Wars Incorporated some frustration but it's because of movies boom you're supposed to just have the skill because you picked up the rock or the sword or the the pen or the wand well and now it's because if you think about the circuitry that kids get used to with dopamine and the space between wanting and having in general is low because when you don't know something you want to know it here you do know it our tolerance and our kids tolerance for wanting and not having is so low that what's so sad is the learning space has gotten massively compressed and people fear frustration this image when I've gone over this with kids and even teachers I know teachers who teach us in their class okay today we're going to learn this new thing we're going to learn whatever it is the you know how to read a short word everybody in this class is here not knowing everybody in this class is going to get here and probably today most of us and you can actually do it m are going to be right here what does this say the learning space how are we supposed to feel when we're in the learning space the class can say frustrated okay here's an interesting assignment different than you think the goal today is not to tell me if you can read the letters that are in front of you I want you to raise your hand when you feel frustrated which feels like this oh I can't do it because I'm going to come up to you and I'm going to give you a high five and I'm going to say you are in the learning space you are learning how amazing is that like Andrew I really believe this has like the power to change learning because then when we talk about proficiency or when we talk about years from now my kid is saying this happens all the time I get questions about this all the time my kid says they want to do whatever is it could be a coding class it could be a lacrosse class and they do it once and then they always come home and they say I want to do it I quit or maybe they're on a swim team they want to quit do I let my kid quit right to me the question is actually like most likely none of our kids are going to be Olympic swimmers or like professional basketball players I think about this a lot with orts the whole goal in my mind for most people with orts not everyone but most is learning how to deal with frustration learning how to do things you thought you couldn't do character sharing being a good teammate sportsmanship right all those things are hard skills to learn so the reason I'm signing my kid up for basketball is actually just because it's like a good medium for all those things and so I want to be sure that if my kid is quitting it's not because they're escaping the very very natural learning space that is so important to be in in life and this happened actually my oldest wanted to quit baseball he' played for years and he wanted to quit in in the conversation we ended up having was look let's wait to the end of the season like and this goes back to values it's not we don't quit but like in our family we we really value and try as much as we can to keep our commitments and not just to ourselves to each other and so the rest of the season you might be thinking all the time I don't want to be doing this and again in my head I'm thinking good that's like a good life experience to watch yourself go through that as long as it's not toxic and at the end you know we'll talk talk about it interestingly enough he had the best baseball season he'd ever had he had a grand slam which no shade to baseball that's as exciting as youth baseball ever gets right and still he was like they I'm done like I just want and I felt really good about that I was like look you you you ended on like you're playing really well it wasn't just cuz you got moved down in the batting order like if that's the reason why I K get moved down to the batting order they're not starting on basketball I hear this all the time now they want to quit I don't have any any rigid rules but if that becomes a pattern that worries me or not worries me but forget you sports that's just not a great circuitry that would be conducive with kind of resilience and confidence in adulthood look I love love love this concept which I believe to be entirely true that the learning space between unskilled and skilled if you will yes that's what it is is characterized by the feeling of frustration in mind and body yes I don't want to Rattle off another experiment but there is just oh so much date I I'll share this with you offline um the papers that is showing that brain plasticity changes in neural circuitry only occur when the chemical milu of the brain is different than it normally is otherwise how would the brain know it should change so what sets the context for massive change in our neural circuitry is when there's a lot of adrenaline in the body sorry folks it's true adrenaline also called epinephrine and nor epinephrine released in the brain now you don't want to be in a state of panic or or stress to the point where you're debilitated but that shift in the chemical milu sets the stage for rewiring of connections between neurons I mean this is known at the molecular level it's known at the cellular level it's known at the circuit level and I'm excited to share that literature with you because it it just basically is a bunch of nerd speak um uh and numbers to support the fact that you're nailing it right in the Bull's Eye which is without frustration there is no rewiring of the neural circuits and if you think about it it had to be that way right otherwise why would the circuits change so that the error signal is what sets plasticity in motion now the actual rewiring occurs during sleep so this is my reminder to make sure that your kids get enough sleep because that's when the actual this is the phenomenon of not being able to do something coming back a few days or weeks later you're like can do it well because it happened in sleep the final portion of the rewiring it's why phone shouldn't be in the bedroom for kids I think 75% of people young between the age of seven and 18 are massively sleep deprived and you know there's the the neural rewiring deficits associated with that are are are serious and these are what we call sensitive periods uh I like sensitive periods more than critical periods because critical periods imply an open and shut sensitive is there's a tapering but it does taper yeah so um this unskilled to Skilled um and ation in the learning space model this is part of something that you're putting together now could you could you I already have it I mean our frustration tolerance program it's a workshop it's you know on our our it's within our membership right so it's one of you know it's one of 30 workshops to me it's one where you know the thing is no parents say Dr Becky what I'm really dealing with is low frustration tolerance you know they'll say I have you know my kid is having Tantrums or they won't do their homework or kids with ADHD tend to have low frustration tolerance right so um to me it's like one of the first things I recommend to new members where I say okay you might like this is the thing this is like the key thing that underlies a lot of Tantrums it underlies entitlement it underlies not sharing it underlies why you throw the board game when you're about to lose and underlies quitting it's not homework and again the MGI the most generous interpretation is wait right the commonality in all those situations is my kid is frustrated and if what they're learning or what they've practiced is when I feel frustrated it's so intense that sometimes I think like do our kids learn that their emotions operate on a dimmer switch or an onoff switch we want our kids to operate on a dimmer like you said if you're at a 10 out of 10 nothing you can't operate but if every time and I'm so interested in this literature you mentioned because I was thinking what would happen in the first number of years of a kid's life if every time they're frustrated well-intentioned but again just under resource parents turn it off then what I think would happen and I'm wondering is then something that could be like a five out of 10 I feel like would feel like a 10 out of 10 because you never had a dimmer right because if you only operated when a light went on with always going off then even if over time years later the light was at a five it's still going to feel blinding right and so this idea of a dimmer you want your kids when they're frustrated that's what frustration in tolerance is nobody says I'm frustrated I can't read yay no one says that but if it kind of comes up oh there's that light we want their bodies to think okay all I need to do and I have skills to get my nine out of 10 to an eight an eight to a seven when I'm at a seven that's where learning happens that's very different than it's at a nine and kind of like who's going to turn it off for me or the reason in those situations cuz say I'm not doing my homework is they don't have the skills to bring it to a seven and so their choice is to stay at a nine or 10 out of 10 which no human can do or walk away and bring it to a zero and so what I'm saying is our frustration tolerance Workshop which I want every parent to take but I also just want to get into schools um is literally the thing that helps you teach your kids how to get frustration TS how to you really can do this it sounds sick but like you can get your kids to like being in the learning space to be like like I I'm going to thrive here the Good Feeling is eventually going to come I'm relatively comfortable here because I I just have watched myself survive it that many times and so the benefits of that workshop and it just the program is not only Tantrums but actually is is a lot in academics CU that so many times when kids have issues in school I'm not ADHD is real dyslexia is real that definitely could be a component but so many times It's actually an issue of frustration tolerance and that's often not kind of labeled for parents I'm um realizing as you're saying this that the literature that I'm aware of about stress and Trauma is actually relevant here in an interesting and perhaps surprising way whereby you know this thing I said earlier you know the brain only changes under conditions where norepinephrine and epinephrine are released you know there is such a thing as one trial learning and it's associated with negative experiences and the reason negative experiences create such robust learning in only one trial is because there's a massive amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine and other neurochemicals released so it's stamped into the nervous system but learning of things we want to learn relies on the same neurochemicals I mean there's a wild and really cool literature from a guy named James mcau um who showed that like if you spike adrenaline before learning the learning is much faster and much more durable if you spike adrenaline after learning turns out the learning is more durable now we can't start getting into kind of uh you know biohacking experiments on on kids or themselves but that the adrenaline is supposed to come during the learning itself which is what you're saying but the problem is if we stop once we're frustrated we get the increase in Adrenaline and norepinephrine and again other neurochemicals as well but then the perception is that the the plasticity Loop is closed there so what did you learn when I do hard things I get frustrated when I stop the the frustration goes away yes that's all you learn in the same way that somebody exposed to trauma this underlies the basis of almost all modern trauma therapies is to in the right setting take people back through it sequentially let them experience that and start to desensitize to it so they can complete that Loop yeah that's exactly right and so I think it's so important to push through frustration and I think it's so important as you I'm just agreeing with you here clearly but that oftentimes that frustration can last more than just the learning session it can be weeks or months or in some cases a year of a really challenging course or a sports sports uh participation and so that's where it gets tough because as empathic creatures one hopes we hate to see members of our own species suffer especially our kids and so it becomes this thing of like do you let them opt out like what did they learn by opting out and that's where it gets really complicated cuz we got a forbrain which can set all these different rules and so um but can I I don't know about frustration for a year I guess I always think how we experience a feeling is the feeling plus the story We Tell ourselves about the feeling and the feeling kind of is at a certain level but the story we tell oursel about the feeling and what it means about us or how capable we are of coping with it that can make a feeling that was here go to here something about frustration of a year like I it's interesting we're talking so much about stories but again if one of the things I try as a parent is when my kid is saying I don't know what would it be to quit you know I I hate gymnastics right and you're thinking okay like first of all quitting is not always weak or wrong sometimes quitting is a very brave awesome great thing to do definitely sometimes the absolute best thing to do 100% but as a parent sometimes and I get this a lot like I'm conflicted like I don't know what's right first of all there's probably not a right and again our parenting never hangs on one decision so just let that go but I think what I would be curious to just experiment with again maybe it's because I'm so obsessed with frustration tolerance especially in this world that is so working against frustration tolerance I feel like it's like even my more my duty as a parent to help so I'm like okay let's just have an experiment where I would say okay talk to me about why you want to quit gymnastics and I'm might know in the back of my head maybe they're not as good as everyone anymore right or maybe they just don't like it who knows but I might say you know look maybe this isn't relevant I'm thinking about when I did you know I'm thinking about a different sport um when I did track growing up and there were like whole years where I was like I love track I love track and I don't know if I ever told you this but when I was 11 I hate a track I went from love to hate it and part of it was and again say something kind of relevant to your kid part of it was there was a new kid at school and like I was kind of the track star until she came in and then I was like second and that just kind of stunk and no I didn't tell myself it's okay I kind of told myself this stinks every day and part of it was all my friends were doing soccer and I kind of felt left out but I finished the year and the next year something interesting happened and this is what a kid will say I'll go oh what you love track again you know and it's this amazing moment because they're always going to say that to be like no no I ended up deciding that next year is my last year at track and I I stopped after that but can't explain it it just it felt like it came from like a different place it almost like I felt more settled I think after like I really knew and I don't know if that's relevant to gymnastics I do know you've loved it for a while it's kind of new to not like it and sometimes when something's new and you don't like it you just got to though but other times when something's new and you don't like it you want to like figure it out and I don't know I'm wondering if we should give it a few more weeks to try the figuring it out thing and again maybe your kid says no I want to quit and you're like fine and in some way have' already had the experience what no matter what they do but I think that's that's what I think about playing around with with kids way more than I think what parents say is so should they quit or not it's so binary it's so so rigid and I think we're missing the Nuance of the story and the process that matters more than the eventual decision I love your use of story in um narrative with your kids it seems like you use that a lot I do like instead of saying you know and uh forgive me for I'm not I'm not an analyst but I I feel like it starts with an observation like okay you're behaving this way maybe what's behind the behavior you're expressing this what's maybe deeper to that but um when talking about your own experiences towards your kids as you've been doing here in these pseudo hypotheticals I'm sure some of them is this we interview your kids later and find out no I'm kidding the um it's clear that you use story as a way to kind of um share genuinely but also probe for what might be going on with them and I have to say I find it um really delightful because it it it it raises lots of questions that I think anyone would have and I think it's um it's part of your gift clearly because um so many people you know follow your advice and and take but the advice you give is also it's interesting it's like an observation like frustration is key I want to increase frustration to tolerance but then you're not like okay you're going to hammer down their throats frustration tolerance in the following way it sort of becomes a a question like where is there frustration in your life and and then you put it into your own narrative as opposed to necessarily asking them questions I think asking kids questions or asking people questions generally is great like hey how can I do better as you pointed out earlier um but it's really I don't know if the word is disarming but it's really in a in a entirely positive way way like you use your own narrative to allow people start going oh yeah like where am I experiencing frustration where where could I tolerate that better and so I think that there's this incredible Triad of like or or tripartite thing of like observe consider like the deeper layer and then offering a narrative that's really a bunch of questions when where you're speaking from your real truth it's really elegant I have to say it's it's spectacular I hadn't realize it until right now I don't know if I realized those parts but you know what is is interesting is it brings up the word we kind of mentioned before but didn't talk about and maybe it'll be surprising that I say this is shame and I I think shame it is the biggest blocker to learning and shame I think can be defined like a lot of things in many ways but it's the experience of aloneness I think shame is the feeling you have when you kind of feel like a part of you is not attachable so for a kid that's an existential threat to not be in attachment with someone and in that way when you're not attachable you're alone you're alone and so so many of the things that happen with our kids because I'll I'll I'll model another story and maybe I'll get some flak for this because it's it's probably counterintuitive but I think about like one of my one of my kids my resilient Rebel who was in a hitting stage when he was younger hitting and he's just also in like a he was in like a couple weeks he was hitting and then and there was this one there was this one time where we were doing a family puzzle and he was younger he was probably like three it was really hard it was more for my older kids he was kind of doing his own thing I think he was playing with blocks on the side we leave we come back and like couple of the puzzle pieces were missing thing that we're in and I just knew I knew it he saw it I know most generous interpretation he felt like oh my God I can't participate what the rest of the family is doing and so you know what I'm going to do cuz I'm a smart kid I'm just going to stop them from participating and so I'm going to take the puzzle pieces and hide them I just I knew it I know him so we come back and we' worked really hard on this puzzle of course you're angry but again I can either do nothing on the outside or do nothing on the inside in that moment not always but chose to be an adult and I was just like I know you took the puzzle pieces I just want you know and he's like what are you talk no I didn't you know maybe his four no I didn't and I was like we're working on this puzzle I get that is probably frustrating but like you need I'm not I didn't have the puzzle pieces that was not working and then this is truly going back to stories and going back to shame if you feel like you're the bad kid who's doing bad things and you're the only one who's like that you are shut down from learning so I went up to him on the couch and my husband I remember watching me being like what are you doing and this is how I started I go I don't know if I can tell you this which any kids like I don't know if I can tell you this when I was probably about seven I did something really bad that's what I said and he was like I can't even tell you he was like he like every part of his anger like diffused and you can really draw a kid in by just saying to them I can't tell you I've never told anyone I go okay and this this is true I go my sister was two and she had these like oil stickers and I really wanted them and I asked my mom and she said no we couldn't go to the store no those are you know my sister's stickers and you're never going to guess what I did and he was like I don't know you asked her for them you waited you know and I was like no I took them but that's not the worst part he said what and I go my mom asked me if I took them I knew I did so you know what I told her and he said you told her yes and I go no I told her no and he literally goes and I I feel like in that moment what's happening is he's saying like so many things that you can never say didactically like Mom like you're my mom I love you I hold you on a pedestal and like even you did something that wasn't so great there's like so much hope and goodness and then I didn't in that moment I did not say and you cannot say in these situations so now you can tell me the you just have to like trust because I think the shame of the Badness shame freezes you right as an Animal Defense state right shame freezes you so a kid who's lying to you is always in shame and you can't get a kid to unfreeze and move to a different place of telling you the truth if you're adding more shame through fear like the math doesn't work but you can through stories now true story he did not right after that say you know I was just like I remember my husband who we okay with me saying this he was like we have to punish him we have you know we have to punish him I was like in the moment that's going to feel very cathartic to us that's what punishment does it makes you feel very powerful it makes you feel very cathartic it doesn't work it just doesn't especially not with kids who are strong willed I was like just give it a couple days it's probably a good three days later and he brought me the puzzle pieces in a bag and he just said I took them and he truly started crying and I did not lecture him I feel like the whole Arc the whole lesson Had basically already happened honestly like the day after or so again and this is what I think we miss as parents and like we're almost afraid to like just name the humanness of it and I kind of gave an example earlier he's going to want to do something bad again we all want to do bad things that's not a bad urge it's just about having the skills to do something differently when you have the urge so I think a couple days later and I do this I do these little like role plays they take like 20 seconds I was like oh my goodness look at the puzzle cuz we' still been working on it what if you want to take it again he goes I won't I go I know but I think you might want to remember how I took the oilies so you're acknowledging that inside him there might be a piece that still wants to do the wrong feelings and that's an urge I teach my kids an urge means you want to do something my kids will say an urge is not a behavior behavior is doing the thing that's not okay but the only reason your urge doesn't convert into behavior is because you have a skill to manage the urge and you can't build skills if no one teaches you them so I said what could you do instead could you run to me and say I really want to take the pieces could you say I need time with you because at the end of the day I think he felt left out and and we did and by the way this kid is he like perfect now no he you know but like it it brings together so many things when number one when we trust ourself that we have time when we realize shame the fear of being the only one being bad being unlovable being alone is often the biggest blocker for kids when you really realize that punishment and sending your kid away makes no sense at all and you can kind of give yourself freedom to tell stories right because when we're really struggling with something you don't want to look at someone especially someone who's perfect right it's like when you really have a bad experience as an adult the only thing you want to hear is your friend who I like you know I'm mortified I sent this email to my boss the only thing that would make me feel better is someone like let me show you the email I sent I'm like oh well that's worse that's the only thing that makes me feel better not because I wish bad upon other people but because you want to know you're not alone and other people's stories through that like vulnerability it's kind of like it's like this magic this magic trick I mean is pretty far away from the parenting um Dynamic but um the understanding and actual data from like 12 step programs and group therapy generally um including trauma therapy that is of a group therapy nature uh fully supports everything you said hearing the uh terrible or Andor humiliating things that people have done or have done to them as awful as that sounds you know is is often what underlies people's willingness to recover ability to recover and then they become the teachers over time like you said I think um you said so many incredible things there but right at the end you said something that I hope everyone internalizes that when you do something embarrassing maybe even humiliating the last thing you want to hear is look it's all going to be fine the thing that actually helps is somebody who has experienced something similar and is doing fine yeah and I use that at management all like we had someone do a presentation at work and it was for a bunch of people and it did not go well and I met with her and she knew it kind of didn't go well and honestly the only thing I said to her I don't even manage her directly she's more Junior and and I really mean this we had in Clinical Psychology grad school like it's intense you do a session when you're first doing sessions and like everyone's watching you they're like watching you do therapy which is helpful you know but I remember my first one and I felt like pretty okay about it I was like this my first one I was okay I I it I got I got torn to shreds they were like that was not good you know and now obviously I'm on the I feel good about my clinical abilities but the only thing I said to her is I was like look and and I shared it with her and I said like I've been there like eventually I look back on that helped me learn that day I just felt awful I wasn't like this is my learning space moment you know and so if you're you're feeling like that I just want to let you know like I've been there too this is the starting point to getting better this is going to like make you stronger I know that I've lived that and I I I think storytelling in that way is probably like a really underutilized kind of quote tool almost dehumanizes it to call it that in in management and in any relationship I love it and I feel like the story of your son bringing those puzzle pieces back is like ah there's so much there so much and the fact that there was a delay and then he he brought it back on his own accord and um and that you had already kind of Let It Go that that's I feel like a really interesting piece that it wasn't um to like appease you it was really something internal for him like he got the lesson for him it wasn't just about like making mom feel okay about him like he clearly understood you still love him but it wasn't about like fixing something externally as much as it was about fixing something internally which I think is the the addressing and overcoming the shame piece I think that's right and that's the thing like I think so many times like this like are we teaching kids what to think or how to think like after they're gone from our house like it's the how to think and you said questions I love kind of Socratic questions for kids like oh like if again a different version of a story would be like okay I know you didn't take the puzzle pieces but I'm just thinking for me like what would make me take puzzle pieces oh I wonder if I felt left out or I wonder if I was just really trying to get my parents' attention for a while and this is the only way to do it and what would I do after and what would I need now I'm going to get emotional what would I need to know about myself or from my parent for me to share that I did take it maybe I would need to know that my parents knew I was a good kid H anyway sorry what were we talking about like cuz your kids eventually make good decision adult make good decisions for themselves because they ask themselves the right questions that not because they've heard their parents specific lesson right because they're able to say to themselves like what am I feeling right now what am I really looking for why did I do that so like asking questions telling stories asking questions without even answering them actually provokes a much more sophisticated developmental process in your kid than the lectures we all me included trust me plenty of times that my kid that I've just lectured them but again they're just catharsis they're not actually terribly effective yeah um if ever there was some core truths about brain plasticity it's that frustration is associated with the chemicals that um Foster Brain Change we know that and that questions have a really interesting impact on learning which sounds kind of like a duh of course they do but when we ask questions it creates this open loop in the brain that the brain wants to solve as opposed to hearing a statement this why I always felt like those um pictures on office walls like motivation when you blah blah blah like the motivational statements don't mean much in terms of because they're not about verb States when we ask questions we put our brain into kind of a process of verb states of asking what behaviors are going to lead to which outcomes there's an interesting literature about this that um you know probably isn't fully relevant here but it gets back to trying to learn basic motor tasks and the same things are applied to basic cognitive tasks of like how do I solve this and puzzle is a great um example because it's both cognitive and motor like you're fixing these pieces in different ways I have to get back to doing some puzzles I'm realizing and emotional you know I can really embarrass myself but one of my favorite things that I again I've just noticed my kids extending for for puzzles because they all did a lot of puzzles when they were young is so funny I remember my kid doing like this puzzle and getting some frustration what I did is I did a puzzle to the side of him instead of doing it perfectly I kind of like mimicked I was like oh this doesn't fit oh it's not that piece okay and one of the things I noticed this one when my kid was really young is he kids have a really hard time with puzzles and it's kind of a metaphor for life for when a piece doesn't fit they keep trying it when what they really need to do is such a metaphor is put it down and pick up another piece right but I could tell my kid that but I'm not I always feel like just telling doesn't really work this is what I did not joking I'm going to sing get ready okay so I was doing it over here and I just go oh it's not fitting it's not fitting here it's not fitting here and I go if it doesn't fit put it to the side and try another piece and then I was like oh right I can put this on okay I'll get this one and I didn't make it for I was like oh oh oh that one fits there right I have heard not anymore kids are too old but there was a time I remember me and my husband were like outside the playroom and we heard our son like singing the song it's just it's a mantra it's self-regulation because is it cognitive is it physical it's also emotional it goes back to frustration tolerance where our kids need they need mantras they need skills they need songs to actually uplevel their skills to regulate the emotions that get in their way of doing great things right and you know that kid is interesting like not really anymore now that I think about I want to revive it he makes up songs Through situations what an amazing skill right but this stuff can like and if anyone's hearing this they like oh that's unrealistic like it's amazing you do it one time one time make up a silly song model the frustration yourself make up a song struggle again and then get success whatever it is it could be with reading with a puzzle with putting on your your sock it could be oh it doesn't fit I'm taking a deep breath and trying it again it could literally be anything cuz it adds a little play and jooy you probably know what song does in the brain better than I do but probably regulating um I would put money that a parents be like that's so weird Becky you're right it didn't take that much time I did it one time and my kids started singing the song and now they put their socks on by themselves I love it you taught a process through song and um there actually is a lot of data on music in the brain and how it organizes things mostly in the form of a story of a beginning middle and end and just the quickest example I can give is um when we learn our ABCs we learn them in song Right ABC you never forget that right um it's much easier to learn things through rhythmic song little motifs than it is um through a list of letters or numbers does our brain like encode it differ yeah so see it it fragments it into a beginning middle and end and then there's an under repetitive sort of wave a b c d e okay here I'm now I'm singing so you know at risk of of you know embarrassing both inducing all sorts of bad neural uh responses in listeners but uh you get the point it's it's it's a waveform that the brain can recognize I actually have a friend who's a very accomplished musician and I was say and I know the lyrics to his songs very well and I said you remember that song he goes well I have to hear the the underlying Melody and then he can remember all the words he's a singer he's a lead singer in a very very well-known band he doesn't even know the words to his own songs if you just ask them for him but you give him the music and he's just out the gate and he can do this in front of tens of thousands of people so then it is a cheat code for coping skills if you put it to song it it becomes a verb process sorry I didn't mean to cut you off there it's almost like saying like the mechanics of writing are you pick up you put the pen between you you know there's a um there's a whole Rhythm to writing there's a whole sequence of motor sequence that we that we learn or eating or anything for that matter um no one who's an expert piano player thinks about playing the individual keys at the point where they've learned it they've they've batched it into it's sort of like chunking but it has an underlying Rhythm that's carried by a neural circuit that allows the expression of the movements of the fingers or the or the the words out the mouth or in this case overcoming frustration to just kind of ride on top of all of it yeah so um there's an unconscious genius to to what you uh what you did and I love it maybe um as long as nobody hears me saying oh I'll need to sing more to get through frustration um I have a question about Miss Edson yes um people are going be like what um before we started recording you shared with us um something I think is entirely appropriate to what we're talking about now which is uh learning and learning hard things and frustration tolerance and you've evolved these Concepts you know in the course of your work and through your own parenting child relationships um clearly your own and then yours with your kids who was Miss Edson and what did she teach you because when you told me this I was like whoa that's super valuable we all need to know about this yes so miss Edson was my second grade teacher and I remember writing in her class and I remember something she told us and it's truly something that shapes me every day and she said if something feels too hard to start it just means that the first step isn't small enough and then she really kind of made this even more concrete because what I remember in her class writing and I still use this in writing today is okay so something feels too hard to do the implication is it doesn't mean it's my fault it doesn't mean I can't doesn't mean I'm stupid it literally just means the first step isn't small enough that's very actionable and so the way I play around with it now even in my own writing is okay I have to write a new article and I'm like I can't do that okay so I'm in I can't mode okay if something is in I can't mode if it feels too hard I hear her voice it just means the first step isn't small enough so I'll make it literally I'll just make it smaller I'm going to write a page today and then often I'm like I can't do that okay smaller a paragraph no and I literally do it until and some days it's a word and I go you know what I could write a word okay now okay right and I I really think Miss Edson was ahead of her time I mean obviously now we talk a lot about frustration tolerance growth mindset but this really is a way of saying when things are hard it's not your fault and there's something you can do to build the circuit of capability because I think when we're trying to do something hard there are like if you think about it I don't know you're on the top of a ski mountain and on the one side is that I can't it's too hard and the other side is I can we all have natural capability I I really believe this every person but it's just about figuring out how to get your skis like to the beginning of the ski slope and then maybe if we've practiced being on the I can't do hard things slope our skis keep trying to turn but we just have to keep getting them back and so if we tell ourselves I can't do this and we just stay there stagnant but if you say wait smaller smaller smaller smaller like I used this with the client a while ago I can't ask my boss for a raise I know I deserve cool no problem let's make it smaller okay what would be smaller I don't know let's get creative could you write down what you would say okay no could you say the word to me five times out loud raise raise raise raise raise I remember she laughed she go I can do that cool let's start there okay she literally did that what I think is so powerful about Miss edson's advice is as soon as we get even our skis a tiny bit into the I can circuit the I can slope we're actually just a lot more likely to stay there or at least that becomes a bigger part of our identity right so with this woman that I was working on this with one of the things we were working on it was just okay so you did that amazing the next thing I even just had her play around things saying to me can you say to me I deserve a raise it was very interesting she had I think this is one of the reasons she had trouble speaking up for it it was really hard for her to embody that we said that she couldn't I remember a week she said I'm going to write it down and bring it she didn't again like parenting I didn't punish her I didn't send her to her room I said Okay that was just too big let's make it smaller let's write it together we wrote some things down there right I then had her write it as an email and send it to me and I then had her practice it with her best friend and then she asked her boss for a raise like I mean like I don't even this like probably no one's surprised yeah like that makes sense she'd gone through a lot of steps but it's just applicable in every area of your life so even anyone listening we all have something in our I can't category this is too hard or I can't and we just stay there and if you if you hear Miss Edson saying wait if something feels too hard to do it only means that the first step isn't small enough and if then the next smallest step feels too hard no biggie like no judgment make it smaller make it smaller make it smaller and then allow yourself to eventually build up from there love it love Miss Edson I'm gonna thank you and Miss Edson yes thank you Miss Edson I I think the idea of lowering the stakes to be able to move forward is just spectacular yeah and in everything and um I noticed you do that by the way I'm not like analyzing I'm just saying you do that with with parenting I think there's so much tension around this notion of like creating healthy productive functional kids and I think there is a lot of Shame for parents that when things aren't going great and people know it or they know it and um the idea of creating lower Stakes um in order to be able to make pretty big moves over time where where they're required or just do nothing when sometimes that's what's required yeah and and that the similarity is so interesting what I think that the powerful thing about Miss edson's advice is is she's almost saying make something small enough so you can get your first win having a win is really powerful it's kind of Addicting you're like what's my next win right you're on the Wind circuit you know one of the reasons um we want to create so many more resources for parents and when parents come to us and even say this is a problem this is a problem this is a problem I often just start I I would say okay like what is the smallest thing would change that would make you when you go to bed at night be like today was a better day like there's some bigger stuff I hear you probably not going to tackle that we'll tackle that in time but like I want to get you a win today and then all of a sudden when a parent starts to build it's kind of their own self-efficacy their own like oh wait I did feel good about that one moment I did feel more connected to my kid I said this one thing it's it's I simp it's momentum you know and we have to give ourselves the opportunity to build momentum um which really usually only starts by by taking the smallest step anyway I think it's spectacular I um I was going to ask you uh and I never do this but I was going to ask you you know if there were one thing that people could start the process of trying to be a better parent better to themselves you know if it's more about you know more about emotional containment Etc um maybe it's this thing of you know asking you know at the end of today like what would be one thing that would allow me to have said it was a better day would that would that be it certainly that's powerful I'm going to give you two things one is kind of a one small thing but it's kind of a bigger theoretical thing and one thing is is very very very concrete um so the bigger thing I I really believe that the single biggest thing that gets in our way of feeling more empowered and capable as parents is that as much as we say we value parenting and I think parents people do who are parents are like yeah what do I care about more than parenting it's kind of the lowest on our list in terms of what we invest in you know people invest in all types of things and I want to be clear yes like we have an offering at good inside in our membership but that's not what I mean for someone listening they might be like there is that parent coach in my town who I've been like saying I'm going to call or maybe it's a therapist or maybe it's a parenting group at your school or maybe someone listens to me and they're like no offense Dr Becky there's someone else I follow on Instagram and they have a course and I like them better I I'd be like do that today like align your even purchasing decisions with your values like that that and because we're not expected to know this naturally we're not and as long as we don't have the resources around us a little kind of someone described it to me as like a onesie TWY thing like it it it's it's just not giving ourself what we deserve it is like a surgeon saying they're not good at surgery when you find out they never went to medical school or residency You' be like well just didn't really get resourced in the way you deserve for this very challenging job so that would really be the thing if I'm really honest because I'm not as much as I'm about a quick win I'm not about a quick fix I think that just sets us up for more like a Band-Aid having said that I love a quick thing so a couple things I think people can do with their kids telling your kid at night and I'll model how would say it like I think most people it's not just me when you put your kid to bed it's like oh you're like I just want to be on the couch but it's when your kid's willing to spend five extra minutes with you because it's the cruel irony at night you want time without your kids and they just want a little bit more time with you if you allow yourself to lean in and you can just say to your kid almost like in a whisper I think whispering to your kid is one of the most underutilized symbolist strategies whispers are so sacred they feel sacred they feel like they know they're just for you whispering to your kid like I just want to tell you there's nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you or I just want to tell you you're a really good kid we're in a hard stage but I will never ever ever think of you as anything but a really good kid don't expect your kid to say anything but just that takes 10 seconds and if you're like Whispering feels awkward don't whisper just say it like doesn't matter if you're thinking you don't know my kid they're teenager text them text them sometimes a text to a teen can feel like an unexpected whisper from a parent you know um and that's it and that and that's that's the single thing today and then maybe I'm going to add a third just do something like that for your yourself give yourself credit put your hand on your heart tell yourself it's parenting things really hard like I'm doing enough I'm not messing up my kid forever that's not a thing like and I've got this awesome well this whole thing that you've tempted to take on is also really hard and you're doing incredible work educating people on how to parent I there's so many things that you've said today I'm not going to recap them all um you know we do time stamps and all that so can people can find them but in no particular order I mean um you know this concept of you know telling a kid your right to notice when they when they notice something important in you or in others or in themselves um that rigidity is the enemy um asking like what's this really about when they're doing or saying something or expressing themselves in a way that feels confusing or maybe especially when it's irritating um encouraging frustration as a route to learning like incredible and then you said the more that you can locate somebody the more you respect their values which I think is incredible and on and on I mean there's just so many gems in today's conversation and and so many actionable gems that you provide on social media uh through your courses through conversations like this and others that you're holding in other podcasts and I just want to thank you so much uh you know I you're teaching people how to parent others how to think about their own parenting oh yes that's the other one you said the the only kind of parenting that we do reflexively is the one that was done for us which will evoke um you know feelings of relaxation in some people and feelings of dread in others and um but it all just speaks to the importance of paying attention to to this thing that we call parenting and I think the way that you're merging this with a thoughtful eye on technology where it's taking us and where there are concerns as well as you know where it can be utilized it's just fantastic I I can't say enough good things about the work that you're doing and I'm just so grateful that you're doing it and I'm saying that on behalf of myself and everyone else so you're you're making the world a better place so thank you so much for joining today and for for sharing so much uh we'll of course point out where people can find you but just keep going it's awesome I've learned to ton I know everyone else has as well thank you I'm honored to be back here a second time I love speaking with you and look forward to the next time likewise we'll do it again thank you for listening to today's episode with Dr Becky Kennedy I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did right now Dr Becky has a 20% promotion going for her fantastic online program on parenting Becky was kind enough to extend this discount until this Friday January 17th 2025 for hubman lab listeners you can find more on that along with links to Dr Becky's book her terrific social media handles and more through the links in our show note captions if you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zeroc cost way to support us please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and apple you can also leave us up to a five-star review please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode that's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to include on the hubman Lab podcast please put those in the comment section on YouTube if you're not already following me on social media I am huberman lab on all social media handles so that's Instagram X formerly known as 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anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr Becky Kennedy I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science [Music]