Dhru Purohit Show - #240: How to Use the Power of Mirror Neurons to Radically Transform Every Relationship in Your Life with Jennifer Kolari

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

How to Use the Power of Mirror Neurons to Radically Transform Every Relationship in Your Life | This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and BiOptimizers. Connection is at the root of being human. We all want to feel connected to our tribe, we want to feel seen and heard, and we need to help others feel the same in order to have healthy relationships.  I think most people would agree, this is an important thing to work on. What most people don’t want to hear, is that the work begins with getting to a good place with ourselves, and even becoming our own best friend in order to create deeper connections with others.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Jennifer Kolari, about all this and more.  Jennifer Kolari is a Child and Family Therapist and one of the nation’s leading parenting experts and the founder of Connected Parenting. She is the author of Connected Parenting: How To Raise A Great Kid and You’re Ruining My Life! (But Not Really) Surviving the Teenage Years with Connected Parenting.  Jennifer is a frequent guest on Canada AM, CBC, Breakfast Television, CTV News Channel, and Global’s The Morning Show. Her advice can be found in many Canadian and US magazines, such as Today’s Parent, Redbook, Parent Magazine and Canadian Family. She is also on the health advisory board for Chatelaine Magazine. Her entertaining workshops and insightful strategies, shared with warmth and humor, make her a highly sought-after speaker with schools, corporations, and agencies throughout North America.   In this episode, we dive into:  -Why so many people have a hard time truly connecting with the people in their life (7:25)   -Where the feeling and need to prove ourselves comes from (9:45) -What we lose when we cannot connect with people (15:24) -People-pleasing and having a difficult time saying “no” (24:02) -Understanding the difference between being kind and nice (28:08) -Overfunctioning for your child (32:25) -Storytelling and playing the victim (41:38) -The importance of having empathy and compassion for others (45:09) -The CALM technique for connecting with others (52:13) -Navigating couple dynamics when there is a breakdown in communication (1:07:20) -How to use the CALM technique on yourself (1:34:59)   Also mentioned in this episode: -Connected Parenting: How to Raise a Great Kid by Jennifer Kolari - https://connectedparenting.com/books/connected-parenting-book/   -You’re Ruining My Life!: Surviving The Teenage Years with Connected Parenting by Jennifer Kolari - https://connectedparenting.com/books/youre-ruining-my-life/   -Connected Parenting Podcast - https://connectedparenting.com/podcasts/   -Connected Parenting MasterClass - https://connected-parenting-online.mykajabi.com/connected-parenting-masterclass-1     For more on Jennifer Kolari, you can follow her on Instagram @jenniferkolari, on Facebook @connectedparenting, on Twitter @connectedparent, on YouTube @connectedparenting, and through her website https://connectedparenting.com/.  Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter - https://dhrupurohit.com/newsletter. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and BiOptimizers.   Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use the discount code DHRUPODCAST. Right now, BiOptimizers is offering my community a few special bundles and for a limited time BiOptimizers is also giving away free bottles of their bestselling products P3OM and Masszymes with select purchases, just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You will never have power as a victim, ever. In any situation, if you can ask yourself, what is this doing for me? What does this keep? Why does this keep showing up in my life? And how does it serve me? Hi, everyone. Drew Brod here. Question for you.

How do you become more likable? Like really likable, not in a fake way, in a real way. How do you have true connection with the people around you? Both the people that you know that you want to be closer to and the people that you've never met before. Well, today's guest, Jennifer Kulari, who's an expert in the field of mirror neurons and the practical application of them is going to be teaching us a simple technique that all of us can use to be more connected, authentically to the people in our lives, which means we'll be more likable.

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That's cozy, C-O-Z-Y, earth.com with the code D-H-R-U podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T. If you missed that, it's in the show notes. and if you're on the fence, keep in mind that Cozy Earth's sheet come with a 10-year warranty. So check out CozyEarth.com with the code Drew Podcast. There's a reason I've talked to so many of our experts on the podcast about magnesium. This super mineral is needed for over 600 enzymatic reactions in your body. In fact, every single cell contains it and needs it to function. magnesium is essential for stress management and restful sleep because of its influence on our neurotransmitters.

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Welcome to the Drew Perraud podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Jennifer Kalari. Jennifer Kalari is a child and family therapist, an author, a public speaker, and an expert in the area of the practical applications around the science of mirror neurons. mirror neurons are fundamentally connected to human social interaction and sophisticated human behavior and thought processes. When we understand their power, we can tap into our bodies and our brain's unique ability to utilize mirror neurons to create true empathy and connections that brings the most important

relationships in our life closer together. Said simply, we become more. likable in an authentic way when we understand the power of mirror neurons. Now, a little bit more about Jennifer. We've had her on the podcast previously where she told us and taught us how to use mirror neurons to be a better parent. But interestingly enough, we've had Jennifer back on now because this technique of tapping into mirror neurons, which she calls the calm technique, can be used to improve every relationship in your life. How do you be liked by everybody around you?

Well, there's a fake way to do it and then there's a real way to do it. The real way is through the authentic process of deep connection and empathy. Now, Jennifer is also the founder of Connected Parenting, the organization that has coaches and training and online programs for people that are out there, parents and individuals who want to embrace this technique and the power of the calm technique in their own lives. She's also the author of Connected Parenting, How to Raise a Good, great kid. She's been helping children, teens, and families for over 20 years now, tap into the power of connection to improve their lives, create more love, and more joy.

It's a fascinating conversation. Stay tuned. Jennifer, welcome back to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here again. I'm excited to be here. I love it. This is my third time. It's your third time. And always a hit. And today's going to be the same. No pressure. I want to start off with a big picture question that'll set the stage for what we're going to be talking about today. Why do so many people have a hard time truly connecting with the people in their life? I'm talking about in relationship, there's disconnection. In friendships, there can be a lot of frenemy situations. In work, budding of heads, whether it's with you and your superior, you in,

people that report to you, you and your colleagues that are there. Why is this big challenge happening for so many people in so many different areas of life? It's a really good question. And I think the simplest answer is fear, right? It's fear. When you're afraid, when you're not inaligned, when you're overthinking things, you're going to disconnect. That's how it works. So if you meet someone who is prickly or edgy or defensive, that person, it's fear. They're afraid. They're in pain on some level. And so dealing with that and knowing yourself.

And the most important relationship in the world is the relationship between you and you. When you are sorted out yourself, everything else falls into place. Do you think that most people know that they're afraid or that fear is driving this? Absolutely not. No. No, most people do not. Really, when you think about human emotions, there's really only two. There's love.

And I know it sounds corny, but there's love and there's fear. So anger and jealousy and bitterness and, you know, I don't know, gossip and all of those things dealing, lying, all of it comes from being afraid. You're afraid you don't have enough. You're coming from a place of scarcity. You worry that you're not enough. And that gets in the way. And those become patterns that get laid down in the brain. that get laid down in the brain, the neuropathways in the brain, then form themselves around that.

And the brain likes to do things that are the same, likes things that are familiar. And the truth is, we're the star of our own movie. Everyone else is the secondary character, right? So we're used to seeing things from our own perspective. And what really gives you strength in this world and what really gives you closeness is, A, when you're in a good place with yourself, which is not so easy, but it's possible. and two, when you just feel like you don't have anything to prove to anyone, right? You're experiencing life.

You become a student rather than a victim in life, and that's huge. Why do so many people feel, or whether they realize it or not, or why does it sometimes feel that people have something to prove? Like, where does that come from, right? As somebody who works with both parents and kids and families, where does the feeling and the need to prove ourselves to other people from? So I'll give you the kind of big answer to this because the brain itself does not have the capacity to store long-term memories until about the age of seven or eight. Prior to the age of seven or eight, whatever happens to you, it's like an emotional tattoo. It gets burnt into the limbic brain.

So you've got your frontal lobe that regulates and organizes and prioritizes and motivates and shifts attention and takes perspective all those really important higher order things. Then there's the midbrain. That part of the brain's job is to freak out. Am I safe? Am I in danger? It's the security system in the brain. So that part of the brain lights up very, very easily. And before the age of seven, all the things had happened to us.

So what's your first memory that you can, like, how? How old were you? Probably my first memory was right around six or seven that I can really strongly remember. Yep. Prior to that, there might be one thing, but it might be something scary or something really exciting. But most of the time we can't find memories because the capacity wasn't there to build them. Yeah. Like at the age of five, I think I have a memory of me lying in my parents' apartment when we first

moved to the States. I just remember the carpet was green, but not too much else. It'll be fragmented, right? So seven or eight is when we actually start to get a sense of the world and we get long-term memories and then we compare them to each other. So prior to that, those are called implicit memories. So whatever happened to us prior to, and there are good things that happened to us prior to the age of seven and there's all kinds of things that happened to us prior to the age

of seven. And that actually is what the brain is built upon. So if you think about it this way, we're adults walking around with programming that was installed prior to the age of seven. right so everything that happens to us every interaction every failure every success goes back to that early programming but the good news is it's programming you can update the program you don't have to run on this outdated programming right so it's usually there that could be our birth order it could be something traumatic that happened in our family our parents could have gone through a divorce there

could have been financial things happening there could have been an accident could all kinds of things that early fear or trauma then gets built into the brain system. Okay, life can be this way, be ready, and build itself around that. So, for example, I know my implicit memory. So when I was little, I was only about two. My brother passed away, and I don't remember him because he was a baby. But I do remember my parents being at the hospital a lot and just feeling like there was no one there. And my parents did the best they could.

What could they do? They had a baby that was very ill. And I know that that memory caused me to like, yeah, da-da, here I am, like, see me. Am I, I'm here? And so a lot of what I ended up, how I ended up operating the world was based on that. Now, that's not a good thing or a bad thing. It can be both, right? So it is why I love the job that I do and why I care so deeply about people and why I

learn to be seen and heard. These are very important things. but it did come from that implicit memory. So I'll give an example of how it show. I remember being with a client and a phone call had come in just before then, and it was from a fairly prominent psychiatrist. And immediately when I got this call, I started to panic. I've done something wrong.

I don't know what's going on. Why is he calling me? There must be some reason for this. And my brain kind of took off. Now, in my whole life, that's never happened, but this is where my brain went. Ended up phoning the psychiatrist back. How are you? Oh, thank God you answered me.

I really need your help. I need you to see this family, which of course is what it was. But my implicit memory was something's wrong. Something's wrong and I've made a mistake. And maybe it's my fault. And maybe it's my fault. Yes, exactly. So once you're aware of what that implicit memory is and in arguments with people,

with any interaction that you have with anyone, your implicit memories are going to come through. You basically have the same argument with everybody all the time. It just taps into where you feel like you've been abandoned. where you're not enough, where people don't recognize you, the sort of common beliefs that people have. I'm not enough is a big one. And that can come from many, many different things. But being aware of how that program operates in the background is important. Because you can just, in a loving way to yourself, notice, oh, there's the program. It's running. I don't have to obey that program. I don't have to believe that program. And then you go to the work of really trying to,

become enough for yourself rather than other people. And that's a challenge, but it's important. Yeah, and also like catching when that program is running the show and we're not aware of it. But then also there's gifts that come with that program, just like you were saying. Yes, absolutely. And we'll chat more about that in a second. But I want to come back to the opening question that we had. You know, why do people have such a hard time connecting?

Let's talk about something else. You know, you see families, you work with families. What are, what do you lose when you cannot? connect with people. What is lost? And it could be in different categories of life, right? Tell us what you've seen with relationships, people in their jobs. When you regularly cannot be connected to people, which in turns also the opportunity for them to be connected to you, you to be connected with them, what's the consequence in life? So there are big consequences. I mean, we're human. We're social beings, right? You're here. I'm here. We're all here because

someone loved us enough, right? Someone cared about us. Someone looked after us. Someone nurtured us in some way to get us here. So human connection is actually incredibly important to mental health and physical health, really, ultimately. And I think what you lose is a sense of happiness and peace. When you're constantly in a place of fear, this person's getting ahead of me. I'm not enough. Why did that person get a raise? How come nobody noticed that I did this? When you're constantly in that state, the midbrain can't tell the difference between something really terrifying that's happening and something sort of milder that's causing us stress is happening. It operates the same way. So cortisol flies through your body. Adrenaline is surging through your body. And then you end up reacting to everybody in your

life instead of responding to everybody in your life. And you miss opportunities for people to love you and care about you and ask if you're okay. And you lose the opportunity for growth. It really honestly comes down to learning how to emotionally regulate, which is a huge gift. And if you're a parent, it's a huge gift to show your children that you can do. It's not taught anywhere. In our culture in particular, we teach people to run away from their emotions. If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling angry, if you're feeling whatever, drink something, smoke something, grab your phone, watch something, buy something, get away from it. And those emotions, which I won't even call negative emotions are like indicators. They're like your GPS system. Right. So those, those what we call

negative emotions will tell us when, you know, the rumble strip on the edge of the highway? Yeah. That negative emotions will shake you like, uh, and really what it's telling you is I'm off the road. I'm not being my best self. I'm operating from fear, not love. I'm in a place where I don't like who I'm being in this moment and I'm just operating from a place of fear and I'm defending myself and I'm getting scared. So learning. how to feel your emotions, truly feel your emotions is actually what's freeing. So if we are operating by reacting to each other all the time, people will walk around feeling hurt, not listen to, ignored,

looked over, and you're constantly in a state of pain that you don't need to be in. Yeah, it's funny because it's like you feel unsafe. And let's say as the person who has a hard time connecting with people. And that's not just a soft skill. It's like it actually impacts your income. It impacts your opportunities. It impacts people wanting to get a chance to do business with you or explore new ventures. It's not that soft skills alone are not important. But for anybody that's listening, it's like, well, how does this relate to other aspects of life? This relates to everything. And so if you're the individual that's in pain and because you're in pain, you're in fear. and it's really the absence of connection really allows that fear to come up.

There's not a neutral opportunity. It's not like a fear, a neutral, and then a connection on another side. It's either going to be one or it's going to be the other. So when you're in that fear mode and you're not feeling safe yourself, you are seeing everybody else as a threat and it's just going to continue that cycle. We tend to create the situations in our life. that we're already expecting. If we expect the worst in our friends,

we expect the worst in other people, we expect our, expect our brother or sister or parent or kid, and that they're not going to show up, they're not going to have our back, whatever it might be, we tend to create that. We treat them a certain way, and then they treat us a certain way back, and then the cycle of pain continues.

That's right, that's right. And to your point, whatever you're tagging, whatever you think is going to happen in the world, there's the reticular activation system in the brain, which everyone should know about. It's basically a neural net. There's so much happening around you, sounds, sites, there's data and information flying into the brain all the time. You're commissioning and decommissioning cells. You're digesting food. Your blood is pumping. There's so much happening. So the neural net actually takes this thin little band of what you've considered important and then pulls from reality those things. It's like how you tag things on Google. Right? So if you wake up in the morning and, oh, I have to see my coworker today and I know she's just going to do this or I know my husband's going to do that, now it's tagged. So it's pulled into your awareness. Then your brain, you go out into your day and guess what you're going to see? That's because you've tagged it, right? You're looking for it. And that's a really important thing for people to understand because what you focus on shows up in your life. Truly, that's how it works. So it's funny. I put this white shirt on today and I was thinking to myself, I'm going to This shirt is going to look just as beautiful and just as clean when I put it away tonight. And here's why I do that.

If I put this shirt and I'm like, I'm for sure going to spill something out. There's no way this shirt is going to look like this at the end of the day. What is my subconscious mind here? White shirt, dirt, right? It makes that coupling. It doesn't understand if you want it or don't want it. I've just tagged that thing. So now what's going to happen is my subconscious wants to do what it thinks I want it to do.

I might squeeze through a smaller space than I would have normally. I might choose a messy drink. I might choose a lunch that's a little messier. The subconscious mind is always trying to do what we think it wants us to do. That increases the chance that I'll have a splotch on this shirt, right? So the subconscious mind, think about it this way. It's like the conscious mind is like a little mouse and the subconscious mind is a giant elephant, right? And you're trying to steer this amazingly powerful part of your brain around.

with these narrow conscious beliefs that we have that have been given to us from our families, our culture, our community, our country, our religion, whatever it is, and also from those implicit memories that I was talking about. So a simple thing like, I'm going to go to work today, and I'm going to look for things that my boss does or my spouse does that are positive. I'm going to look for some things they do that actually aren't that bad. Because the truth is, they probably do a bunch of things that aren't that bad.

But your brain only pulls from what it sees and what it notices from the data that day, the things that it thought you were looking for, when they weren't nice, when they let you down, when they stole your idea, when they, whatever. Does that make sense? Absolutely does. So question for you on that note, you know, you shared about, you know, your younger brother passing away and very sorry to hear about that. You talked about it before too.

I just want to acknowledge it. And the stress of that, you know, could have, that did bring to your family. Of course. And naturally, as your parents were so focused on that, the feeling of not maybe being seen or had attention been placed on. And that could have been one of, you know, the way that I've understood is that there could be a couple. There could be a couple sort of implicit sort of stories, things that are there that sort of define us from a young age. What is an example of negative in the sense that it wasn't maybe giving you what you need? needed at the time. When you were growing up, what was a negative pattern that came from that,

right? Yeah, that's a good question. A pattern that you weren't aware of. Yeah. That maybe was running the show. Yeah. Probably I wasn't going to be seen that I had to go that extra mile to be accepted or appreciated or loved. You know, a lot of people have this like, you know, people pleaser, right? I can't say no. Were you a people pleaser growing up? 100%. Yes. And like give us a story or an example of something in your life, you know, with your friends. It could be in high school. middle school, something, you not speaking up, all of those things. Being with a shitty boyfriend too long. All of those things.

And the truth is, like, a simple example would be saying yes to too many things. Sure, I'll come. Oh, this is happening and saying yes to too many things. And then being like, well, what do I do now? Right. How do I say no to people? So saying no is actually a really common theme when people are people pleasers. And I think a lot of people can relate to that.

We've done a few episodes on people pleasing. Yes. Walk us through because I know how much people can relate to this. I am in people-pleasing recoveries. I love it. Take us through the bodily sensations that you feel. That's a good question. Take us to the bodily sensations you feel are the tension or other stuff

because it actually is real-time stress that you're navigating. One part of you is going one direction and another part of you is going in another. So walk us through what it's like for you. Yes. Okay. So the gut is really where you're going to feel it. Right. Some people feel them in their chest.

there's almost this feeling of a sinking, like a kind of a feeling in your body. And almost everything kind of drains into that sensation. I have kids that I work with that call it the burn. So it almost feels like this hot feeling that just goes through you. So there's a part of you that doesn't want to do this thing. And there's another part of you that wants to do it or you're not going to please that person. That feeling, which is interesting, this is how we have to sort of understand how our feelings are in front. information, right? It's information. So that feeling is telling us, usually I'm going to, I'm going to,

how can I word this? I'm not going to do something that's right for me. So when you say yes to something, somebody says, oh, can you work this shift for me? And you're like, sure, yeah, I'll work that shift for you, but everything in your body is going, do that, right? Then you're left with this feeling in your gut, this heavy kind of almost feeling of like sickness a little bit. And then it sits in you and then you stew about it. How am I going to get out of this? And what am I going to do? And then you drag yourself to this thing that you don't want to do with this really heavy feeling. That feeling is your indicator. When you feel that way, you're ripping yourself off. That's the best way that I can explain it. Your best self and what your alignment is with what's good for you and what you need to

be doing is off in that moment. And that feeling is your indicator. The only way that feeling is going to go away is if you say thank you so much for thinking of me, or, you know, I appreciate you asking. I love you. I really do, but I actually can't take your shift today. Like it's just this confidence of knowing. They'll figure it out. And then what happens to that feeling? It's gone. It lifts. It goes away. So learning to use these emotions as your GPS system, right? You know, what's really interesting about that is that the last time you were on, we were talking about kids in anxiety, right? And so much, there's been so much attention on anxiety, and we talked about it both positively and let's just use the word negatively. But a lot of times people feel, feel the

sensation of anxiousness, which can mean a lot of different things of people. But instead of seeing it as a smoke detector, like, hey, look, something's going off. It's, I am anxious. This is the thing. Anxious, right? I am anxious and now I've identified with being anxious instead of, hey, I'm having feelings of anxiety. What is my anxiousness trying to show me? Yes. Where have I crossed my own boundary? Yes.

Where have I not paid attention to me? And interestingly enough, I've noticed to add another layer is that when you cross your own boundaries, and a lot of times it's, you know, can be, a situation, an environment, you grew up, you didn't feel like you had a voice, people put you in a position where, you know, you can fight for the things that you want to do. You were too young. You didn't know. Like, there's so many factors that play into it. But when you continue to cross your own boundaries, the only thing that's left is really sort of everybody else is to, to blame. And not that other people didn't have a part in it. Yeah. But you are stuck in blame, which increases this distance and this ability not to connect with other people.

You just don't trust people. Yes, and then you're feeling lonely and you're feeling detached. I want to go back to one thing that we're talking about with the feelings. And I want people to understand there's such a difference between being nice and being kind. Those are two completely different things. Being nice can be toxic. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah, I'll do it.

That's when you get that feeling in your stomach, right? Nice is not such a good thing. Kind is a great thing. Kind is, hey, I love you. Thank you so much for thinking of me, but I'm actually busy tomorrow night. I hope you have a good time, right? Going somewhere and resenting it, doing something for someone and being angry about it isn't even a nice thing to do for them, right? We also teach people how to treat us. It's not their responsibility to figure out our boundaries. It's our responsibility to set those boundaries because people are the star of their own movie. And not because they're horrible and selfish and nasty, but they'll, they'll keep taking because we often give a mixed message. Sure. But inside we're thinking, oh, God, be kidding me. I don't want to do it. Right. So thinking about that difference between

nice and kind is actually a really important thing to understand when you operate in the world. Because if you're nice, you'll end up resent, like, not saying don't be nice, but when it's nice for the sake of saving something because you're afraid because you don't want to lose a friendship because you don't want to let someone down, that's the wrong reason. Now you're operating for fear. Right? When you're operating from love, hey, I love you and I know you can do it. So this is incredibly important in parenting. It's almost like nice is meaningless, right? Yeah.

It's just like if somebody said, hey, you're fast. Okay, great. I understand that you can run fast when you need to run fast. But if you said like my definition of me being an effective person is I'm fast at everything. So I'll do this interview fast. I'll do that. Like nice is ambiguous. It doesn't actually mean necessarily anything.

It's really the kindness that we're looking for. That's a much more powerful word. That's what you want to shoot for. Because sometimes you have to do things that don't seem that nice in order to be kind. Right? That comes up in work all the time. If you're managing people, if you're leading people, it comes up in parenting all the time. It comes up in friendships.

It certainly comes up in marriages. Right. But the key thing is really aligning with that feeling of what actually feels right in the moment. Am I operating from love or I'm operating from fear? So if I'm operating from love, I would say, of course, you know what? really tired, but I can see you're having a really hard time. I'll take that shift for you. But you do that, but the feeling's not there. That yucky feeling isn't there because you're doing it to be kind. You're doing it because you really want to help that person in that moment of need,

they need you. And that's very different from doing it a bunch of times or feeling like you're being taken advantage of or really having something else that you need to do for yourself and you're putting that aside to please that person. So it really comes back to what we're just talking But a smoke detector, I love that. Use your emotions as an alarm system. It's telling you if you're on the road or off the road. Are you in alignment with yourself or are you out of alignment? I call it, you know, the compass facing north.

You said something really important earlier. You said, you know, we teach other people how to treat us. Yeah. And one of my favorite quotes by this coach to like Silicon Valley executives and stuff, Founders, his name is Jerry Corona. He says, it's important to ask yourself, where have I been complicit in the creation of situations that I say that I don't want in my life? Doesn't mean that you're 100% responsible.

It doesn't mean that you were the full cause of it. Where have you been complicit? What are areas that you see often where people are teaching, others on how to treat them that they have no clue that is setting up friction in their life, right? Like, let's talk about parent-kid dynamics because this is something that you have a whole model for. We're going to talk about that in a second.

You have a whole team. Your daughter's here with us today. Yes, yes. You have a whole book, books, coaching, everything. And that's like your world. But the beautiful thing is, just like our first interview. So much of these dynamics that you can very so clearly see with parents and kids apply to every other relationship in life. So let's talk about the parent-child dynamic.

What's an example of something that parents may not be realizing that they're, in them interacting with a child in a particular way, they're teaching their kid how to treat them? Honestly, the best example that comes to mind is over-functioning for your child. Talk about that. So doing things for your child that you know they can do for themselves, right? And overfunctioning, helping them too much with homework, letting them off on chores. And again, it comes back to the same thing. It comes back to parenting from a place of fear. I'm afraid my child's going to be upset.

I'm afraid my child's going to have a fit. I'm afraid my child is going to feel pain from this thing that I want them to do that I know is good for them. And so what happens is kids are smart. they can figure out really easily and very quickly, and I don't mean maliciously, but if mom or dad are going to overfunction and they're going to worry more than the kid is about homework or whatever it is that they have to do, they're not going to worry about it. Why would I? I'll listen when I have to listen. And so what happens is parents, and this happens to all parents, but I would say maybe a little bit more for moms, is they end up completely exhausted and doing the nice kind thing,

right? Nobody appreciates me. No one ever thanks me. You know, everyone, just doesn't, nobody realizes how much I do around here. And part of that is you are overfunctioning for everyone. You're teaching people how to treat you, right? If you actually say to your child, I love you, and you know what, I love you enough for you to be mad at me, you're going to do that job for yourself. You're going to be the one that does what you need to do. You're going to finish that homework because I believe in you and I know you can do it. That's the kindness, right? That's the operating from a place of love because you love them enough to know that they can do it. And the hardest thing about being a is if you don't teach your child these really important lessons, life will.

Life is a much harsher teacher. And if you learn that lesson for the first time when you're 18 years old or 19 years old and you're in college and you think that you are the center of the universe and everybody told you your whole life that you were amazing and everything was easy for you. And you get to college or the real world and everybody's just as smart. There's 10,000 more people that are way smarter than you or prettier than you or successful in some aspect. And you have a major meltdown.

You have a major meltdown. In fact, and I don't have the stats offhand, but it used to be 25% of boys, I think, in first year university just fell apart, like dropped out, fell apart. I think it's even higher now. It's very common for students to just not be ready because they've been tutored and driven and helped and parents have helped them do the homework and cheating is rampant right now. And some parents are helping their kids cheat. Like, where does this end?

So you're absolutely right. And kids need that neurological hardware to learn how to do that stuff, right? To learn how to take care of themselves, to handle big emotions, to handle hard things without parents always rescuing them. And I'm not saying never rescue them. Of course there are times you have to look out for your child and you have to fight for them and you have to be an advocate for them. But just don't be doing that so much that they don't develop the neurological hardware

to do it for themselves. Right? And that's a really important part. You're literally the architect of your child's brain. And if you smooth out every bump in the road and you smooth out every challenge and you, you know, smooth out every contour in their life, exactly like you say, life's going to get in there one way or another. They're going to get broken up with. They're not going to make a team. They're going to fall apart when they get to university.

And they're not going to have the understanding. They're not going to have the neurological hardware to help support them through that, right? Because everybody has things that don't work out in their life. Everybody has things that they wanted to accomplish something. It didn't happen the way they wanted to. We all go through that. And that's part of actually the road to success. And then there's those that feel that they go through it.

And then can you know that you'll be okay on the other side? Versus the person that says this bad thing happened, I'm never going to be the same on the other side. I'm not going to be okay. I'm not going to make it through this. Yeah. Why is it, actually, let me ask you a different question. For those that also are stuck in people pleasing or catch themselves in people pleasing,

as someone who knows that that's their background and that your early life shaped this, I'm sure there are still some times where you might cross your boundaries, even if it's a little bit. How do you reset? So how do I reset? So part of it that we talked about, because I work really hard myself, not to, just with my clients and with the kids that I work with, but I work hard myself to use my own emotions as my GPS system. I now recognize if I'm off, if I'm feeling a certain way in my body, I am basically out of alignment with my best self, right, with my higher self, with a part of me

that knows what's right. You're going to ask a question. Oh, no, I was going to say, because you know that that lack of equilibrium means something's off. Some people are used to it. And you're But if it's there, something's off. Yes. And what we often do is we think the something off is that person's fault or this person's fault or the blame thing that you were talking about. But if you can literally just look at your emotions and go something's off, what is it? Right.

And the biggest thing that I do is I try to always make sure I'm not sitting in the place of being a victim. And if I am there, I'm not there too long. That I switch as quickly as I can into being a learner. Right. So when this thing has happened and I'm off, then I literally say to myself, okay, what did I miss? What's my body telling me? What is this information that I'm missing? What's the information in these feelings that I'm feeling? And what's my lesson? What do I need to learn? What am I missing? What do I need to learn from this situation? And does this situation match other situations I've been in

before? Because you will continue to get the same lessons if you don't figure it out. You don't get to skip a grade. Like you eventually have to figure it out, which is why we see patterns over and over and over again and our lives showing up in different ways with different people. You can hate your job and hate your colleagues and hate your boss and switch jobs. And guess what? Six months later, it looks the same. Yeah, there's like that classic sort of meme on Instagram of like, you know, fire the toxic people that are in your life. Okay, that might be one layer to it.

There might be people that are genuinely belligerent in your life or other stuff, things like that. You know, we wouldn't wish that upon anybody. But that sometimes could be there. And then the other part is that sort of gray area, which is, okay, there might be somebody that's reflecting behavior back or maybe is negative or something. But is there a pattern or a way that you've been complicit that is kind of keeping that along? Is there hypocrisy in your own area?

Have you been saying yes to too many things because you're afraid of losing their friendship? Have you been, you know, any kind of dynamic that's there? And that's harder to catch. It's harder to look internal. Yeah. But it's actually the only thing that really gets you to the root of the issue. It is. And it's the only thing that eventually helps you figure out that lesson so you don't get the same lesson the next time. Or if you do, you have a whole set of tools and you know how to deal with it.

And it's a very fine line between blaming yourself for your problems and empowering yourself to fix the problem and not have the problem again. And that's really where you have power. You will never have power as a victim, ever. in any situation, if you can ask yourself, what do I need to learn? What part of this do I need to own? What part of this is my pattern? And also ask your question, how does it serve me? Like, what is this doing for me? What does this keep? Why does this keep showing up in my life? And how does it serve me? And sometimes just asking that question can help that lens pan back so that you can see the situation in a whole new way. You know, you're so open and vulnerable about your life growing up and some of the experiences that you had, but this time and the past times we talked, curious that when you became aware of this pattern, did you, how did that change your own dynamic with your parents?

Oh, it changed everything, honestly. It really did. And so in a few different ways, I think first recognizing myself that that was a pattern that kept showing up with teachers, friends, you know, all over in any area of my life, gave me some power to think, oh, I can actually do something to change this. And it allowed me, and this is a really important thing when it comes to parenting. And I'm very lucky because I had really, you know, my parents or my mother passed away a couple of years ago, but my dad still lives with me 88 years old. He's awesome.

And I'm very grateful for my relationship with him. But when you can get to a place where you realize you're, no matter how, even if you had parents that were just awful, If you can get to a place where you realize they did the, they were afraid, they were in pain, and they did the best they could with what they had, you're already not a victim. Right. And this is where empathy comes in. This is where compassion comes in. This is very challenging because a lot of us are very connected to our stories. We should talk about storytelling.

We tell stories all the time about our lives and we're absolutely invested in that story. And we see the world through that story. We don't like to change that story, but you don't have to lug this story around all the time. And what people don't understand is human memories aren't even that reliable. They're not. So basically, this is how memory works. You remember something. You then pack it away in your brain, but it actually splatters all around your brain.

It goes to the olifactory center, to the visual center, the auditory. It literally gets separated into a million different pieces and put away in your brain in different compartments. When you remember something, it gets reassembled. But it gets reassembled with the feeling that you're feeling at the time that you remember it. This is what PTSD is, right? This is what phobias are. So every time you recall something, every time you tell that story again and again and again, you're adding layers and layers of emotion and fear to it.

So we have to kind of own our memories. And I'm not saying don't trust your memories. But watch when you're telling the story all the time. And you're not your story. You're the storyteller, right? And that's a really important difference. So for me, it allowed me to just understand and actually feel true empathy for my parents. I can't imagine what they went through losing a child.

I mean, that's a terrible thing. And he was very ill. And he was born with Spina Biffitt actually. And when he was born, the doctor said to my mother, oh, we're just going to take him and feed him sugar water. He won't make it. And my mother said, absolutely not. That baby is coming home with me. And he was very, very, very ill.

And they kept him at home for a very long time. for this beautiful little soul doing everything they could to help him. And it allowed me to see how beautiful is that. And I got a whole life. I rather didn't. Right. And I'll always be grateful for my parents for everything they did for both of us and for my sister as well. So when you can shift that to see that people are always trying to do the best they can, it won't always look like it. And there are people who are evil, I'm sure. But most people are in pain, right? So even if it's somebody at work or if it's your spouse or your partner and they're being horrible to you and you're all of your own programs start coming back up oh here we go again right um if you can literally take a

minute and in your head think to yourself don't say this out loud because you'll upset the other person it won't work but in your head you're repeating i'm sorry you're in so much pain i'm sorry you're hurting this much and this is the only way that you can think of to deal with it just say that over and over and over and over the person's going and you blah blah they're doing that and this is what you're saying in your head and watch what happens. It's incredible because the micro expressions on your face change. Your shoulders change. Everything about your energy changes. And watch what happens to that person who's going, you haven't said a word. You're just thinking in your head these beautiful empathic thoughts. I guarantee you anyone who's listening,

try this. The other person within a few minutes will just, they'll stop because they're not riffing off of what they're doing. Right. It's a dance that we're We do especially in long-term friendships and marriages and kids and parents, we do this dance and we're just used to the dance. Same, you know, different fight, who left the garage door open, who didn't put the dishes in the dish, but it's the same fight. You don't appreciate me. I'm not enough, right?

Over and over. You mentioned empathy and compassion and those two are like two primary things that enable connection. Yes. And a lot of people talk about them. They talk about the importance or we'll say, you know, try to do, build a lot of things. more compassion, try to grow empathy. But really, you know, what I so much love about your work is that your technique, the calm technique is actually a formula for growing it. It's not just like, hey, you know, be, be, go be peaceful. Okay. How does that happen? Yeah. Instead of like,

hey, here's a technique for your breath or this or meditation that is actually, if you do it and you practice it enough that creates the environment of peace around you. It's very difficult to just go tell people to go and be something. It's very difficult to tell people. Just go be empathetic. Just go be compassionate. And by the way, they'll pay off in the long term and people will like you more. And they'll want to do stuff with you that includes your kids and your partner and other stuff and you'll earn trust, mutual trust in both sides. So this is a perfect place to break down the com technique and the comm method. And maybe you start off with just a little bit of a little bit of background on it. Sure. So,

this is now 30 years ago, I started working, after I finished my undergraduate degree in psychology, I wanted to get some real experience within the real world. And I went out to work in this group home for street kids. So these are kids who were really, it was sex trafficking. They were working on the streets of Toronto. They had what are called Romeo pimps. So these boys or men who would pretend to love them and reel them in and get their trust and then send them out to work. So by the time they came to this receiving home, they were traumatized and they'd all been sexually abused and physically abused. They'd been through really terrible things. They were tough.

They were scary. I had no idea what I was doing. I was green as the grass. I was so out of my element. And, you know, we were trained to be very military in this group home. I don't know if group homes still run this way, but this one certainly did. And it was, you know, don't turn your back on these kids and don't be too nice to them. And if, you know, give an inch, take a mile.

if you let them away with anything, they'll be all over you. And that was just overwhelming to me because I saw, some of them were 11 years old, by the way. They were 11 to 16 in this, in this group home. And at night when it was time to put them to bed and the teddy bears came out and the makeup came off and the jammies came on, they turned back into babies like children who'd been through terrible things. And so I did not listen to anything I was told not to do. And I spent quite a bit of time with them during the bedtime or time. So I would rub their backs and I would sing them lullabies and I'd tell them bedtime stories and

and they would melt. I can't even explain to you how powerful this was, how layers of defensiveness and prickliness just sort of melted away and sometimes they would cry, sometimes I would cry. And it was really powerful. And I noticed the next day when it was time for me to get those kids to do the things they needed to do in the house, they were much more likely to do it for me. So it had a direct impact on trust and. compliance. And that was pretty powerful. And the other staff were like, oh, she's a bleeding

heart. They're going to walk all over her. She's going to see. This is going to backfire. It's not going to work. It didn't backfire. And there was this wonderful sense of just trust and connection with these kids who truly had no reason to trust anybody. I'll be honest with you. Really. And I remember one little girl, actually, she was really tough. She was quite behavioral. She'd only been there a short time. She was actually leaving. She was going off with her social worker to go to another group home. And she got to the end of the sidewalk and she was about to get in the car and she paused for a second. I was standing on the porch with a few other staff members and she came running back up the sidewalk and put her hands on my cheeks and said,

I just want to remember this face, the face of someone who actually cared about me. So that moment, as profound as it was, I'm sure, for her, was so profound for me. It was this human, amazing connection where there was just pure love there and she hadn't felt that before. And I adored her and I cried my eyes out as she left, but I knew in that moment, this will be my work. This is what I want to bring. And I want to learn everything about it. I want to understand how to find this in all of us. It's the language of love.

We all speak it. There's nobody who doesn't. It's powerful. We all know how to do it. So at the beginning when you were talking about finding compassion and finding empathy, I like to think of it more as like let it flow. You don't have to find it. Allow it. Allow it.

It's in us. Let it flow through you, right? You don't have to look for it and generate it. It's there. Just let it in. It's there. It's only a question of, is there a blockage in the way? Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's how it started. And I went, you know, on in my work, I went back and did, you know, postgraduate work and really started to form the idea of how do I help people allow this empathy and not only just allow it, but understand how profoundly important it is to human health and human health. and human mental health, right? So because we are social beings, we only feel good when we're good with our people. I mean, how do you feel if you've had an argument with someone you love, right? You're just off. No matter how you try not to be, you're just off, right? So, and people who seem so unlovable, right, so hardened or so angry or so bitter that you just think, oh,

that person's horrible. That's the moment, actually. to allow compassion. What has happened to that person? What happened to them this morning? What else is going on in their lives? Who has hurt them? Where have they suffered? Where have they felt pain?

Because what you see back is pain. It's fear and it's pain, right? So it takes bravery, it takes strength, it takes courage to be compassionate and empathic when it's so much easier to just get mad and, oh, that person's an idiot and treat them the way that they just treated you. But as we'll dive into, the more you're able to do this, your own life changes, like dramatically changes. The interactions that you have with people change. The conflicts start to diminish or be, you know, or you recover so much faster from them.

And they don't wound you as much. And you just are able to feel good about how you're operating in the world. So what's interesting about that time is that without even really knowing what you were doing, there were some key pills. that were kind of repeatedly being hit in those just authentic interactions that you were having in this group home. And I've heard you share on other podcasts, those same pillars that were there, they would start showing up in your other lives, in your other life. Yes, yes. And interactions with other people. Talk about some of what those key pillars are and how that led to the technique that you call the calm technique.

Well, maybe I'll start with that. Maybe I'll explain what the calm technique is and then we can pull in the pillars. So it's actually a technique called mirroring, which is part of a – so self-psychology is a model of therapy. And it's not particularly well known. I don't know why I wish the whole world knew about it. It's amazing. Heinz Kohut is the founder. And he was years and years ahead of his time where he just deeply understood that attunement,

deeply connecting to the emotion behind what someone is bringing to you. And when you align that, when you're able to attune with that, literally, it's almost like being on the same radio station, right? That incredible things happen. And emotional regulation starts to happen. When you're deeply understood, you're then able to make your own alignment. And children and people get stronger from the inside out, as I showed you in that group home, right?

So I then took that, which I loved, and I used it in my early years as a therapist, and it was absolutely the greatest gift I've ever learned, I think, in life. I took that and I kind of put my own spin on it. And I called that the calm technique. So there's four things, four pillars that you're going to do. The first one is connect. And I mean literally connect. Put your phone down. But like look at the person, gaze into the person's eyes, make sure they know you're available, you're present, you're showing up. And also in the sense that you're not ready to put your own agenda out there. If you're just getting someone to listen so you can get your point in, then you're operating from a place of fear and you've lost the connection.

And everybody can see that from a mile away. Absolutely. You can always, we all know who's listening to just wait to chime in. Or we can all see you who's not listening, even though it's like, I'm listening. You often see parents sometimes do this with kids. I don't have kids yet, but I can remember being a kid and going through that myself with some adults. And it's interesting because, you know, to riff off that a little bit, because I know going through. Yeah.

It's interesting that when we are so fixated on our story and it could be hurt, resentment, whatever might be with another person, we actually don't want to connect. Yep. We don't want to look at them and I. We don't want to listen to them. Yep. We want to drive our agenda. We want to drive our agenda. Or even if we're being quiet and we're looking like we're listening, we don't want to do things that actually would lead to a deeper connection with somebody.

Yes, that's a very, very good point. So there's a lot to this first part, right? So, and it's even, even the thoughts that you're thinking in your head, you want to kind of quiet those and start really being present and thinking about what the person in front of you is telling you. Right. And if you're a parent, you take your agenda, don't you talk to me that way? And why would you do that to your brother? And you just take it and you park it. You get to bring it back. It's actually incredibly important. You are, you know, your child's frontal lobe, essentially, right? So you get to bring it back. But that connection is huge. The other thing I always say is you want to connect with your higher self. And that's sort of what we were talking about. If you're fear-based, if you want to control the person, if you want to change the person, if you want that person to feel better so you can feel better, it's not going to work. That's not going to be authentic, right? The brute force approach. 100%.

And so what you want to do is connect with yourself. What does my softest heart think here? How can I listen with my heart literally? And that's brain heart coherence, right? How can I be present with this person? And there's a whole bunch of things that need to happen and we can break it down. But once you've done that, then you go on to the next step. So this is A, this is the affect matching.

This is where the look on your face needs to match, not exactly, but close enough, the person that you're talking to, right? So if they're really angry and they're intense, you want to be, you know, listening with this look on your face so that neurologically the mirror neuron cells in the brain, register that and then cortisol starts to drop, right? oxytocin starts to flow which is the hormone slash neurotransmitter that flows when you're in connection and oxytocin does unbelievable things in the body it blocks and inhibits cortisol it strengthens the immune system that's super important in our world right now it speeds up neuroplasticity these are

huge it's free you don't need a prescription there's no negative side effects for it and you get the same bounce back right so when you speak to another person this way and you are engaged this way, they will then engage that way with you, and you'll get all of those same amazing biochemical benefits. And it's not to say that if somebody's angry at you, you're not trying to be angry back to mirror them. You're actually just showing them that you're really... You get it. You get it. Like you're taking the severity of the situation. You understand that you're talking about something urgent, important. Even if you don't have the same opinions as them, you do not have to agree. You are there. You're not dismissing them.

by giving them a crossed look, right, with your arms crossed and your sort of face looking at them like, you're kind of crazy. Yep. And you are not sort of overly happy. Like, you're not overly anything. You're actually just, if you were there and you genuinely had concern for what somebody was saying, what would you do? How would you listen to them for somebody that you care about?

It's like I call it the best friend response, right? When you're talking to a best friend and they're complaining about something, you're not going, well, you know, what was your part in it? And are you sure it went that way? And, you know, these hard things can teach you things. Like, you would never talk to your best friend. You know, what? Are you kidding me?

Seriously? That's what he said. It's that kind of genuine response. Now, you don't have to agree. It's not about agreeing. It's about getting, right? I say it's sort of like if someone's wearing a sweater and you say, oh, that's a really nice sweater.

It looks great. And then you try it on. You're like, oh, oh, this sweater really does feel good. Here's your sweater back. You don't have to keep it. It doesn't have to be about you. And you're not getting angry if you're not angry. You're not the one that's angry.

They're the one that's angry. And you understand and you're present with them in that moment and really reflecting that back. We'll do some examples actually in a minute. Yeah. And I want to say one thing about that. Sure. I've always focused on like listening and like connecting. Yep.

But because I tend to be a little bit more stoic in my, in just who I am, I've had to like get better at like, okay, maybe I like, I like, oh my gosh, like that happened to you? Like that doesn't really feel like it's tough for me, but I do with my eyes. You do with your eyes. I do with my eyes. That's important. And people still feel that. Here's what's important about that, Drew.

If you're faking it, oh, really? And you're thinking, this is not me. You don't have to turn yourself into someone else, right? But you can do it with urgency. You can do it by clarifying what? Seriously? He did this. Right.

It is really, you have to still be who you are. And it doesn't matter. If you're faking it, it won't work. Of course. There's no way to be like, what? What are you doing? You don't talk like that, right? So that's what I mean by sort of letting it in as well.

When it's truly genuine, it will come out the way your body is comfortable expressing it and will be authentic. Everybody who's listening is naturally doing this anyway, whether you realize it or not. It's more about tapping into that power, especially when it comes to creating empathy and connection with another person so that you can, get to a place of trust. And naturally, whatever is the best thing to happen next ends up happening. Yeah. It usually flows from, if you can calm your agenda down, I need to teach this person something, I need to fix it, they need to leave this conversation better than they came, I need to give

them something that's usable. That may happen, but that's actually not what the person wants. Most often, they just want you to be there with them to just join them in that moment, right? And it's funny. You mentioned that because that, uh, You know, there's a, there's a new book about dopamine. I'm forgetting about the title. I know the book you mean too.

It'll come to both of us at some way. And then another expert, it might have been the same author, was on a buddy of mine, Andrew Huberman's podcast. And they were talking about how the need to want to like push an agenda, like the resistance again, let's even take like politically. One person believes a particular way, you believe a particular way. The need to go in and sort of correct someone and that feeling of you're gearing up to tell somebody how it is,

that is often a stronger release of dopamine than something like positive happening in your life. So we in this place where people feel so addicted to want to come in and actually tell us, let me tell you how it is actually, right? Let me tell you about this, let me tell you about that aspect. Let me tell you about this aspect. And there's part of us that's addicted to that way of chiming in.

But the challenge is, forget about for a second whether you have a fair point or not a fair point when have we ever listened to anybody who's just come in and just told us how it is that we don't trust never never and the minute someone says let me tell you how it is you've already lost the person like they're they've already shut off they're already going to get defensive right so even in a conversation that's more genuine than that like I really want this person to think I'm a great listener I really want to do a good job listening. You're already operating from fear. The minute your agenda is driving the conversation, you're going to lose part of it. So there's a lot of kind of

just surrendering. This conversation is going to go how it goes. I just need to be present with this person. I don't need to come up with a solution. I don't have to say anything brilliant. I just need to be present. And Heinz Kohut, who found itself psychology, you know, his belief and he was right is as certainly as a therapist, your job is to just be a sounding board. often and reflecting back the accurate feelings and emotions. And then what happens is the person goes, oh, well, that doesn't sound quite right. And kind of the third time I've said that. And watch what happens. They'll start to figure it out themselves, right? Because you're just present in that moment. This is particularly true for spouses, for children, for best friends. Like you really, just drop the

agenda. Just be brave enough to be present and do it with your heart. I had a, I've told this story before, but one of my favorite little clients that I see, I asked them, I often check in with the kids that I work with because I often work with the parents at the same time. And I said, how do you think your parents are doing? They're really working on listening. They're really working on understanding your feelings. And he said, well, it's funny you say that. Because I think my mom's been listening with her heart. And I thought, that's it. You're listening with your heart, not your head, right? Easier said than done, but so powerful when you can do it. So powerful. Yeah. Again, going back to what you said earlier, we allow, it will happen naturally. Yes. But then the question is always, what's the blockage in between? So we were going through, and I think we hit the C and we hit the A. We hit the A. So now we're at the L.

So L is where you listen and then you get to choose your words. And you listen first because what you say is far less important than how you say it, first of all. And the words are much less important than the affect, right? So then after you've done all that, now you're listening. So you can paraphrase. You can say what the person said back to you with a little. twist. You can summarize, oh my God, are you kidding me? That's exactly what happened last week when

you went into the whatever, right? You can clarify. So what part of that, when did that first start to go wrong for you? You pick a detail, right? So people who are not super comfortable with being kind of overly affect-based, you can sort of pick a detail. But urgency, right? Like, you're picking a particular part of the conversation. That also makes oxytocin flow. You can wonder out loud. This is mostly for people that you're closest with. So let's say your spouse comes home and they start yelling you about something and they're telling you about something that something had happened today. But you know that something else just happened in their lives.

They just got fired or they had a big fight with their mom or something else happened. You can listen and then you say, you know what? I wonder also if the fact that that just happened or that terrible thing just happened is also part of this today. And then you'll often get tears. Yeah. That's what it is. Right.

And when you're doing this in a genuine way, you'll know because there's nodding, right? There's leaning in and there's like, yeah, and you'll see evidence on the person's face and in their body that you're making that connection that you literally feel in your heart. You're both in alignment now. When you're off, they're going to say no and you don't know. No, that's not it. You're not listening. They'll literally tell you. You're not listening to me.

That's not what I said. And it's usually when our agenda starts to slip in too early. And then the final thing is M, that's the mirroring. So when you've pulled all of those things together, you've had a good mirroring moment that you've shared that is literally like dropping a pebble in the water and the rings go out. That person is then going to feel better. You're going to feel better. They've learned something.

They may have a different interaction with someone else that day or later that day. And it just becomes part of this beautiful rhythm of how we start to communicate with each other. When it all comes together, it's so simple, but yet it's something that's, because it's so simple, it's just so easily to overlook. We forget the power that the calm technique. And again, people are already doing this, right? There's relationships in your life where you are doing this naturally. This isn't something that is completely foreign. And that's the best, that's the best teachings that are there. It's like, hey, look, you're already doing this. I'm highlighting it for you. I'm just helping you tap into it a little bit more.

Because there's certain areas of your life, your relationship, you're with your partner, your boyfriend, your spouse, your girlfriend, your whatever it might be, your kids. That's a big one. We chatted about earlier. Yeah. Your team. If you're an employer or if you work somewhere, you and your boss, your team, somebody reports to you, your social structures that are there.

If you take the areas where it's repeatedly budding of heads that are there, it's that we've forgotten. and it's usually because there's a big blockage in the way, a story, some resentment, some resistance, that is not allowing us or is in a way dehumanizing another person, right? Oh, okay, this works and this can work for somebody who gets it, but this person, let me tell you about Becky, let me tell you about, you know, Tim, let me tell you about this other person. They're just not capable of getting there. They're the problem.

And so we never even give them the opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really important thing that we have to, honestly, sometimes the person you least feel like doing this with is the person that needs it the most. And that's certainly true with your children, right? And that's a pretty profound thing to know. Let's talk about a couple areas where you also see this showing up.

You gave that perfect example of kids. Yeah. Right. Let's chat about relationships a little bit. Again, because you work with families. You don't particularly necessarily work with couples. I mean, it naturally comes up. Sometimes.

Yeah, it does. Yeah. So what are some common dynamics that you see for couples in the classic sort of, you know, men are for Mars, women are for Venus, all that other stuff that's there. What are some classic examples of where there's a breakdown? And really, they're missing that structure of the content. Okay. So this is a really good one, and people will recognize this. So I guess the first part that I want to kind of start with is that we tend to polarize, right? So we tend to choose people that are quite different from us most often.

And we do that because they will naturally complement us. And if you have good communication and you trust each other, you're going to be an awesome team. If you don't have good communication and you start to struggle and you sort of focus your time on trying to turn the other person into a version of you, that's where you're going to start going off the road. So that polarizing happens a lot with parenting. So it kind of looks like this. Like one parent is usually softer, a little more gentle, you know, worried about, you know, they're tired, they're hungry, they're having a hard time looking for what's behind the behavior. Because behavior is not a thing.

Behavior's not the problem. It's the symptom of the problem, almost always. And that's not just true with kids. That's everyone. And so they're looking at what's going on behind the behavior. And they tend to be a little softer and a little more gentle. And then the natural opposite to that is the other person. parent, which is often the dad, but not always. This is ridiculous. These kids are out of control.

We need to do something. They're running the house. How are they going to have skills, you know, to be an adult? And then what happens is the tougher parent has to get tougher because there's not enough rules being set. The softer parent has to get softer because the tougher parent is being too tough. And then you end up becoming a caricature. You end up being literally propelled away from each other. And then momentum grows because the stronger the opposition is, the stronger you have to be to oppose it, right? So now it becomes more intense on both sides. Kids are also smart, so they figure it out. They can figure out pretty quickly, oh, mom and dad are fighting over this. I can start a little trouble here, and then I can back out and no one's going to look at my behavior.

They're going to end up focused on each other. But polarizing happens a lot. And then it gets into the storytelling. How does that fit in with who you were and how your childhood was? How does that fit in with those implicit beliefs that I was talking about that are already there? And so what I find happens often, there's a few different dynamics, the mum often will start over functioning for everybody, right? Just sort of running the show and... Just let me do this. I'll just do it. I'll just do it. It's fine. Don't worry.

Yes, exactly. And then this is a really important part. I'm going to divert for a second, but the stories in our head become really profoundly important here. So as you move through your day, I'm like, of course. Of course nobody put the dishes in the sink. Why would they do that? Because I'm the one who does it and I'm the only one. And you're sort of doing this kind of ranting thing either out loud in your head or out loud with your voice or you're doing it inside your head. But it's chronic and you're in the shower. You know, I'm going to tell him and I can't believe they did this. And we're literally living in this story.

Now, what's important is the frontal lobe knows that it's not happening, but the midbrain doesn't. The midbrain thinks you're in trouble. It thinks your village is being attacked. It thinks some wild animal is going to attack you. Your cortisol levels are high. Your adrenaline is through the roof. you're constantly living in this state of reliving the argument. Because that perceived threat is just as real.

Whether you're imagining it, remembering it or in it. That's the truth, right? So you keep acting this out and then you go to lunch and you tell your girlfriends, can you believe it and they do this and this ranting kind of thing. And you can do a little bit of that. That's venting. That's okay. That's okay to do some of it.

But if you live there in your head all the time, you are constantly now in a state of fight or flight. and whoever walks into that room and asks you for a glass of water is going to get it, right? Because you're in a different state. So this is very important. And this can happen to both couples. So the other one over functions and does everything. Or if anyone else does something, the family's not good enough so they do it again.

Right. So the other one's like, well, why, why am I going to do it for? She's just going to do it again for me or she's going to tell me that's wrong. I'm getting in trouble anyway whether I do it or I don't do it. So maybe I just won't do it. Right. So one couple ends up feeling misunderstood, not appreciated, you know, taken advantage of. And the other person feels on the periphery. They're not given any respect. They're undermined. They're treated like a child. And that's, first of all, not great for intimacy. That's not great for your sex life, right? That's not cute on either side. And the further away you get from each other. And the other thing that's important is children are watching. They're watching. They're watching these conversations or watching whether or not they're being resolved. They can hear you, especially when you're talking out loud about each other.

And so we're teaching our children what relationships look like. So that's a really common one or one under functions, one over functions, one under functions. And that can play out in all kinds of different ways. It's funny. You were talking about the stories that people have and how they continue it throughout the day. And even in the shower, you know, in the car. I saw this meme like two years ago. and it was a person taking a shower

and there was a bunch of like, there's like an encyclopedia like behind them and the book said basically like fictitious arguments that I've won in the shower volume one through 10. That's so true though. How often do we do that?

In their cars, that's the other place where we love to have arguments. Totally. Yeah. The beautiful thing is that a little bit of that piece and space allows us but if we use that space to just continue a story,

it drives us deeper. And then we don't get to see how we were a, part in it or actually how to we actually create a resolution. Yes, that's the important part is if you stay there, if you get stuck there, it's no longer a strategy. It's no longer a tool. Like venting for a few minutes and then moving on is fine.

But getting stuck there is a problem because then the reticular activation system lights up and only sees those flaws in your partner. Your body constantly thinks you're in that argument day and night and you wake up with a pit in your stomach and you go to sleep with a pit in your stomach. and even when there's good moments, you won't let them in because it doesn't fit your story. Like you have a big drawer for all the things your spouse doesn't do right, and then you have a little bitty one for the things that they do right. There's nowhere to put them. You can't file it, so it just goes to junk.

Right. So one of the things you can do that's really helpful, and I mentioned it before, is start looking for the times when your spouse does do something nice for you, does do something kind. And they're there. They are there. It's just you're not pulling them into your awareness. And it's really challenging that story. So in the middle of that ranting, you have to allow yourself to do it, and then you have to stop. And then you have to think about something neutral.

It's not easy to do because we like our story. You talked about it a minute ago, that dopamine thing, that happens in the shower when you're fighting and winning that argument with yourself. Right. So you're constantly getting that hit all the way through. And it's interesting about anger. You cannot be angry for more than 90 seconds, biologically. So you're angry for 90 seconds. That's just about enough time to start a battle, run away.

throw a spear or whatever it is that you have to do, after 90 seconds, it's a choice. So you start thinking about it again. I can't believe it. And you reenact it and now you're mad again. And then you reenact it and you're mad again. And you're mad again and you're mad again. Right. And then that affects all the relationships in your life with your children, with your friends,

with everyone because you're up to here all the time with that level of stress. So part of it is, and this is so hard, we don't want to admit this to ourselves. We really don't. But the truth is, those stories keep fueling your reality. And if that's what you're focused on, that's what you'll see. It's truly that simple. And so start tagging something else or at least think about something neutral. Think about something else.

Listen to something else. Listen to a podcast. Do something else. List five things in your life that you appreciate. Do whatever you can to pull your brain away from that stuckness, which is quite addictive, actually. It's so addictive that it's almost like. gratitude and you know you're a big fan of this and you teach parents how to do it with

their kids and highlight it in a notebook and read it at the end of the night and you know there's often this philosophy and sort of the world of relationship coaching and counseling which is like you know the happiest you know couples have a five to one ratio you know for every one negative thing interaction there's gonna be five positive ones that are there but in a way so much of this is true because when we are up to here and how we see the world and we're so clear that that's the way that it is, is very hard to see anything else that's not that. It's very hard to see anything else. And so you cannot acknowledge the joy and the beauty that's there.

You don't compliment your partner on that thing that they do for you every morning that's still special and beautiful. Like they like making the bed and you like to make the coffee. But still, that's great because you don't like to make the bed and you stopped thanking them for that. Yep. And when you miss that, you miss so much of the joy and the beauty in life. You do.

And if that's the story you tell, even if you, And moving on, right? I'm going to, this marriage is over. I'm going to have a new partner. If you don't fix those stories, they will show up again in your next relationship. And if you're being really honest with yourself, it's probably showing up in other relationships. Wherever you go, there you are. Wherever you go, there you are.

And it's a big reason why one of the best lessons in people's life is not just not getting what they want, but getting what they want. And then realizing that didn't change anything. Yep. I thought it was my work. I thought it was my boss that was the problem of it. And sure, they might have been a little bit of a problem in it. Then you go start somewhere else. Yeah.

And those patterns continue. Yeah. And that pain and that suffering is one of the best teachers in life. If we're open to it, if we're open to seeing that the smoke detector is screaming for a reason. Yeah. Because there's fire somewhere. Yeah. That is so true.

And that piece of it is where freedom lies. right and it's where true happiness actually lies and it's in every story it's in every book it's in every ancient text it's in the wizard of Oz it's in star wars you can look for it it's over and over again you're the hero in the story the only one is going to come and save you is you and that's the truth and we hear it over and over again but it's absolutely the truth and when i have couples come into my office and it's kind of funny because they literally always come in truly believing that i am going to tell their partner how wrong they are. And you're going to hear it from a professional and they sort of sit there like, okay, what is the story? You're going to validate what I'm thinking. And that's never

going to work and that never is the reason. Right. It's always, if you want to change your partner, change yourself. That's the truth. If you don't like the behavior that your partner has, look inward. Relationships are an inside job. It's the truth. And it usually starts with your relationship with you. And people don't love to hear that. And that's what part of the ranting is. When we do this ranting thing, we're literally going like, are you going to let this happen? Like, does nobody else see how unfair this is? Is somebody going to do something?

But nobody is. You're going to do something. That's who's going to do something. You're going to save you. No one's going to save you. It seems that one of the reasons and one of those blockages that are there that prevent us from taking that path is that it's scary to give up our problems. It is. Can you talk a little bit about that?

It is. Well, and there's a few reasons why. one, the midbrain tells us that by focusing on that problem, that's the only thing that's kept us alive. If I take my eye off that thing that could leap at me, I'm going to die. And this comes into the addictive part of it as well, right? So your midbrain does not know what's going on. It just knows that you rant and you're still alive. Therefore, this thing must be keeping me safe. It's the frontal lobe that's able to mitigate that. It's the frontal lobe that goes, hey, wait a second, this is happening here and it's happening here and it's still happening here.

What's the common denominator? What can I do? What's my lesson? What's my role? Right? And you have to kind of pull yourself out of that very primal safety system that activates. The addiction piece is another. That's a very powerful thing. People have a very hard time letting go of their story because it feels good to rant. And anger especially feels better than sadness, right? Anger of all of the what we call negative emotions, anxiety probably feels the best. Right? It's much easier to feel angry than sad or angry than afraid, right? There's also this question that people have is that who would I be if I didn't have my problems?

Yeah, that comes back. Who would I be? What do I know on the other side? Yes. If you grew up and your only sense, even on a practical level, is that, you know, you think of your parents as being in love. And in love meant they fought, you know, all the time. Mm-hmm. Or they had this particular type of conflict.

But that was just because they were passionate and they were in love or that, you know, if you think that, that's all you know. That's right. And sometimes people don't know what's on the opposite side of things. And they're scared to know because as terrible as a state can be, the brain doesn't like to change states, right? I'll take this state because it's familiar. I don't know what's going to happen if I shift states. But you also don't have to leap, right? It doesn't have to be this massive jump to, oh, I'm going to think differently and everything's going to be different.

You can practice it. It's a practice. Do it for five minutes a day, right? Five minutes a day, try to think about positive things. For a few minutes a day, just set smaller goals for yourself. I'm going to notice five things about my spouse today. Or I'm going to go to work and I'm going to find two things about my coworker that I actually like. Or as soon as I think about something that's unpleasant, I'm going to spend a few minutes thinking about something neutral. Right. And as soon as you shift your thinking, the vibration in your body changes. Your biochemical signature changes. changes, right? And as soon as that changes, your body goes, okay. So just stretch that out. You don't have to go all the way from completely miserable and ranting to loving your life. That's a, that's a big leap. That's a big state change. But time is going to pass anyway. So do something every single day that causes you to challenge yourself and shake the pattern up a little bit and grow new neuro pathways. And most of it is about, honestly, it's about learning to think about neutral things or what I call the next best feeling thought, something that just feels a little better

than the thought you had before, right? It's actually, and it takes work to do that. It does. But that's what really, that's another form of a, that's like a meditation. It's a concentration on something. Absolutely. I often think of like gratitude is meditation

for your prefrontal cortex because it's natural that life's happenings can take over. And we tend to remember because of the negativity bias, we tend to remember things that are negative. Everybody remembers, we just had a 20th anniversary. If you were live on September 11th and you were probably older than the age of, you know, eight. Everybody remembers where they were.

Exactly. Because that gets rooted in our brain. It's a negative experience. It's a painful experience. It's a scary experience. Your brain wants to remember that. And so that hopefully, you know, could protect itself or others from that pain and experiencing the future. And so because we have this negative.

We actually have to take time because we'll forget the good things that happen. We forget the amazing things that take place. I did a gratitude workshop earlier in the year at the like the halfway year mark for my podcast. And I said, you know, we tend to, and again explaining out the basics on the negativity bias, we tend to focus on what either hasn't happened that we wanted or the negative stuff that's happened. And then when we are encountering a new challenge in our life that we want to do, like we want to launch a new business, but maybe we've never done it before. We forget that there's so many things and areas in our life where we've demonstrated we had strength. And if we keep on showing up. So let's practice this.

Let's practice. And I had three questions. The first question that I said is, so you're reflecting back on the quarter or the year. And the first question was, what's something that is? Something tough, no matter how big or small, something tough that you accomplished that you're proud of. Yeah. Because we tend to not pat ourselves on the back. Oh, it's true.

Right. What's the rewards? What's the journal that you have with the WINS journal with the kids? The accomplishment book. Accomplishment book, right? And you do this with kids. I was just listening to your episode that you have on this, is that kids forget how capable they are. And adults also forget how capable they are.

Second question was, who's someone that went out of their way, no matter how big or small, for you. They did something nice for you. Who's someone? Because when we often think that the world is against us or we don't have enough support or that we feel like we're lonely or things aren't going the way we want to, we forget that kind gesture. We forget that time that somebody, you know, paid for our coffee or gave us that mentorship call and it completely changed the trajectory of our life. Absolutely. And the last one is who's someone that you did something for? That's a good one. because along the same vein is that there's so many people that are so hard of themselves. Yeah.

And they are constantly comparing themselves. And comparing is wired into our DNA. It is. It was wired into our survival, just like remembering negative experience are. So we were meant to compare to make sure that we had enough, that our people had enough, and we're always looking around to make sure everything's there. It's just that now we have so many inputs of comparison. And if you want to go doom scrolling and looking for them all, you can find them all.

You can. And that doesn't necessarily mean that those people are any happy. or any more satisfied with their life. So these are just, it's just nothing special. It's just an opportunity to meditate on and train your frontal lobe on there's actually good things that are taking place. It's so true. You would not go to the gym, do two setups and wonder why you don't have abs, right? It's the same thing.

You want to grow these neuropathways. You want to grow these new habits of thinking. And it takes time. It doesn't take as much time as you think it's going to take. And you start to see the results. You start to feel the results. really quickly, but it is a practice. It really is. And it's something you have to be mindful of every day. And it's keeping that frontal lobe on, right? And having it mitigate the safety system and the brain.

We're literally walking around in, I forget who said this, but it's brilliant, in virtual reality suits. That's what our body is. We take energy, we take vibration, and we interpret it. We interpret reality. And that is true. So, but we get to decide what we focus on. We get to decide what we think about. we get to decide where our energy flows and where thoughts go, energy flows. So for you in terms of actually making this a habit, and I know you've been practicing this for years, you teach this for years, but just as important for you to practice it, right? The whole, you know, the shoemaker's son has no shoes type thing, right? It's so important to live it.

How have you found for you that it is so integrated into your life or your world that you don't have to, like think about it, right? Like you've, you've sort of have it stacked or you've placed it into your life and your routine with other people or yourself individually that it's just now part of your life. Yeah. Like brushing your teeth. The calm technique for sure is, I mean, there's moments where my own teenage daughter can trigger me a bit and I'll get off track and I'll go back and I'll repair. But for the most part, and I can teach it and I can, I can be in front of a whole group of people and do examples of that don't have to think about so much. And that's what I want people to know that as you practice this, it will become natural. And it's more of a way of being. It's more of a philosophy

than a strategy. Right. And you can approach everything this way. The one strategy I've learned to do recently that I've been practicing, though, that helps me a lot is when I have a negative emotion of any kind, I go towards it instead of away from it. And I've become acutely aware, both as a therapist and also watching as people are struggling in some really difficult times and also knowing myself. So if I'm feeling worried about one of my kids or I'm stressing, about whatever's going on in my life. I literally put my hand on my heart. I close my eyes and I go directly into that emotion. Okay, fear. Thank you. Thank you, anxiety. You're always coming out swinging for me. You're always coming out like full force. I love that about you. I appreciate that you do that for me.

Thank you. I love you for it. But I'm actually okay in this moment. I don't need you right now. And you'll say that out loud. I'll say it out loud. And you said recently, this is something you've been doing recently. Give us the contrast. What would you do before? probably like spin out and be up half the night and think about all the things that are wrong. It's just in your head. It's running around. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then, you know, often very common to wake up in the middle of the night, not get able to get back to sleep. And now I use a strategy where I go towards the fear. I welcome it. I thank it. It's information. It's important. Sadness is another one. Let yourself feel it. This is what it means to be human. These emotions are part of. of what make us who we are. And we can't have the good stuff without the bad stuff. And what's so interesting is when you go directly, let's say, into the sadness, it's okay to feel sad. This is how sadness feels. This is how a mother feels when. This is how a human being feels when. This is how it

feels to think something's going to happen and it doesn't. And honor that feeling and go towards it. It will metabolize. It will melt away. And after a few minutes, you find yourself thinking about something else. It's amazing. It is, I can't even remember. It's, part of it is heart math, like brain, heart coherence. And there's a few things that I heard together. And somehow it came out in my brain this way. And I teach the people that I work with in my clients and my kids that I work with to do it. It is the opposite of what we often do. We want to like, oh, I'm feeling this. Oh, I don't want to think about it. Oh, I got to do something. Oh, I got to find a solution. But actually just calming down and turning around and walking right towards.

it can be very, very powerful. Do you think at all that your upbringing and unique experiences that you had and the loss of your brother and how your parents kind of, you know, treated you and you're not feeling seen and not leading to like a people pleasing? So that's how you get seen. Do you think that at all plays into the not allowing yourself previously to maybe fully feel the emotions? Without a doubt, there's no question. But I would also say that that is on top of that. such a human thing, right? It's emotions, especially intense emotions, are very uncomfortable in the body, particularly anxiety, right? Anxiety is particularly awful and stressful and feels, it's one of the most difficult experiences to feel. Sadness is also very hard. So yes, for sure, that,

and I have to be aware of that, right? And I have to allow myself and know that I'm good enough and I I am worthy of feeling those feelings and I'm allowed to feel those things. And I want to say, too, like, and this is where the story, you know, my parents were actually really lovely. And after they got over my brother, they were very much there for me. But my story kept saying in some ways that they weren't. That's the piece that's so interesting. And if I look back with my adult eyes and my frontal lobe, I can see that. But it imprinted at such a delicate time for me. And I would I didn't do it any other way. I wouldn't, I mean, obviously I would want my brother to be okay. But I also know that that's something that has helped me with my work and it's helped me be exactly who I am. And so I think part of it is accepting and understanding when things happen to you that they come in some weird packages and some difficult packages and trauma is never an easy thing. But it's what you decide to do with it, right? Who am I going to be now? How am I going to be my best self anyway? And I think the greatest gift you can give yourself is to allow yourself to feel what you feel.

And often people get, especially in this wonderful world where there's spirituality and all these great teachings. And what I find happening is a lot of people are just meaner to themselves now. I should know better. And I read this book and I've learned how to do this and I've done my breathwork and why am I still doing this? And you get so mad at yourself. But that's exactly what happens when you don't go inward. Right. It has to be, I'm going to allow myself.

Okay. So I'm back here again. So my theme song's playing again. Here it is, but not with judgment. Not with you, an idiot, you should know better. It's okay. Here it is. It's back and that's okay.

The most important thing, Drew, is using the calm technique on yourself. Right? That's the most important thing. Because some people are addicted to beating themselves up. If you look at the science of self-compassion, we've had on Dr. Kristen Neff, who's one of the leaders in the space that's there, is that, you know, there's a reason why we love picking on ourselves. There is even a weird little dopamine hid that we get from telling ourselves that we're wrong,

that we should have known better. And we beat ourselves up and we're worse to ourselves than anybody would ever speak to us. We would never speak to other people the way we speak to ourselves often. And that's the part that needs to stop. That's the voice that we need to start to silence. And I know we're running out of time, but I have one strategy that I think is really helpful. And this really speaks to not being enough and your self-esteem. and just think of it like a bank account, right? So, so you're, I don't know, you got minus $80,000

in your bank account. So if you give yourself a few kudos and you try to, you know, compliment yourself and be kind to yourself, you're not going to notice it. Not for a really long time, because there's no difference between being at minus 80,000 and minus 40,000. You're not going to feel it. But if you keep saying yourself, okay, that was nice of me. That was really sweet of me. I like how I did that. That was so nice to me to let that person in. The smallest things. It doesn't have to be, oh, I won an award. That was really a nice moment. I was a good human being in that moment.

I like how I handled that. And just keep making deposits and making deposits and making deposits. What will start to happen is you'll get to zero, right? And once you get to zero, when you start to compliment yourself, you're going to be like, yeah, that was really cool to me. You're going to start to feel it. And so being your own best friend and really solidly being aligned with your true self, with your best self, who, by the way, will never agree. with you when you beat yourself up. Never. Your ego is what gets nasty. That higher self, that that, that, why is this most connected part of yourself? Won't go there with you. That's why you feel so

awful. It's not the thing that's happening to you. It's not the person that's doing that to you. It's you being in such disagreement, such a gap between what you know is, where your integrity is, where love is, and where you find yourself in the present moment. It's so important. And I think that the component that is there that you share that I want to just touch on a little bit before we close up is the calm technique on yourself. How is that different than let's say you're doing it with somebody else? And just reiterate again why it's so important and when somebody would do it. Sure. So, okay, so let's say you just got in a horrible argument with your spouse. Okay. And you go upstairs and you're doing that ranting thing again. So while you're ranting, you're,

literally either out loud or in your head, say, of course, of course you're going to feel that way. You work so hard. You were the one who cleaned the cold kitchen and he came in and said this. Actually validate first that that's okay to feel that way. Yeah, but talk to yourself like yourself is kind of like a different person a little bit. Like it's your best friend. If your best friend came and said that to, what would you say? Right. Right. And say that out loud and actually match the affect with yourself and really like, you know, summarize and say, yeah, I do feel like. this a lot of the time and allow yourself to just feel nurtured and listen to and understood.

And then do the part that I talked about where you literally go into yourself and go, okay, this is how it feels to feel like people are taking advantage of you. And this is what it feels like to feel like nobody appreciates you again and honor that feeling and go right into it and sit with it for a minute. Then take a breath. So you've done the whole calm technique. You've done in the middle part you've sort of connected with that feeling. then take a breath and start to think about, okay, can I think of one neutral thought? Can I think of

something else that's going to take me away from that ugly thought that I just had or that space that I'm in? Or go look at photo albums or look at pictures on your phone or listen to a piece of music or go outside, look at the clouds in the sky. Do something. And then your brain's going to go, what are you doing? What are you doing? You should be back here thinking about this thing. And then you go back again. You do it for a second. And then you spend a long, time thinking about something else. You think and then you do something else, you know, then you, then you find another neutral thought and you just keep in play with yourself. You keep doing that until what happens is you'll get to a place where you can nurture yourself, listen to yourself, acknowledge yourself, metabolize that, literally just alchemize it into something else,

move on to something neutral and then suddenly be in a better mood without even realizing it. And then you can look for five nice things that your spouse does. Or then you can think about your colleague in a different way and challenge yourself. Or even acknowledge yourself and say, hey, you know, Drew, you did the, you're doing, you know, you did the best you could. Yeah. Yeah, okay, you want to create more here. But let's look at these aspects, right? You handled this situation. Yes. You did this. I find that as a transitioning moment, especially when I'm by myself, walking is kind of like my go-to. Yeah, me too. Especially with the whole science around EMDR. Yes. And eye lateral movements that are there and the research that goes in, you know, when we're walking, we're making forward progress.

And that naturally starts to relax the vagal nerve. Absolutely. And we feel like, okay, look, no matter what happened, you are literally kind of walking away from your problems just temporarily to give a little bit of space around things. The brain just wants you to run. So walking, a lot of people run also when they're upset. They go on a jog. They go on a run. But yeah, moving forward, though, is actually really important.

And if you can't, you can do it in your mind. Yeah. Right. And just having those different habits and loving yourself. And after that, that's when you can say, okay, what's my lesson? Right. Because you're basically saying if you're not in a neutral state, if we have not de-escalated a little bit. You're just going to beat yourself up if you ask.

Or you won't be able to ask those really difficult questions. How does this serve me? Is this true? Right. And who am I without this? Those are really important questions. That's higher order thinking. that's the magnificence of the human brain.

But you can't do that until you've self-parented your way to that. Yeah, your brain is like a detective. If you believe a story, I'm a failure. It's on a mission to look for that. And then toxic positivity is trying to brute force squash that with, I'm amazing, I'm good enough, I'm this, I'm that. It's too big of a jump. Not saying that there might not be some elements of that that could work, but you're just not in a receptive space.

No. And then you get mad at yourself for not being able to keep it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's a whole little system. It's so straightforward, but it works. I know. But it works.

It really does. And humans are messy, but this actually really, if you can make this a lifestyle, if you can make this something that you love yourself enough to do, you will change your life, truly. This was fantastic. Thank you. I can't even believe that the time just flew by just like that. It feels like we just sat down and started to talk about it. You work, as I mentioned earlier, you have a whole system and methodology and a group of things that you do.

Now, even a podcast. Yes. Since I think the last time that you came on, the podcast is new. So take us through a little bit of the world. Let's start with the podcast. Sure. People love this conversation. I think the podcast is a natural next leap that's there.

Perfect. They can continue and then you're there in your world. What is it and walks through? Okay. So I have two podcasts. I have the connected parenting podcast, which really talks about a lot of the things we did today. All things parenting. I take parents through the calm technique and also, you know, bedtimes and angry teens and all kinds of stuff.

And we have a lot of fun. It's wonderful. I enjoy it. And that's wherever you can find your podcast. And I try to do it weekly, but it doesn't really turn out weekly. I try to do it as much as I can. I have another podcast called the Mental Health Comedy podcast, which, so I host that along with Ed Krasnick, who's a comedian. And we interview well-known celebrities and entertainers about mental health. about their mental health, about anxiety, about worries, about depression, and comedians are brilliant, amazing people, but they often carry that brain that can see all the amazing intricacies in life and be brilliant enough to find what's funny can also turn on you. And there can be a shadow of that. We've had some fantastic guests. And that is very much

strategy-based. So I make sure in every episode I give people tools. Like, we can talk a lot about mental health and the importance of mental health, and that's important. but I actually give people tools. It's literally, here's what to do. Try this. So they're exercises. So those are two ways that people can dive deeper into this.

I love it. So that's content. There's also books that are out there. We'll come back to them. But I really think especially, you know, last year I was talking to you in the beginning, I was like, I bet in a very unfortunate and fortunate way

that you guys exist. Like this has probably been a big year for business. So many families are struggling. Yep. So many kids are struggling. Yes. And there's parents that are listening here and are hearing these examples and with school closures and other stuff and just people trying to

navigate this new world that we're in. People are looking for support. So you have a whole team that works with families. Yeah, we have a big team and we work with kids directly. So we have people who just do pediatric work. And we do very different therapy with kids. We make sure it's fun. If they love Star Wars, it's all about Star Wars.

If it's Harry Potter, it's all about Harry Potter. If they want to go science, we go science. We tailor it. So every child has a magical experience and feels really safe and loved. Zoe, my daughter is on the pediatric team and works with kids. And we have a bunch of other people who do it, and it's wonderful. And then there's also a bunch of us that work just with the parents and really supporting parents through this journey of parenting, which is hard. We specialize in gifted kids, kids who are super bright and kids that have ADHD or kids that I call gladiators.

Just sassy, feisty, no, why? Why would I do that when I can do this? kids who are going to make great CEOs, like great adults, but just have two, their feelings are too big to fit in their little bodies. And those are our favorite kind of kids. So, and the connected parenting method works on all kids. If your child doesn't fit in that category and you just want some really solid, science-based, you know, it's the neurobiology of love, really, connected parenting. It works on all kids, but it's especially effective with the sassy or fisterier kids where, you know, you read all the parenting books and it works well on your other kids, but not on that kid.

that's where we really come in, I think. And the beautiful thing, this all happens over like the web. Yes. They don't necessarily come in and see you guys in person. No, we have, I mean, we can, depending on what city people are in, but we work with families from all over the world. All over the world. So that's our team. And then we have online courses.

So I have a teen course and a connected parenting kids course where you, I basically go through the curriculum with you. It's all recorded. It's all online. You can, it's on demand. And you can either just watch the videos or you can. can join and work with me once a month where I do online coaching calls, which are amazingly fun with families literally from every corner of the globe, all saying the same things about their kids, which is pretty amazing. And it's a really supportive community. So yeah. That's beautiful. And here's

something super unique. You have this role play playground. Yes. Membership for parents. Talk to us about what that is. So it's actually delightful. So it's a membership where you pay for the month and you get to go to four different sessions, there's always at least two connected parenting practitioners on the call. And parents join and they practice the calm technique. And they exchange roles and, you know, one will be the kid and then one is the parent and one's having a meltdown. And if it doesn't work, if you're not doing the calm technique properly or as efficiently as you could, you're going to see the person escalate. And in this loving, joyful way, our team helps people get better and better at this technique, which takes practice. It's not so easy. And then the

parents just support each other and help each other. They're all parents of really challenging, amazing, smart, funny gladiator kids. And it's just a really lovely place to feel supported and learn. I love that. And it's a low cost entry. It's like 49 bucks. That's why we did it. Therapy's expensive and the courses, not everybody can afford that. And we wanted to have a place where people can really learn. And our belief always at Connected Parenting is if you can't figure this out in your own house, how are we going to do it as a planet? How are we going to do it as a community, as a country, as a city. So it gives you the confidence to make your home life and just go as well as you possibly can, as well as it possibly can, and just feel confident. And it's lovely. It's a

beautiful place to practice. Podcast, coaching for both family and kids individually, the courses that are there, and then the books. I love the teen book. I always remember the title, you're ruining my life. Yeah. The question is, whose life? Yours or your child? Yes. Both. And then there's connected parenting. Yes, how to raise a great kid. Yeah. It's fantastic.

It's a huge ecosystem you've built and a lot of incredible tools, a lot of them free that are available for people. And then those who want more assistance can go down that pathway with you guys. And just as always, it's just such a pleasure. Thank you. I love our conversations. Thank you so much. Our conversations is so great. I get the most beautiful, thoughtful messages every time you're on from folks who, especially, I would say, parents.

And naturally it tends to be a lot of moms that reach out who have so much compassion for how they now reseed their relationship with their child. That makes me so happy. Yeah. And forgiveness for themselves for feeling like they've messed up or done something wrong, which is a huge part of this. There's the self-compassion. Yeah.

Absolutely. So Jennifer, thank you for being here. Thanks for bringing your daughter. Oh, it's fun. Thank you. If anybody wants to work with her as a coach. Reach out to you guys. And we're going to go have a nice mother and daughter evening now.

We're going to do something fun. Enjoy it. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you.