The Resilient Mind - You're Not Broken. You're Just Disconnected - Dr. Jody Carrington

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Watch the full video interview on the new Resilient Mind YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXHijSFgacWe are told we're in a mental health crisis, with rates of anxiety and depression higher than ever before. But what if it's not a mental health crisis at all? What if what we're truly experiencing is an "understandable human response to a loneliness epidemic?"In this episode, I'm joined by the incredible Dr. Jody Carrington psychologist, bestselling author, and renowned "connection crusader." Dr. Carrington argues that the path to healing isn't found in isolation, but through reconnection with those around us.She shares a deeply personal and astonishing story from her own life that taught her the most important component of human connection a 40-year-old family secret that revealed a sister she never knew she had. This conversation is a powerful reminder that we are wired for connection and that the things that hurt us most often hold the key to healing us.Connect with Dr. Jody Carrington⁩Website:- https://www.drjodycarrington.com/Youtube:- ‪@DrJodyCarrington‬----------Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you'll be listening to You're Not Broken, you're just disconnected with Dr. Jody Carrington. This episode is also available in video. Watch it on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. We've never seen rates of mental health issues, anxiety, depression, this high on this planet in the history of the free world.

Today I'm joined by the incredible Dr. Jody Carrington, psychologist, bestselling author, and Connection Crusader. Whether she's speaking to educators, parents, leaders, Jodie's message is clear. We heal through reconnection. What we are experiencing is an understandable human response to a loneliness epidemic. We are all just here walking each other home. The things that hurt us the most are the things we need to heal us the most.

In order to go out, you have to go in first. You know, I know the things that you just mentioned about, that idea of proximity that we had in the past and we don't have today. Our great-grandparents looked at their children 72% more of the time than we looked at our babies today. We are dying faster from emotional illness than from physical illness. Like, before you even pee, your check in your phone. Welcome, Dr. Jody Carrington. I am super excited to have you here on The Resilient Mind.

Oh, I was super excited to be here. So we're going to jump right in. And my first question was one of the things in studying your work. work is you often talk about the power of reconnection. What moment in your own life taught you about the most important component of human connection? Oh my lord. Okay. Well, there's many of them, but I think one of the things that I think about often these days is I didn't, so I grew up in a little town in Alberta, Canada, and I grew up as the oldest daughter of two kids. And so my mom and dad were high school sweethearts. like lived six miles from each other.

Their first date was when they were 14. They went gopher hunting in the field between their two houses. So I thought we knew everything about each other. And they had me, they had my brother. We, you know, grew up in this lovely real community. My brother, Ida leave home, get married, do all the things. And my parents end up getting divorced. And, you know, as it were, we all become lovely and connected to successful people.

And then when I was 35, I was pregnant. and married to my husband. And my mom and dad were not living together. Obviously, they've been divorced for about 20 years at that point. But my mom said, hey, what are you doing this weekend? Do you want to come home to the farm? And I said, oh, of course, like, yeah, my husband's away. I'll come.

And my brother, we can visit. And so we were sitting at the kitchen table. And I was waiting, just having coffee with my mom. And my brother and my father walk in, who like, this is not normal because this is, you know, now my mom's home. Anyway, so they walked in and they sat out of the kitchen table. and my brother and I'm working on, like, what is going on here? And my mother and my father said, my dad started to cry.

And he said, there's something we need to tell you that we haven't told anybody in 40 years. And I said, you know, so we were like, oh, my God, like, I don't, could he be dying? Like, I don't, obviously, maybe you can't be dying for free. So he said, you have a sister. You have a full biological sister. Your mother and I got pregnant when we were in our teens. And because we couldn't tell anybody our grand, You know, our parents never knew, your grandparents never knew.

But we managed to get your mom to a home for unwind mothers and you have a sister. And we were like, what? So at this point, it was like, okay, so that's cool. Like, nobody's dying. Like, there's one more of us. Like, that's going to be okay. And then it started to sink in that they're like, oh, my gosh, like she looks like your mom. And she sounds like, you, Joe.

And I was like, whoa, time out. Like, you've met her? And they're like, oh, yeah. Like, she's love her. And I was like, just a second. And then my dad, like, they're sobbing and all the things. And he's like, would you guys like to meet her? And I was thinking, like, maybe like next Christmas.

And my brother was like, of course, dad. And he's like, great. She's in the garage. Like a puppy. And it's not actually true. She was driving. She was like, you always have been. But she was five minutes away.

And we met her that day. And she is remarkable. And so we've now had 15 years. together since that time. And there's been a lot of stories. My father just actually passed away a month to go yesterday. And so I'm so grateful that we, you know, this, this, this is the most powerful. It's interesting.

I've studied human connection my whole life. And I did, of course, know this until I, you know, much later in my career, I was already a psychologist. I'd practiced for years. And it's interesting that this story, you know, is certainly where it all started for me. And it's been remarkable. It's been remarkable to watch my parents navigate that. And, you know, my sister Valerie and her family,

her adoptive family now integrating into our biological family. And at the last, even our dad, you know, what does that mean for her for me and for my brother? So I was not happy about it. I'll tell you that for free because I was the oldest and the only daughter. And then suddenly I was like the middle kid. And I was like the second daughter. So there was lots of navigating about what that would look like. but it was, it's been one of the guests for sure.

Wow. And out of my own curiosity, when you met, was she like, I'm the older sister? No. No, not at all. She, like, she was raised as the oldest sister in her family as well. She is an adoptive, a younger adoptive brother. And so I, it's interesting. We're both very powerful women now, but we're also very much alike.

Like, if you see us in the same room, people can't tell us apart. Now, I don't think she looks anything like me, but like, we get mixed up for each other sometimes. And she looks, I think, a lot more like my mom than I do. But yeah, she's got some very strong traits. We say this all the time. Like, if we grew up together, we'd probably kill each other. But it keeps so funny, can I tell you?

Like, we grew up an hour and a half. She grew up an hour and a half from our front door. We were at the University of Alberta at the same time. We live three blocks away from each other. Wow. And I found she took an undergrad in psychology. Yeah. We're like, did you drink here?

Did you go here? Did you like, I was like, thank God. Like, can you imagine? And like, even we're talking about this at my dad's funeral. Like, I don't know that I would have, like if I would have walked by her. You know how sometimes like people look like you and you think, oh my gosh, that looks like my father. And that looks like my mother. I don't know that I would have ever made that connection.

But everybody else, whenever I say that, they're like, oh, yes, you would have. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. So, anyway, here we are. And so what does connection mean to you then? How old do you define that? I think there's a couple of things. things when I think about this from a human perspective. Okay, so there's two rules to this human

race. We are way more alike than we are different. Our DNA as human beings is 99.98% the same. As you know, race is a social construct. And so sort of the first rule of the human race, whoever created us or however we got here is that we are neurobiologically wired for connection. You disconnect from an instant they die. We will do better on this planet if we are good at initiating and maintaining and maintaining and mostly repairing relationship. And so it's sort of the key, I think, to everything that is certainly getting overlooked in this AI-infused era. And I think what's interesting about it for me is we will never automate relationship. We will never in the foreseeable future. We talk a lot about doing therapy with bots and, you know, engaging in those things

and expediting the process of the human experience with, you know, artificial intelligence. The issue is, for me, I can never see a day where we will automate relationship. And I think the only AI that matters in the most successful relationships or organizations is authentic interaction. And it's interesting because despite the fact that we're neurobiologically wired for connection, as human beings, the hardest thing we will ever do is look at each other. And we've never had so many opportunities to look away. And where do you think people will choose to look away?

The hardest thing we will do is look at each other, mostly because so much of what we know about each other is written without words. So depending on where I feel, if you feel lonely, where are your eyes down typically? If you feel like because of the color of your skin, you've been extradited because of the way that you look, the way that you, your gender identity, if any of those things are not acceptable, if you are struggling with grief or anxiety or depression, we tend to look. down. And what is interesting is the more I am in love with you, the more I feel like I've hurt you, the more I want to know or not know about you dictates how much I can hold gaze with you. And there's cultural differences in this regard, but as humans, we are all neurobiologically wired for connection. And we've never seen rates of mental health issues, anxiety, depression, this high on this planet in the history of the free world. And people say this to me all the time.

We're in a mental health crisis. And the data would support. that. You know, rates of suicide continue to rise, anxiety, depression. We're, for the first time in history, we are dying faster from emotional illness than from physical illness. In a globe where we've never had this much access to resources and research, right? What's the issue? So we are like, obviously it's the mental health issues and I don't think it is. I think what we are experiencing is an understandable human response to a loneliness epidemic. Because we were never, it is estimated that our great-grandparents looked at their children, 72% more at a time than we look at our babies today. Wow. And is it like we are more distracted? We have so many distractions. We kind of, maybe there's

this idea about being hyper-independent. Like what is kind of at the heart of causing a lot of that disconnect? Yes, all of those things. Also, I want you to think about the proximity with which you interact with the people in your family, in your system. And, you know, if you think about the square footer to the house that many of our grandparents lived in versus the square footers of the house in which we raise our babies, you know, the size of the beds that our grandparents slept in. I mean, I say this often, you know, my Jack and Evelyn Carrington slept in a single bed. If they had a knockdown, shoot him out. I mean, their noses were together, you know?

My personal husband and I, we got king size bed. I don't even know where the shit he is most of the time. You know what I mean? And he's on his iPad. I'm on mine. You know, we're like, hey, high five. You know, like we've successfully procreated. We're good.

I don't want to talk to anybody else. I've been, you know, navigating this human souls the whole day. I mean, he's a, you know. And so we have very little left for the people we love the most at the end of any given day. And we live in places that afford proximity like never before. We don't have to get together for dinner. We can all eat in our separate spaces. In fact, we can overeat stuff.

We don't have to go out for, we can bring every, you don't go to the grocery store. Somebody can Instacart that thing for you. So the amount of interaction with you. means we in order to see how you're truly feeling you can tell me all day long you can email me buddy you can text me you can say that oh jodd had a rough day or no i'm fine but the second i lay eyes on you especially if i know you right you think about this is the people you love the most in your life you know any children you know you're you know a sibling you my brother's particularly good at this and i'm good i'm good and the second i see him i know whether he's good or not you know and if we've

never had this much part, which is why I think you can't automate the therapeutic relationship. Because the way in which I'm going to answer a question or ask another question of you is very dependent on how I see your body shift. That's what makes us good at communication. When we start to read nonverbal communication, you know, people on the autism spectrum, we often, you know, they talk about communication difficulties. Often, they have beautiful ways of communicating. But the ability to read another's body language, the way that they're feeling about things, becomes really instrumental in crafting a response. And what originally drew you to psychology and working around trauma?

Well, it was a teacher, actually. So a couple of things. I, like, as I said, I grew up in this little town. And I don't, I went on to get a PhD, but like there was 22 of us that started kindergarten together, the same 19 of us graduated together. Okay, so we knew everything about everybody. It's a big hockey town in Little Alberta. And I can tell you the first and last name of every teacher I had in that K to 12 school.

I have no idea what they taught me. The literacy and the numeracy are beyond me. But I remember my favorite teacher's name was Holly Nordstrom. And I remember mostly where she was standing and what she was wearing. The day she had to tell us are then captain of our hockey team had been killed. Oh. And I remember thinking, even as a 16-year-old kid, if there's somebody at the helm, of big emotion, we're going to be okay. And that was my first sort of thought of like,

that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to, navigating big emotion is like, that just blew me away, experiencing that as a kid. And then when I decided to be a psychologist, I ended up in my undergrad taking up position with our national police force, which is called the Royal Canadian Man of Police. And I became a civilian member. And I started looking at organizational stress and trauma and what it looks like when you don't look after your people. We do a horrific job in this country of looking after our first responders. And we do an even worse job of looking after the people who hold them. And you can't ask people to step into other people's most worst days and not care for them and expect them to not get PTSD or birded out or create a breeding

ground for racism, which we've seen over multiple generations in the world of policing. And so I really was connected. So I did my master's my PhD all around police psychology. Fascinating. Organizational stress trauma. Yeah. I love trauma. And then I did that. I love trauma. it sounds ridiculous, but I did, I did, um, my residency in Nova Scotian. I did a rotation with kids. I wasn't a huge fan of kids. I still am not. I like big people better. But, um, I fell in love with sort of understanding the neurodevelopmental process of, um, trauma and relationship and attachment and connection and how, you know, humans are often often at the heart of everybody's major dysfunction. The, the broken relationship with the human. And ironically, the only way you fix that is,

is in a reparative relationship with a human. And so we're in this complex dynamic of, you know, the things that hurt us the most are the things we need to heal us the most. And, you know, we have to be pretty relentlessly pursuant of connection while making the body feel safe in order to heal people. And so I just, I love that whole body of work. And it is so necessary now, as you can understand, particularly in this place where we've never been as disconnected.

And you mentioned along that, a heart of a lot of like pain or trauma is human disconnection. How can people better create space to start rebuilding that? Because I'm assuming like if you have been through a traumatic experience or a human connection is impacted, you might be defensive or trying to protect yourself. And so you don't want to create that space. How can we start creating that space to start rebuilding that reconnection? It is such a brave move, right? Because what you're doing is reminding your body, for a very long time, it believes the world isn't safe. And it does that to sort of protect you,

particularly if you, you know, experience significant amounts of trauma at the hands over their people or, you know, you were raised in a war zone, or you were an immigrant that survived a refugee camp. Or in our country, I speak a lot about the experience of indigenous peoples. And as a settler, as a white woman,

that's in all of my privilege, that's been my greatest learning, is really understanding, you know, in our country, there was an attempt at a cultural genocide. And so there's a very big disparity in, you know, for example, in child and family services right now in this moment, about 72% of kids in care are indigenous, despite the fact that they make up 10% of the population. And it is evidence to me that if you tell a particular group of people that they're worthless, if you treat a group of people like they don't matter, the capacity and ability to recover

from that is takes multiple generations because you can't give away something you've never received. And what becomes really critical for me in that process then is understanding, first of all, those of us who have had the privilege of emotional regulation, the privilege of being able to do this work, like create a podcast like you've done, really talk about resiliency of the mind. What does that mean? And as you know, it is like the greatest gift to our, I think about this quote of it's where it comes down to for me. A dead guy named Ron Das changed my life. He said this.

He said, we are all just here walking each other home. Beautiful. Nobody gets out of here alive. And so every single one of us, regardless of our trauma, has so much capacity to give each other a corrective experience. The more resources you have in order to do that, the more you better use them. That's what privilege looks like. And I think that when I think about that for myself or I think about that and speaking with my

patients, it always starts from the inside. It always starts in order to go out, you have to go in first because we often don't talk nearly enough about our regulation, the emotional regulation, so our neural system. This is where trauma lives. The body keeps the score. One of my greatest teachers of trauma is a guy named Bessel van der Kulk. And he wrote a book called The Body Keeps the score. It is a ridiculously thick, heavy, crazy read, and he has maintained a place on the best sellers list for decades because it is brilliant. And basically, she talks a lot about convincing the body that it is safe. And that becomes very difficult when the world has told you sometimes from in utero that it isn't. And so I talk a lot about emotional regulation in terms

of just getting your body back in a place that you believe in this moment you're safe. You know, you told me that you're traveling. And so you're in this room. I'm in my home office at home right now. I do believe to the core of me that in this moment I am safe. But oftentimes, particularly these days, we get lots of messages that our bodies aren't. So I'm thinking about my kid is, you know, my husband just took our middle son to a lacrosse game. And so are they safe on the highway?

And like my daughter's out there. And I'm really, did she eat lunch? I don't know what's happening. And we're attention framed. And then also we have this right here. So this is buzzing. This is giving me notifications. And I'm getting little shots of cortisol every once in a while that is making me go like this.

Now, I think that I'm relatively safe. But all of this incoming noise is suggesting to my body, be ready. Somebody might die. And then at the end of the day to relax. I don't know about you, but I watch Dateline. I'm in band watching somebody get murdered in Tallahassee, you know? And so what happens in that place, right, is that we have never had this much even subconscious information to suggest to us that we need to be on edge in this world. The noise never stops.

We get very little opportunity for rest and stillness. And the response to that will never change. The idea is that you have to go out before you go in. And so it's really, I mean, we could do it together right now. If you just drop your shoulders. If you drop your tongue from the roof of your mouth, one of the most primitive responses to stress is to slam your tongue to the roof of your mouth. So historically speaking, our ancestors would do that when we, like, we're going to get chased by a tiger

or, you know, the bad guys were coming over the hills with guns. You would lock your jaw so you were ready to fight. And your shoulders would go up to pretend your core. And so the reverse engineering of that is to be on. purpose consciously doing that as often as you can when you feel safe. So drop your shoulders, drop your ton from the roof of your mouth, wiggle your toes, and let your gut out. You just, you probably can't see this, but he just dropped two inches. But the idea is like, generally speaking, we are like in this culture, in that, you know, here in this moment in North America,

we are very much like, okay, got in, chest up, shoulders back. You're good. Lock your like, The hustle. Did you drink your kale? Have you done your yoga? We're gold. That's how we'd be resilient. Which the exact opposite is true. And so we are not, we're not very good at resting our bodies, at relaxing our bodies. And we're certainly not set up in this generation of technological advances that are developing way beyond human capacity to take a break. Because we're not that good to shut this off. We're not that good to shut off our, because right now, like I'm showing you my Apple watch, okay? So I have this connected to me so that I can keep my stamps up

because I'm trying not to get the dementia. Okay? So I'm trying to be healthy and I'm trying. But what's also attached to my watch is everybody I know. My children have access to me on there. All the team snap bitches, I mean, like my kids are in sports. Okay. So there's this app called Team Snap.

It's supposed to keep families connected. There's usually one crazy parent on every single team across the nation. Who uses Team Snap is a place. to communicate your feelings about the refs. Okay? So she has access to me all the time, right? By design. As to the people that I like my workout buddies

that I've agreed to let them have access to me. But when Leah is working out doing functional strength training at a three o'clock on a Friday, I'm mad. Because I had an ear drinking my cheek and I have moved my body, you know? So all of these things are Dana, like, if you think about this, I think about this all the time, when my dad came through the door

at 5 o'clock, one generation ago, from nobody could get him. His patients, his clients, his employee, his parents, nobody could get him. They could call the house phone because I'm not that old. But we decided not to answer that during dinner. But nobody could get him. And who knew that better than anything was his neurophysiology. And so now, before we even wake up, like before you even pee, your check and your phone.

How do you more? I know, because we want to, we're success with humans. You're being so, I mean, this podcast is crushing. So you're like,

you just want to check before you get it. Like, did anybody respond to my email? What's going on? And then in there, there's nothing in that email that's going to lower your cortisol. In there,

there's some complaint and somebody's canceling and somebody's being a jerk. And then you're getting some ad from sanks to remind you to you need that gut sucker reader because you're fat. And like, all of that is happening. and you haven't even peed.

So if we think about what has happened just in our neurophysiology in the last decade, it's massive. And I know in one of your books, kids, these stories, you talk about emotional dysregulation, which is what you're mentioning. For adults, because when you're doing that activity with me,

then I did become aware that my shoulders were up and my tongue was at the roof of my mouth. But how do you become more self-aware of our regular, like their level of regulation. So it's a couple of things. You're not that good to do it by yourself. Okay, I've left to our own devices. I say this all the time.

And when I say this to people, you're not that good. You're not that good to undo multiple generations of abuse neglect to trauma on your own. You're not that good. You're not that good. I worked at the Children's Hospital on a locks psychiatric patient unit for 10 years. And kids would tell me I would get hit and kick and bit told the FAA every single day. I loved those babies. But at the end of that 10 years, when I left there, I didn't know if they'd like name a wing

after me or something, but I kind of thought that there might be like a chookudery board or something, you know? No, nothing. And when I left there, I remember walking past the nurse's station and we were under-resourced. There were still tons of racial disparity, financial disparity, and many, many unwell kids. And I thought, what was this for? I didn't even make a dent. And it occurred to me at that moment.

I'm not that good. That's not my job. It is not my job is to do the next best right kind thing. To use my privilege, whatever that looks like to do the next best right kind thing. And when you give somebody that statement, you're not that good. It's not criticism. It's liberation. Because I think what happens is we try very hard to like, look at the mental health crisis.

Look at what happening in burnout. Oh, like, can you believe there? to greater racism that is still happening. This is 2024. We're still having these covers. And it just is maddening and it's frightening and it's frightening. And what is happening with this administration? And holy shit, what's going?

You know, this shooting happened to get like what. And what happens in that moment is our shoulders go up and we lose access to the best parts of ourselves, not our ability. We lose access to it. That's the definition of emotional dysregulation, losing your friggin mind. And the only way that you. you have access to the best parts of yourself is when you're regulated. Okay?

When you bring a baby home from the hospital, how do they let you know what they need? They cry. They get emotionally disregulated. They lose their friggin minds because they don't have a lot yet in their prefrontal cortex that can say to you, dad, I'm hungry, I need my bum change, grandma's voice is annoying. They cry and the job of big people is to do what Ron Das taught us to walk them home. Provide that sense of emotional regulation by showing them how to do it. If I looked at an infant and said, calm down.

Use your words. It doesn't work with an infant and it doesn't work with your wife. But we assume that we get into leadership roles in an older parts of our life. We're going to tell people. We're going to tell people what we want from that. You're not making good choices. You're using.

Stop using your. But if you have to tell somebody they're not making a good choice, they know. Okay. So the idea of emotional regulation is that it requires human connection. to be at its best. And if we've never been this disconnected, this is my biggest worry for the next generation, for those of us leading this current generation,

is that we've never been this tired, is sleep deprived. I mean, John Hayd's work is really interesting, Heights, sorry, Jonathan Haidt, wrote a book called The Anxious Generation of 2024. It's probably one of the best reads, if you're involved with kids or neural developments of anybody on the planet. And he basically said, there's a few things that are different these days

as we're navigating humans. one of them is we've never been asleep deprived. And the other thing that just broke my soul is that we've never been this attention fragmented. Which means my ability to sit and be very connected to you and your questions has to be done on purpose. I have to shut my email notifications off. I have to shut my watch notifications off. I have to shut my phone notifications off because I am so honored that you would have me on your podcast. But if I get a watch notification from my brother who I'm very worried is not going to survive the death of my father.

if he sends me a note and says, Joe, can you call me? My ability to stay connected to you is just dropped by at least 40%. Now, I can do it because I'm pretty, I can manage the fragmenting of my attention. We've been good at that over the last decade, but you've just lost a piece of me.

And you may feel that or you may not, but you will not get the best, you know, if I'm sort of thinking, yeah, so anyway, that's the, yeah, that, so it's just kind of like we get, yeah, you know? And so what? Right.

Like I don't know if this has ever happened to you like in a physician's office or, you know, when somebody is like they're trying desperately to do an assessment with you, but they're getting buzzed or they're getting beat or they're getting whatever. And you're just like, hey. It's like focus on me. One, two, three, I find me, you know, because we're just not designed for this much information. And so I think it's just really acknowledging that right now that that is that is something that. we don't talk about enough, that we're the first generation of parents with access to social media. I'm not worried about kids because kids will only be okay. Like, if the big people aren't okay, the little people don't stand a chance. Fascinating. And one of the things talking about

emotional regulation is we love to talk about emotional resilience or mental resilience. What do you think one of the biggest misconceptions people have around that idea of resilience? That you're born with it. You are not. somebody has to show you. Now, there's neurophysiological differences sometimes. You know, this is the nature, nurture conversation often. I am so much more inclined to ask this question, not what is wrong with you, but what happened to you. And what I understand your experience, it will be very tied to resilience, mostly because you will be able to identify those people who could identify somebody who caught them, somebody who was regulating them through, even the

hardest times. And that's where resilience is born. Amazing. And for parents that want to build or teach resilience to their kids without negating their emotions, how will they go about doing that? You know, I, I, you know, people ask me this all the time. Is it possible to build emotional regulation. Yes. Oh my God. Because for a very long time as parents, we've been trained. We've come from a long line of people that would, see this. Kids should be seen. and not hurt. Your job is to respect me and then I'll be kind. The hard part about this.

We made those rules when we had much more proximity connection to our children, which means I could enforce a rule because there was, generally speaking, I'd already spent a lot of proximity with my child in that date. I'll give an example of this. So like, even as a child for a teenager, okay, if I'm out chasing cows with my dad, we grew up on a farm. And I'm chasing cows. And I mean, in real life, like I'm not,

I'm on a five-foot frig all-Ukraine and chassis. Like, I am not built to be chasing cows, okay? So I'm out there. And I let all the heavis through the gate. My dad's like, bird twice. What are you? Tell I. Oh, my God.

You know, and I'm like, I cry and I'm going to start again. They're too fast. I'm scared. You know, whatever. Within two hours, we are at a kitchen table. And he may never, I don't remember him ever apologizing to me, but I do remember things like this. You know, we're face to face at the kitchen table. and he would say things like this, pass the piece, honey.

Or what times you're a ring at gay, baby girl? There was enough proximity that afforded reconnection and repair in this way that we are losing the opportunities to do because oftentimes, you know, even just that stat that we talked to at this top of the show, right? It's like if we look at our kids, relatively speaking, 72% less of the time, you know, I text my, I know this rule. I mean, I wrote a book about it. and I like will text my kids when it's supper time when they're in their rooms.

Like I can't even be bothered to go up the 13 stairs and not because first I'm scared what I'm going to see because I got a 14 year old. So like I'd rather just be like, hey. But like, but you know. And like, well, for my father, like he would have been like outside the door playing or my grandmother would have been like he would have been in the living room because they had one bedroom. You know? So like I think there's so many of those things that we underest.

with respect to proximity that, you know, I, and I tell stories like this all the time, you know, my husband was away. We have three kids. Our twins are 12 and our oldest is 14. And, you know, when they were little and we would be home at the end of the day, you know, I'd have practiced, seen patients during the day, come home and I'm trying to do baths and supper and how school and read books. And there was one particular night. I can't remember how our oldest was like, maybe like eight this time. Okay. So I'm talking him into bed and he has a big scratch on his face. And I said to him, honey, where did you get that scratch?

And like in the top? And he said, no, no, no. I said, after second recess, mom, I just, like, slid down the slide funny. And I was like, oh, my, we have been home together for five hours. I have said him. I bathed him. I read books with him in it. I broke up fights.

Like, if you hit your brother one more time. And, but I never saw him. Right? I was present in the same house doing the thing. that we're expected to do his parents. But until I looked at his eyes in his face at night, I didn't even notice neither scratch his cheek.

We look all the time, but we don't see. That is very powerful. And one of the things that you just mentioned about that idea of proximity that we had in the past and we don't have today, I think it's a perspective shift because sometimes as new parents, we are like, well, this is how I was raised.

So this is how I'm going to raise. my kids, but there's so many things that have changed. We don't have that proximity anymore. We are not as connected to our kids. Our attention is fragmented as well. Our kids' attention is also fragmented as well. So it's like there's so much, there's so many, the landscape has changed. A hundred percent. And so we often try to say that our parents did it wrong. No, they didn't. They were doing the best they could with what they had. This isn't about, you know, I can tell you how many tons I spend talking about father issues and mother wounds and like all of those things, which is all a very critical understanding of attachment.

But we often blame our parents for messing it up. And the truth is they were doing the best they could is what they got. You can't give away something you've never received. And as we're now in this current generation, it's like, okay, let's take the goodness that we got from, you know, whoever our ancestors. And how do we really take stock of what our children need now that may or may not have been different. Bottom line, every kidney is to feel safe. Number one. Two, they need to know that somebody is crazy about them. Light up crazy. That's it. If those two things are in place,

your babies will be okay. And we need to do that in a completely different way now and on purpose. And so it isn't even about them because we lose access to do either of those things if we're disregulated. If I think I'm a piece of shit, mom, if I haven't slept very well in the last two weeks, If I'm grieving my father, if I'm worried about my own mental health, my ability to light up around my own child and stay connected to them, become significant, be compromised. They're not the problem. My own well-being needs to be my primary focus. And when people ask me to see their children in therapy, you know, for many years, people would say to me like, can I see, could you see my kid? You know, we're going through a divorce.

Could you see my kid? He got a tick. He got a tick, he got the ADHD. He's hitting, kicking, biting. Can you see my kid? I would always say, oh my gosh, I would. love. I would love to meet your baby. And I need to meet you first. And people would say this me all like, what happened? Do you think I'm the problem? And I would always shake my head. I would

nod my head like yes. And I'd say, no. You're not the problem. You're the solution. Because I could keep your kitten therapy gold standard tree, but one hour a week until they're 36. And it's a waste of time if I send them home to a dysregulated system. Wow. And I'm thinking it takes It takes a lot of courage for anyone, but in this case, a parent to be like, okay, I need to change so that my kid can be better. For parents that might be resistance to like thinking that they have to change or they are the ones that may not be available to support their child, what sort of recommendations do you provide for them so that they are more open and receptive to actually learning the tools that they need? Okay, so here's, here's my saving grace, okay? Because I will, I say this to everybody. I wrote a bestselling parenting book for parents and teachers, and it's called Kids These Days.

It is like every time I read that book, it is the best thing I've ever read. Like every time I read it, I think, holy shit, this is good. I don't know why this is not a New York Times best selling. And if you watch me with my own personal children, you wouldn't buy the book. I wrote that thing when I was regulated in a hotel room. by myself with wine. Okay. So the purpose is we, it's not that we are none of us. I had never, I just as a treated and out of kids in our country. Not one time. Have I, have I met a parent that wasn't doing the best they could is what they had? Not one time. And if the data is really clear on this,

we don't have to be perfect in any capacity. We only need to get this right about 30% of the time to teach our kids how to regulate. You can screw the shit up. 70% of the time. Because we are overwhelmed, because we are exhausted, because we are supposed to snap, because we're all, we're supposed to haul them out at the grocery store when they're losing their frigging minds. This is a right of passage. That is that, and here's the other problem that I think is really up against us

in this parenting world right now. We've never had access to this many opinions. So if I think about like, so I'm going to be 50 this year. When I had our first baby, the primary, I had one primary opinion, that dictated my feelings about my ability to be a mother. Do you know who that was from? My mother-in-law. The mother-in-law.

The mother-in-law. Now, I had one of the best, but she raised three boys on the farm. I fairly sure she was picking apples, baking pies, and giving birth on a ladder. And when she, you know, I was crying over something and I was after going to die. I don't know. I can't get any milk. She'd be like, oh, just put some whiskey in the bottle. He'll sleep.

And I'd be like, Lori, I feel like things have changed a little bit since, you know. But now, if we think about like what our daughters will experience or even our sisters are people who are like, you know, having children now, you could imagine you come home from the hospital, you're breastfeeding your baby, you're in the middle of the night. You are exhausted, overwhelmed, and hormonal, and you're scrolling. You now have access to 48 million opinions that are saying things like this. Okay. Did you have a dolphin assisted pool birth? Did you check or no check? No.

Okay. Did you have lavender essential oils present? And you didn't. Okay, well that means you're probably going to have the ADHD. Okay. So don't work. Like shit like that's everywhere. And we consume information on the TikTok and the Instagram like it's verified.

And when you are overwhelmed and disconnected, you see everybody else's highlight real. You're reading things that are not anywhere near certified. We make opinions about this and we think, oh, my gosh, we're terrible. This one's doing it so much better because then you have all the Instagram moms posting. You know, I woke my husband up like last week like this. He wasn't up. His alarm head went up, but I'm scrolling before I even peed because I, you know, this is what we do. And I wake him up.

I'm like looking at all these perfect families. And I say, hey, wake up a week, Aaron, we need family pictures. And he's like, what? And I was like, in a bush with sweaters. Right? So the expectation of like, are we holding it all together? And then it becomes very hard to be able to stand up publicly or in a parents group or at the hockey ring to be like,

you know what, I'm not a fan. I am not a fan of parenting. I say this all the time. Motherhood is my least favorite job. I adore my children. I'm very grateful for them. But I do, I am not a fan of being a mom. I, I much prefer my work.

I feel so much more confident. I mean, I'm on 200 planes a year. People are like, is that hard to be away from your children that much? No. No, it is not. I am a little bit. And I love to come home to them and love on them and teach them all the things I'm learning. But I'm equally as excited to get away from them again, you know?

Like, it's a hard job. And we don't have a lot of room, you know, to talk about that or to tell about the fact that you won't love it, the vast majority of the time. And that's okay. And I'm just thinking one of the things, because when I was learning about building a better mindset, I was like, I'm going to tell myself when I go on social media that this is fake. And so my brain will not be tricked to be leaving the jam or verifying that the jam. But then I realized that whatever you're putting into your mind, even when you know that it's a filter. It's almost like your subconscious mind is going to take it and perceive it as if it's accurate. Like when we watch a horror movie, we know it's a movie, but physiologically, we are screaming. Well, other people are screaming. I'm not screaming, of course. But it's almost like our mind forgets that, yes, you think you are passively scrolling,

but it's impacting how you're feeling. It's impacting your perspective. It's impacting your expectations about yourself. in your life. And it's really changing how we feel about ourselves as well. And, you know, I looked up the stat because I was, I was speaking about it this week and in a keynote I gave and I was like, here's why, here's what we're up against, okay? We are not that good. Right now, if I were to take that, I googled this yesterday, if I were to take the top four in this verse, Mena, Apple, Uber, and Amazon, just, just those,

regardless of it. They, those four companies own an. $8.49 trillion market share capitalization. So the desire to keep us connected to our devices and disconnected from each other is a massive business initiative. There's not even a conversation about how it's destroying the minds of children. I mean, I came out today and, you know, my daughter, they're going from school today, so, you know, my boys are playing lacrosse. But my daughter's here waiting for me to go shopping and do something at groceries. And so I come out as she's scrolling on the TikTok on the TV. You know,

and some 14 year old is telling her how to get the next Sephora thing. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, what are we doing? Shut it off. And it's that passive sort of connection that's like, also like, just order it on Amazon. You don't have to go to the show.

Like, don't go to the shop. Just stay home from a peat bill. Because they'll get it instantly there tomorrow. Why would you go to a local shop and get it? Just get it. It'll be here tomorrow. And you don't even go to a restaurant. You don't need to interact in your community.

You're just too many people. It just Uber eats that. Okay. And then you don't need, you don't need to, like all of these things we're just creating work from home. Okay. So ideally, you and I are in the same place. This podcast, I mean, it's probably the best you've ever done, but this would be even better

if we were in the same place because our neurophysiology changes. My reading of your body language, our ability to be like, oh, my gosh, do you, you know, changes when we're in the same. place and you can't replicate that on a text or an email. We just won't. And so does it offer us many things? Oh my gosh, yes. I could face time with my dad every week until he died. And it was beautiful because I wouldn't have been able to get to him. So my children got to see him more often. We can do a meeting like this. You're in a completely different place than me. We could learn about different cultures around the world. I can support people to do a consult in India in a second that was

not even possible two decades ago. So technological advances are not the problem. How we use them is the issue. And when the hardest thing we will ever do is look at each other becomes the fact, it will have to be done on purpose, waving at your neighbor, going to the grocery store, sitting down with your partner. There's this beautiful research done by this guy named Anon. It's called the four minutes of connection. And he said, the hardest that you will ever do is sit down with somebody you'll have them look at them for four minutes. Set a timer and you look at them for four minutes. And I was like, oh my gosh, how hard could that be? You know? So I came home to my personal husband and we've been married 18 years and I said, hey, I was reading some research today, honey.

I just, like, they said it's hard to look at each other for four minutes away. I just wonder if you could sit down. I'm going to say, can we just look at each other for four minutes? And you know what he said to me? Why? I was like, what do you mean? Why? Like, I had a lot of choices in 2009 news. son of a gun you better frickin sit down and i chose you so beat it and so he's a scientist by training and so he's like okay fine but we got to like let's use a timer god forbid we go over the four minutes you know and so we were we were 20 seconds into this thing and he called the time out a big tea time out and i was like what you're doing and he said i just want to know like time time time and i was like what you're calling time on a four minute like look into the eyes of your bride

And he was like, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to know the rules here. Like, what am I looking for specifically? Like, did you get a haircut? Is this a new shirt? I was like, holy shit. Right? And so you think about that. Like, could you sit, you know, if your parents are still alive, could you sit and look at your dad?

Could you sit and look at your siblings? You know, your best friend. And oftentimes what happens is it's awkward in the first 30 seconds. But if you can make it to the four minutes, you get emotional. Because so much of what is written between us is. is nonverbal. That is beautiful. And as you're saying that, it reminded me that there was a eye contact experiment that was done a few years ago.

And I actually hosted the one that was in Edmonton when it was being down. Did you? Yes. I represent that study all the time. Oh, that's amazing. So it was fascinating. Because we went, we found a park downtown. I found some eye contact experts, which were my friends.

I was like, I need some people to demonstrate. And they're like, demonstrate what? Look into people's eyes, don't be creepy. They're like, are we getting paid? I'm like, nope, it's volunteering. But it was amazing. People cried. Yeah, people felt uncomfortable, but ended up feeling more comfortable.

And one of the guys actually said something that was interesting, that even though he had met, this other individual, and we're only doing it for one minute. So it wasn't even the four minutes. I saw it was one, yeah. One minute. And they're like, I feel more connected to that individual than I do to my family, to my friends. And it's almost like this social intimacy that I can't explain.

And I think like what you're saying about even just seeing each other, looking at each other, something that we don't do, but it's so, so, so powerful. Yeah. Did your husband make it to four minutes? I made him. Yeah. So we did, yes. And and, and, and what happens for both of us is I remember then the things that nobody else has a memory of. Like this is the boy, I think about this in couples therapy all the time. The only thing I need to do is get two people to look at each other because I don't know if you should stay together, but you do. And oftentimes, you know, when I, when we got to the three and a half minute mark, I remembered what he looked like on our wedding day. I remembered, you know, what waking up in our hospital bed and and watch you either. He was sleeping on the, floor of the Foot Hills Hospital, which is just awful in Calgary, Alberta. And we had twins. One was in the

NICU. Libby was in the room with us. And he was on the floor in a sleeping bag because he didn't want to leave me. And nobody knows that memory except the two of us, you know. And when we slow down long enough to sort of look into, you know, each other in that in that moment, which we don't. We don't. We don't have a day of rest anymore. Every weekend is filled with sports and running and trying to give our kids the best things and you know we're just like okay what is tonight and where are we going and like my my children said to me today like what okay what's the plan for today like it's it's nothing we don't know what we don't we what are supposed to do like like you know so then i'm concerned because what they do is watch tic-tok so then you're like okay we're going to go to evans lacrosse game that we're

going to get groceries and then we're like and then what like then we're exhausted and we all come home and watch date line. So switching gears a little bit, one of the things that you say is that no one cares through life and skate. How do we begin to heal if we don't even know the parts of us that are still hurting? Okay. It's way more simple than you think. Okay.

And the one thing that I say all the time is you have to go in before you go out. Your biggest gift to yourself is to be still. And, you know, we started a little bit, you know, earlier about the drop your shoulders, drop the roof of your, you know, tongue. When you get into that state, you then have access to the best parts of you. That is when you start to give it away to other people. And I want you to start small. Today, you give somebody a compliment.

When you, wherever you're staying today, when you get in an elevator, I want you to make eye contact with somebody. I want you to wave at a stoplight. If you're in a city today, in small towns, we wave all the time on Main Street. because if you don't, you're a bitch. But when we get into the city, we stop waving. When I get into,

I mean, I'm a good waiver here in a holds, but I get into Evanston. I think everybody's psychopathic serial killers. So I don't. Huh? But can you imagine you're waving at people and just trying this? You know, at the end, I was at the Oilers game on Monday night.

Okay, so I don't know in this layer, but like the Oilers are in the playoffs. And I, you would not believe how friendly that city was after we went. We're waving, man. I'm fiving men. You know, embracing. people. You'd imagine if that was just any given Sunday? You know? Hey, you know, you're waving. You're high. That's your day. Look at you. You're looking good. I love that blue shirt. High five.

You got it. We do that and people think you're drunk. You know? But can you imagine if we engaged a little more often, if we were wise enough to be able to say it, you know, at the 7-Eleven, oh my gosh, to this kid, I love your purple hoodie. That's so cool, kid. Or you say to the grand bl at the hockey rink. Oh, I was watching your boy out there today. What a shot he's got. So nice to see you here. You know, when we acknowledge, the answer to everything in my mind is acknowledgement.

When you're acknowledged, you rise. And you only have access to the acknowledgement of other people when you're regulated first. So you go in and then you go out on repeat. Rocket fire questions. Human Connection Edition. A book that changed the way you see the world. Oh. So without a doubt, Atlas of the Heart, it's one of the newer ones, but Brin A Bram.

A practice you swear by for staying grounded. Drop in my shoulders. What's one message you'd want the entire world to hear right now? All we need is you. One trait, every world changer must cultivate. It starts from the inside before you go out. And your coffee order of choice. Brown sugar, old Americano.

And what does that say about your personality? think. I don't know, but I would say that it's probably pretty spicy. That's amazing. If you could place one belief into the hearts of every single listener right now, a belief that could shape the inner world. What would that be? We are all just walking each other home. You are so much more powerful than you could ever think. If you only knew, if you could just take a little piece of that and go out into the world, being the best, walker you can be using acknowledgement as your tool, you'll change the world. You won't even change the world. You might even save it. And if you could envision a world where we are all connected

with ourselves and with others, how do you think the world will be? I think that it is, that's, it won't happen. I think that there is an understanding that conflict is necessary, the disagreement is necessary, that world peace has nothing to look like we all get along. I think it is this place where we understand, we're seeking first to understand the differences that are out there, that we're not aligning with the people who look like us, sound like us, smell like us, talk like us, that we are very open to understanding that we all start in exactly the same place and end in exactly the same place. The more you know what the people walking this planet alongside you, especially the ones that don't look like you, sound like you, talk like you, you will have the most

remarkable human experience. That's your job. And for people that want to learn more about your books, your work, maybe even hear you speak. Where can they find you? Oh my gosh. I would love your community to be a part of ours. We would love to embrace them and love on them. We, everything is Dr. Jody Carrington.com. So everything is at the website and we do a lot on social media too. So just trying to create a safe place for people to have hard conversations. And all those links we are going to add them right in the description so you can just click on them and check out Dr. Carrington's website and all their amazing resources. Thank you so much. you're such a gin.

I'm so happy for this. But one last question. Yes. If one key takeaway, you'd like our listeners to take away from this episode, what will it be? You're not that good, and that's more than enough. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Dr. Carleton, for your message, your passion, your perspective.

This was such an insightful episode. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.