Child Psych Podcast Episode #127

[Tania Johnson] Hello and welcome back to another masterclass. We’re so excited to have Dr. Jody Carrington with us. Welcome, Dr. Jody! Yeah, we’re excited. It’s been way too long, way too long. So, we had Dr. Jody speak at the Institute, as I was saying, years ago when her babies were little. I just feel so happy that you’re back. I’m like, yay, you’re back!

[Dr. Jody Carrington] Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, that was a long time ago, right? That was in Edmonton.

[Tania] Yes, it was in Edmonton, and I remember you had to—there was so much going on—you dropped them off somewhere at somebody’s house, maybe your mom’s, and then you drove down and did this incredible presentation. Those were the years when there was so much going on.

[Dr. Jody] My gosh, yes, and we were just talking about this before we started—now they’re 12! That’s fantastic. My gosh. So many things have changed.

 

[Tania] So today, let me just do a quick introduction for people who don’t know Dr. Jody Carrington. Dr. Carrington is the founder and principal psychologist at Carrington and Company. She’s written three amazing bestselling books. We’re going to be chatting about Feeling Seen today. I have so many questions. Jody speaks all over the world, and she has a really, really wonderful podcast called Everyone Comes From Somewhere. I love your background, Jody.

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, it’s now called Unlonely. The first season was Everyone Comes From Somewhere. Yeah, that’s okay. And then this season is Unlonely. We just evolved it.

[Tania] Love it. Are you changing the name each season?

[Dr. Jody] No, we’re sticking with Unlonely. It was just that the first season, as you know in the podcast world, you’re like, okay, what are we going to offer to the world? Because everybody seems to have a podcast, so what’s going to be fantastic? The first season was really about, you know, how can we get back to this piece of empathy knowing that we’re way more alike than we are different—everybody comes from somewhere. And then the second season has been more about answering the question of disconnection, which really comes down to loneliness. So we just gathered 24 experts globally to talk about what we need to do to become unlonely again in this very disconnected world. It’s been a bit of a shift, but it’s all the same stuff, right? It’s all about what you talk about here all the time: we were never meant to do this alone. If the big people aren’t okay, the little people don’t stand a chance. So, yeah. Anyways, here we are.

[Tania] Yeah, unlonely. Why is unlonely not a word in the dictionary? It’s so beautiful.

[Dr. Jody] Right? Yeah. I know. Hey, it’s what we need.

[Tania] So, talking about being underneath Jody’s book, Feeling Seen, it’s funny. Even just the name of it, I think everybody has this visceral experience when you think about feeling, being seen. How do you say this? A felt sense of being seen?

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, I think it’s so interesting because, you know, when we were writing it, we were like, okay, so what is the thing that the world needs right now? And oftentimes, when you create any kind of content, it’s usually the stuff you need to hear, need to read, need to dive deeper into, or understand more. So I think, you know, for a very long time, I started out in this business doing police psychology, talking about trauma in organizations. I was a civilian member of the RCMP for a while, and I really realized what it looks like when organizations don’t look after their people. I think we do an awful job of looking after first responders in this country and an even worse job of looking after the people who hold them. You’re only as okay as the people who hold you. So when I left the RCMP, I decided, you know, I’m really going to focus on police psychology and what trauma in organizations looks like. Then, when I did my residency in Nova Scotia, I had to do a rotation with kids. They were like, “Listen, you have to do this rotation with kids.” And I was like, I’m not a fan. I’m still not a huge fan of kids, but I fell in love with the neurodevelopmental process of what happens in trauma or when we start to learn that big people aren’t okay or the people who are at the helm maybe aren’t the ones we needed them to be. So, then I spent 10 years at the Children’s Hospital in a locked psychiatric inpatient unit. That’s where I took the first decade of my career, really trying to get a better sense of what it means to be human and why some of us do better than others. And it always, always, always comes down to relationships. And I think that in this season, there has never been such a lack of relationship in the history of humans. We’ve never had this much access to resources and research, but we’re dying faster. We’re killing ourselves faster from emotional illness than from physical illness for the first time in history. So, the question then becomes, you know, what is it about this human experience that is becoming more and more difficult? And I think it really comes back to this idea of loneliness. People often ask us, as therapists, “What is going on with this mental health crisis? Why does everybody have ADHD and autism? How come depression and anxiety are so widespread?” And I actually don’t think we’re in a mental health crisis. I think we’re in an understandable human response to loneliness. We’re neurobiologically wired for connection. If you disconnect from an infant, they die. That is not going to change. But what has changed is how much we share proximity or direct connection with each other. It’s estimated that our great-grandparents looked at their children 72% more of the time than we look at our babies today. And the only way you learn that you matter, right? The only way you learn how to regulate emotion is that somebody has to show you. They can’t just tell you. So, this loneliness, I think, is the focus of what is really happening in this sense of disconnection and the so-called mental health crisis.

The Impact of Technology and Social Changes on Children’s Mental Health and Parenting

[Tania] That’s the disconnect—the loneliness. I think, for all the parents listening in, what they deeply want for their children is to feel connected, loved, and seen. What’s happening? Where is this coming from?

[Dr. Jody] I think it’s really easy to measure, in so many ways. And, you know, we can blame all kinds of things, but I think that, since the introduction of the smartphone in 2006, we’ve seen a massive decline in the mental health of our children. The introduction of the forward-facing camera happened in 2009. So the way we absorb what’s happening within ourselves, compared to how we stay connected to others, has become significantly distorted. I think that’s one factor. I also think that kids have less access to friendships, less access to parents, and fewer opportunities for relationships with grandparents. There are far more single-parent households than ever before in history, and kids are experiencing fewer sibling relationships. All of these opportunities to develop the social skills necessary to succeed in the world have become significantly compromised—not just over multiple generations, but even more so in the last decade. Equally important, I think we’re not asking the right question. We often ask, “What’s wrong with kids these days?” And I’m sure you’re familiar with the term “the anxious generation,” which talks a lot about, “Holy moly, what’s going on with kids these days?” When I get the chance to speak, I ask educators globally, “What have you noticed about kids in the last 10 years? Are they different?” There’s often a resounding, “Yes, they are.” The responses usually mention that kids are entitled, over-scheduled, have little ability to make decisions on their own, show a lack of motivation, are addicted to devices, and don’t seem very compliant. All of these things come up, right? And often, people share these concerns with their arms crossed, as if saying, “Life’s tough.” So then, my next question is, “What have you noticed in parents these days? Has there been a shift in how we, as parents or educators, interact with them?” If you’re a teacher or if you observe parents of your children’s friends, you’ll see that they, too, exhibit many of the same behaviors. Overscheduled, anxious, depressed, disconnected—all of those things. Huh, shocking. Apple and tree: the kids are not the problem. Never in the history of the world have kids been the problem, right? You can’t give away something you’ve never received. So now, if we are overscheduled, overwhelmed, with so much access to technology, we never, ever, ever get a break from people. We’re not designed for this. We’re developing beyond human capacity, right? We wake up in the morning, and generally, all of us are connected to our devices. Many of us charge our devices by our beds. We can’t even go to the bathroom without checking the status of other people, or maybe someone texted us overnight. Are our parents okay? Are our partners okay? What’s going on with our employees, our businesses, our companies? And that data is inundating us before we’ve even gotten out of bed. Our shoulders are up. And then we think, “I’m just going to check on social media.” So now, we have access to everybody else’s life. And nothing in there lowers your cortisol, right? Nothing in there makes you think, “My gosh, look at her. She’s so amazing.” Instead, we’re like, “F**k you. Oh my God, that b**** is already working out.” And then we think, “How did she… Oh my God, why did Mel’s book do so well? What’s going on?” You know, I’m like, “I’ve got to drink collagen.” I woke up in December three times thinking, “We need family pictures.” And he’s like, “Before that even happened…” So, the big people of the world—educators, police officers, childcare professionals, and parents—are all like this, right? Then we come out and try to start the day with our children. This has happened to me countless times. The kids are asking, “What’s for breakfast?” or “Where’s my agenda?” and I’m like, “I don’t know.” Then we strap on an Apple Watch and sit in front of a computer, where shots of cortisol are happening every second. We get notifications: “Okay, so my husband missed his flight. My dad isn’t doing well. My kids….” I was in session today, and I rarely take my phone in anymore, but because we had a sleepover, I said to my patient, “I’m just going to keep this right here because there are a lot of things going on. By no means am I being disrespectful.” But then the phone rings. I have to excuse myself for a moment because it’s my 14-year-old son’s best friend calling me. Panic. Now, if we think about just one generation ago, people in our line of work didn’t have access to us like this. If something was drastically wrong, we would find out when we were done with our session. But now, I am right here, in front of this person I’ve agreed to serve, and I am not good enough to disregard what’s happening with the people I love. To stay connected to them, right? Which is why, now, the conversation about phones in schools and technological options for childcare workers is so important. Why do you have access to your phone when you’re serving other people’s children? Because you’re not strong enough to defy what’s in here, what’s capable. Everything I love and know to be true is here, right? It’s so difficult to disconnect from that place and stay present with other human beings. I think we’re stepping into a place where a radical response will be necessary. We once thought smoking was good, too, until we gathered more data. Now that we’re gathering more data and seeing the mental health of our children drop significantly, we’re also seeing burnout rates skyrocket and a lack of capacity to serve others. And here’s the thing that won’t change, right? We’re all just walking each other home. As Ram Dass said, “We are all just here walking each other home.” Nobody gets out of here alive. We cannot do any of this alone. And it’s so hard, I think, as we watch the next generations unfold. Even for the rest of my career, the constant reminder will be that all we need is each other. To get back to that, we need to rest. Not work harder, not hustle harder. We’ve all come from this place that says, “You nap, you’re lazy.” But society had built-in infrastructures, even earlier in my life. I say to our kids all the time, “Your dad and I are older than Google.” Right? So, I didn’t grow up with that experience. I also grew up in a place where Sundays were sacred. Now, this Sunday, my kids have three hockey games. So, not only do we go, go, go all week, serving other people, writing books, and holding on to other people’s big emotions while we manage our own children and aging parents—who can access us at any second of any moment, including the teams we’re running and all the things—we don’t stop. The 40-hour workweek is asinine because my patients still have access to me. My parents, obviously, our children, anybody on my team—there’s no capacity to put it down. My favorite place, which I think is, ironically, on a plane, because nobody can get to me. I’m on a flight about 200 times a year, and I love it. People ask, “Is it hard to travel?” I’m like, “No, thank you.” Because, while you can now sign up for Wi-Fi, I try my best not to. That’s my permission to say, “Well, if something happens to my kids or my parents, or whatever, there’s nothing I can do until I get back.” And so, the body keeps the score. Think about it: Your dad would have walked through the door at five o’clock or six o’clock at the end of his shift, one generation ago. There was a visceral sense of safety when their home felt that way, because nobody could get to them. Maybe people would call the home phone, but I remember we had a rule in our house, in Viking, Alberta, Canada: you didn’t answer the phone during dinner. So, your body knew that there was a sense of safety in that place. There’s no place we can go now that tells our body we’re inaccessible, so we can rest.

The Importance of Emotional Regulation in Parenting and Wellness

[Tania] It’s so true, it’s funny. Johannesburg, South Africa, is where I grew up. And the same thing—Sundays, no one did anything else. I remember these long, hot Sundays in South Africa, where the afternoon would almost feel like it was lasting forever. It was like a memory sometimes, and Star Trek of all things would be on in the background, the rugby would be playing, but it was just long and hazy. You just had to entertain yourselves, too. My mom was not on the floor playing with us like I might now be in my one hour of free time on a Sunday between all the soccer matches or whatever we’re involved in. Now I’m like, “Okay, now I have to play with the girls.” The pressure never stops. So even connecting becomes a little bit of a job sometimes. I’m like, “Okay, we’ve got 20 minutes, and you’ve been asking me to play with your Barbies all week, so let’s get down and play with those Barbies.”

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, and you’re like, “Okay, she does this, and then they’re dead. Okay, everybody up.”

[Tania] Damn, time for coffee. But it’s so true, everything is so hyper-scheduled. In your book, you talk so beautifully about emotional regulation and how that’s at the core of wellness. I know, like even in our house this morning—20 minutes before we had to leave for school—I had scheduled everything. Now it’s time for breakfast and brushing my teeth. Suddenly, one of the little ones said, “Oh, I have to practice my times tables for school.” She pulled out her multiplication table, and I was like, “No, not now.” But there’s no space for anything that’s off course from what’s actually plotted out. So, what’s happening in terms of emotional regulation for everyone there?

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, that’s such a great question. And, you know, just— I mean, I know your community knows this, but the definition of emotional regulation is how to stay calm. How not to lose your friggin’ mind. How to stay calm in times of distress or big emotion, okay? And it is the greatest predictor of wellness in our children. So oftentimes, when I ask people, “What is your hope for your child?” they’re always like, “I just want them to be happy.” And that’s so dumb, right? Because nobody’s happy all the time. None of us wake up in the morning and are like, “I’m just so happy. You know, so happy with the one I married, so happy with my body, so happy that I drank a bottle of wine last night.” Like, none of us are happy all the time. So, the greatest wish I have for your children and mine is the capacity to feel all the emotions. And that requires some exposure to all of those emotions. It requires comfort for us, the big people, to let them be sad, to be unhappy, to be rejected, to be bullied, to be not chosen, to be anxious, to be depressed, to be sad—whatever those things are. Oftentimes, we have such a desire to fix things and get back to normal that we do not do a very good job of just walking them back home, or holding space for that emotion. And that’s where the greatest lessons come from. It’s not about avoiding all the bad stuff. You can’t, you’re not that good. You cannot protect your child from loss. You cannot protect your child inevitably from getting rejected or bullied. It’s about how you walk them through that when—not if—it happens. When we have the capacity to stay calm, that’s the greatest teacher. Because when your child comes to the door and says, “My God, this person said this about me today,” or “My teacher said I’m dumb and stupid and I’ll never, ever pass grade five,” my capacity to just stay regulated is very clearly from those who came before me and were able to give it to me. So you can’t give away something you’ve never received. If you come from multiple generations of abuse, neglect, and trauma, or if the people around you have often been very dysregulated—this can happen in fear-inducing states, marginalization, or when you constantly feel on edge because you’re not sure the world is safe—it’s very difficult to give calm and stability to the people in front of you. If you’ve survived war, been in a refugee camp, or gone through any other traumatic experiences, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the capacity to provide. It simply means that, understandably, some of us might not have that ability. So the question becomes: how do we give that to our children? Often, the focus is on us first. People ask me this all the time, and I know they ask you as well: “Can you see my kid? I’m so worried about them. They have suicidal ideation, they’re ODD, they’ve got CD, or whatever else it is—hitting, kicking, biting, screaming, and doing all the things.” And I’ll say, “Mm-hmm, I’d love to see your child. Yes, tell me more.” And then I always say, “But I need to see you first.” The question becomes: “Do you think I’m the problem?” And I responded, “No.” And as I’m shaking my head, I say, “You’re the solution. You’re the solution.” I could see your child in therapy, providing gold standard treatment, okay? I could see them for an hour, once a week, at $220 an hour. I’ll get to know your child, and I absolutely need to do that—I need to assess their story before we can make any diagnostic conclusions. But the most critical part of the picture is the system in which it’s occurring. When I understand the resources you need to recognize how amazing you are, how competent you are, and how important you are in the life of your child—that’s when we can make real progress. Your child’s job is to act out; it’s to be difficult, to tell you to “F off,” to slam doors, steal things, or even get arrested—that’s their job. Our job is to walk them through it, again and again and again. That doesn’t mean tolerating the bad behavior, but it does mean teaching them how to handle it. That piece is most effectively done with the adults in their lives. That’s why I spend the majority of my career speaking to teachers, police officers, and leaders in Fortune 500 organizations. Because if the big people are okay, the people they love or lead will be too. So this constant question of, “Are we doing enough for the kids?” or “Are we doing enough for this group or that group?” is a beautiful question. But you can invest as much as you want in the institution of education, in programs, in Chromebooks, and in all the things. If you don’t care for the teachers, the EAs, the custodians, and the bus drivers, they will struggle to teach our children. The kids are not the problem.

[Tania] Yeah, and it’s so beautiful. Jody, I know that what you’re so passionate about is this model of self-care that we’ve sold, which is so different from what you’re talking about right now. What you’re talking about is how do we truly look after ourselves? How do we create a space where we can hold the craziness of the world without numbing out through a phone, alcohol, a shopping addiction, or whatever it may be? How do we create spaces where we can just be okay?

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, and I think it’s like… this concept of burnout really comes up a lot. And the definition of burnout is actually quite simple. When the resources outside of work, which are intended to fill your soul and refuel you, are not greater than those being sucked from your soul at work, you burn out. It’s that simple. And it’s not new—Friedmanberger came up with this theory in 1974. He was looking at a drug-addicted population at the time, and it didn’t even start with organizational stress. What he learned is that people who used drugs excessively in the addiction space started to be colloquially called “burnouts” because they looked like they felt incompetent, lacked confidence, and felt futile in their efforts. They thought, “What’s the point? I’m a lousy dad. I can never be good enough in this way. I’ve screwed everything up, so I’m just going to numb out.” Friedmanberger started noticing that the same things were happening in organizations, and these people looked like the “burnouts” in the addiction space. So, he asked, “What is this concept of burnout in organizations?” And he said that it’s the same thing. There’s a sense of futility that sets in, like “What’s the point? We’re not going to make a difference anyway.” Emotional exhaustion sets in, which leads to a lack of compassion. So, those three things—emotional exhaustion, lack of compassion, and a sense of futility—are what we see in people who are burned out. That means the issue isn’t that we’ve lost our ability to be great. Your job is not a function of burnout. More people don’t burn out because of their specific jobs per se. The greatest predictor of burnout is your ability, or lack thereof, to refuel, to rest, and to really replenish yourself. So, whose opportunity is it? What is it? Is it your job to single-handedly undo the mental health system of Southern Alberta? No, ma’am. Are you good enough to undo racism and marginalization in this world? No, ma’am. And when you consider that… I had to think about this when I left the Children’s Hospital. When I left, that was the hardest, most intense decade of my career. Mostly because I was young and still figuring out how to do this work, so I felt incompetent most days. I would come in early, stay late, get kicked, hit, bit—do all the things—and just learn the process of the dynamics. So when I left the Children’s Hospital, I thought, “You’re welcome.” I devoted a decade of my life. Honestly, it was so difficult in so many ways. I thought maybe they’d name a wing after me or, you know, maybe hold a lunch in my honor. No, ma’am. Nothing. I left with twins in my belly and my little box of trinkets I had collected. I remember walking past the nurse’s unit on my way out, thinking, “The lids are still flipping. There’s still a mental health crisis on our hands. There are still really unwell babies. There’s still a massive disproportionate amount of racism in the system. Did I even do anything here?” The point is that we will never undo all of this. Our job, when we’re in service to other people—as parents, as teachers, as educators, in any human services profession—is to just give them the best we can on any given day. Our job is to try to rewrite that story, to show that they’re not in this alone. When you understand that your only job is to give them the best you can with what you’ve got on any given day, that has to be enough. There’s an elder in the Yukon, an Indigenous elder, who taught me this earlier this year, and it was one of the most profound things I’ve heard. She said, “The most important people you work for are the ones you go home to.”

[Tania] It’s beautiful. So beautiful. It’s so beautiful. Yeah. You know, Jody, I think, too, when we kind of come back to the idea of, “Hold on, we’re at our best when our hearts can rest, when our souls can rest,” it also opens up so much space to be able to see our children, see the people we love, and see our own creativity. But I think when everything is tight, it’s so much harder to do that.

[Dr. Jody] So true, right? And I have to think about this because I’ve really considered this work. I mean, when I have done lots of work with first responders and police officers in the world of trauma, the only thing that works in my mind is a somatic process. Something like EMDR or any method that helps us get back to the unconscious mind of what is happening in the body, because the body keeps the score, okay? So what happens is we can do this topical stuff all day long. You can journal, you can deep breathe, you can do all the things, but the idea is: where do you feel it in your system? And I think, oftentimes, we are completely disconnected. We’re like, “We just did yoga, we drank some kale,” but then we do the whole thing, and our bodies are still like this, right? And then we go home and watch Dateline to try to relax. And that doesn’t work. Your body, when it watches Dateline, has no idea that it’s just a show. It doesn’t know that the young woman in Tallahassee who left the bar alone and got murdered is not happening at that moment. So, of course, we’re engaged in that process—the adrenaline, the fear of it all—but I see this so often that people, including myself, don’t even see it. I’m like, at the end of the night, “I’m gonna watch Yellowstone,” and I did this last night until two o’clock in the morning because I couldn’t shut it off. And then I’m just like this, and then we try to go to bed. People say this to me all the time: “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t rest. I can’t sleep. Maybe I’m going through a change.” No, no! We’ve had our entire day like this—getting buzzed on here, dinged on here, ready to do the next thing—and then at night, we start to process how our babies are doing, whether we responded to an email well, what’s for supper tomorrow, do we need to get them here? And we’re so exhausted that some of us just fall into sleep and then wake up at two, spinning, because we give ourselves no stillness to process. In fact, quiet becomes scary. So we use noise machines and CPAP machines and all these things to try to block out the noise. What we’re doing often is avoiding feeling it. And, you know, Stan Siegel says this: “You have to name it to tame it.” You have to give it some space in order for it to move through. If we’re constantly inundated by all the noise and busyness, and the expectations of how we’re failing our children, our husbands, our wives, or whatever else, there’s very little time to give the neurophysiology of who you are a rest.

The Power of Being Present and Emotionally Available in Parenting

[Tania] Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, Jody, as you’re speaking, I’m thinking about our kids as well. I think that when we have these very, very busy parents whose physiology never rests, and then you have kids who never have those raw conversations or actually look somebody in the eye and say, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I totally messed up.” Lots of our kids are missing those vulnerable moments, or they’re always given a participation trophy. So, they have these adults who are too busy to really feel their feelings, and then we have these kids who don’t have adults feeling their feelings and who live in a world where we can hide constantly, where you never have to go, “I completely lost that race,” or whatever it is. Our kids never experience those deep, deep emotions. I think it’s not until it gets really bad—until maybe mom dies later on or something happens in their world where they go, “Whoa, what’s that feeling? I’m not familiar with it.”

[Dr. Jody] 100%. And you need that script to know what to do about it. So then, you know, oftentimes, I think as parents, we fall into this big guilt phase, which is, “My gosh, I’ve messed them up.” I see this so many times in any of the talks that I do, right? When we start to talk about the neurophysiology behind emotional regulation, you know, kids turn their needs up and up and up until we meet them. And I can see parents processing like, “My God.” How many times have I misinterpreted? How many times, oh my Lord. You know, how many times? I think my own baby will grab my face when I’m on the phone, you know? I mean, they’re 14 and 12 now, and they’re like, “Hey, look at me,” right? And I’m like, “I am doing very important mental health work here.” And they’re like, “Okay, when you’re done, I’ll be right here.” But the idea is so clear that we weren’t meant to do any of this. I often show this video, the “Still Face” video with Edtronic, which, you know, is such pivotal work in our space, right? It shows that if you stop, if you go flat in the face of, like, an 18-month-old or a 9-month-old, and just do not respond for two minutes, their body starts to collapse in on itself. They’ll screech, get their motorbike fist going—anything they can to pull you back in. It just gets louder and louder until, eventually, they’ll collapse, even in their posture. And this is not unlike our 12-year-olds and 16-year-olds when they need to process what has happened. And it’s often not at the best times. It’s often at night, in the car when we have to get somewhere, or right before school. It’s all of those times when we’re like, “My God!” So oftentimes, the question becomes, what do we do about this? And I would say, you know, it’s really not as scary as we think it is. I don’t think we’re as far gone as we feel some days. The data around assisting kids in emotional regulation is quite clear. You only need to get it right 30% of the time. The Circle of Security folks wrote that in one of their first books, and I was like, I hang onto it and I quote it. I talk about it all the time because you can screw this up a lot. And we will, because we’re overwhelmed and exhausted. So I think what happens first is for us as parents to drop our shoulders and understand that, generally speaking, in each of our bodies, at this moment, we have everything that our kids need. We just sometimes lose access to it. So when we know that to be true, if we believe that to be true, then we’re so much further ahead, because even that will give us enough motivation to just show up, right? To give them the best we can with what we’ve got. You don’t need to read another book. You don’t need to take another course. You don’t need to be some superhuman model. It’s just really doing the next best right thing as much as you can. And I know that I am a better parent. I mean, I often say this about kids these days. It’s the first book that I wrote. It’s a national bestseller—the best parenting book I’ve ever read. Every time I read it, I’m like, that is so good. If you watch me with my own kids, you wouldn’t buy the book. Because I get it when I’m regulating. Right? Has this ever happened to you? You’re out in public, and people may know who you are, and your kids are doing a starfish in the Walmart, and you’re just like, holy fuck, get in the car! That’s because that’s all of us, right? Anyone who has come into my therapeutic practice, you know, I’m not telling them what to do. I’m getting them back to the best parts of themselves because they know what to do with their own babies. They know way better than me or anyone else what their kids need, when they need it, and how they need it. My job is to get them back to the best parts of themselves. And if there’s been a lack in learning that process—like their models weren’t awesome or they’ve been told they’re not good enough—then that’s the work we have to do: to remind them of how much they’re loved and needed. The only thing their baby needs is to be reminded of that again and again. And when they push back, it doesn’t mean they’re screwing it up. It means they need the anchor to stabilize even further: to set limits, to set boundaries, and to get them back on course. When we give parents permission to mess up sometimes—even those of us who claim to know a little more about parenting than the average bear—it’s important to recognize that we don’t always know what we’re doing 98% of the time. The greatest thing is that our self-care isn’t about drinking kale and doing yoga necessarily, but really being able to take time to be still, to rest, to refuel, and to surround ourselves with people who can help us get there when we can’t get there ourselves. We need to be very careful about what we consume on social media so that we’re not comparing ourselves to all the dolphin-assisted pool-birth mothers who are lovely humans as well, but none of that is required to be a great human, okay? There’s no right way to do it. It’s really about showing up in the most regulated bodies we can as parents. Our kids will be better for it.

Parenting in the Real World: Embracing Imperfection and Connection

[Tania] So beautiful, Jody. I always talk about this image of a parent who is sometimes messy and imperfect, which is beautiful because it shows our kids that it’s okay to be messy. Mom’s messy, dad’s messy. It’s also about reflecting and being able to go, “Hold on, where am I messing up? What do I need to shift a little bit?” Like, my little girl always says to me, “Mom, you have a very calm voice.” So she was always like, “Mom, you don’t yell, but your eyes get really angry.” And for me, there’s growth there. So it’s like, “Okay, when we’re in these moments, can you breathe deeply, relax your eyes? What is your body saying right now?” But I think it shows our kids that we’re also learning, and that we all have our stuff from the past.

[Dr. Jody] Oh my God, I say this to my kids all the time. Like, I’m new here. Did you know that I’ve never had 12-year-old twins before? How am I doing? How about you give me some feedback? You know, how am I doing? And they’re like, “You’re terrible. This is awful.” I’m like, I know, right? I’m a first-timer. Give me some tips. How could I be better at this? Right? I don’t know, buddy, what to say here. I don’t, you know, I obviously get it wrong sometimes, so let me know. What do we need to do better as a family? What do we need to do better? Well, I need dad to yell less. Okay, yeah, I’m with you there. That’s a good intervention. And then also, I know that your dad’s doing his best. Here’s what I know about your dad, right? Here’s why I love your dad. Here’s what I know. And tell me this about me, right? What do you think I need to do better as a mom? Well, I really wish you would do this. I really wish you’d do that. Okay, good, cool. I got it. Anything I’m doing right? Because I’ll tell you some of the things that I love about this job. And then, you know what I mean? Like, it affords that sense of, “Okay, just a second here. This is a dynamic relationship. We’re trying to figure this out together. We’re in this relationship piece.” But never doubt that I’m in control here. But let’s start talking about this, particularly as you get a little more verbal, right? In these mid-pre-adolescent, adolescent phases, it’s such a good conversation to have because it’s like, “Yeah, you’re right. I mess this up sometimes. I’m sorry for those things. Here’s what I’m sorry about. Here’s what I’m not sorry about. I’m not going to get it right all the time. Neither will you someday if this is what you choose to do in work, business, and parenting.” So let’s figure out how we make this right. You know, the Gottmans do, I think, the best work in this space. Generally, I mean, they started in couples more than anything, but I always remember this data, Tania, when the greatest predictor between couples who make it and those who don’t, regardless of polyamorous relationships, same-sex couples, or heterosexual couples, doesn’t matter. The greatest predictor of couples that make it and couples that don’t has nothing to do with how much sex you have, how much money you have, or how alike or different you are. It is your capacity to repair. Which means your ability to step back in, not when, but if there’s conflict—not to avoid it, right? Because that’s what we tend to do. “We’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine.” But the ability to repair it when it goes south. And you know, the most magical words in the repair space are “I’m sorry.” And they do not follow with a “but.” Because if you butt it, you erase it. And the best lessons you can ever teach your children in this space of repair is not only to apologize to them—something very few of us ever come from models of doing or having that experience—but also apologizing to their parents in front of them. And because our houses are bigger and our proximity is so much less, if you think about how often our grandparents modeled make-up in front of their children… you know, like, if they fought, everybody knew about it. If they made up, everybody knew about it. I think about that in my own life—my father lived in a one-bedroom house, you know, with his two brothers. And so there was much more opportunity for proximity. I don’t mean to romanticize the “good old days” because, of course, there were so many other things that were wrong then, but the ability to regulate emotion and understand human connection was deeper because there were many more opportunities for it.

[Tania] Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And right there, we go back, we circle back to what we mentioned earlier about those times for authentic connection. Because it’s in those spaces that I think our kids go, “This is who my mom is, and this is who I am.” It’s in those difficult moments where I think we really, really see each other, if we are able to.

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, for sure. And I think sometimes, you know, oftentimes this is the hardest part, but those of us with an emotional language tend to be better at repairing than those who don’t have an emotional language. Historically speaking, we are much better at teaching girls—those who identify as girls—emotional words. We give them many more opportunities in their play to be emotional, to be soft, nurturing, caring, than we do with boys or those who identify as boys. And that still stands true today. We think we’re getting better at it, but I mean, I have two sons and a daughter. I catch myself all the time in the nurturing ways that I do, even as I tuck them in at night—still, you know, they’re 12 years old. How much more conversation I’m having with our daughter than I may with our sons, you know? The expectations of who does what jobs around the house, and how many opportunities we give them to develop an emotional language. We’re better with that with girls. And so, what that affords you in adult relationships, then, is typically those with more of an emotional language have a greater capacity to repair. They’re better at the repair. They’re better at managing conflict and big emotions, which is why many Fortune 500 companies right now that have a woman at the boardroom table or at the leadership team will be more successful—irrefutably. Mostly because we’ve never been this disconnected. What we need is the glue to bring us back together. Now, I always have to be careful in this space because it is not a woman’s responsibility to navigate the conflict in any relationship. But irrefutably, we’re better at it—modeling, leading the charge, being able to navigate and have those hard conversations in a way that can be demonstrated to those who watch us, live with us, who… Let’s try that again. We need to—here’s what I love about you—collect and then direct. We’re doing that often, more often in front of our kids. And if you do that, sorry, if you do that more often in front of your kids, you’re giving them lessons that are becoming much harder to access these days.

[Tania] Absolutely. What is it about the naming of the emotion? So, The Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown, I know you mentioned her in your book. Amazing. So great. But for people listening in, what is it specifically about being able to identify different emotional states that leads to a greater efficacy of repair?

[Dr. Jody] So, when you can identify an emotion, it integrates it into your prefrontal cortex. If there’s just a big, messy, visceral sense of, like, ick, of yuck, and you can’t quite identify what that is, that yuck tends to stay stuck. Okay? So for example, if I think about this in terms of severe trauma—when I work with police officers, right?—there’s something that happens at a scene where they have to get dysregulated. And so they flip their prefrontal cortex out of the way, because I don’t need you to know your PIN number, your bank card, and how to identify a black bear from a brown bear. What I just need you to know at that moment is how to conduct CPR or keep somebody safe and fight, flight, or freeze. So you’re hyperarousal. Integrating that experience later—if you just don’t do anything with it, which often happens historically—or you just drink, or everybody says, “I’m fine,” it gets stuck. Now, it’s not a bad thing if that happens once or twice, it doesn’t necessarily debilitate you because you just suck it up and move on. If it happens again and again, though, it becomes a cumulative experience, which means your body continually thinks that it’s in danger because those things are stuck. If you can identify the feeling—and we’ve understood this from a neurophysiological perspective, particularly naming it in the left prefrontal cortex—it allows us to integrate that experience. So naming it from a verbal perspective and a visceral perspective engages both of those parts of the brain, and then it integrates it. Okay? So, if I can say to you, “I felt so scared. I felt so embarrassed that I didn’t get to the scene on time. I felt so much shame. I felt so much angst because that baby was wearing the same jammies as my baby does at home.” When you can name that, you can say, “Okay, look at me now. That wasn’t your baby. You were there to serve a three-year-old who was on scene. That was your job, and you did it beautifully. Yes, but they died. Tell me more.” Do you understand? I’m integrating that process. Being able to describe it—and if you struggle to be able to sort of describe it, which is often the work of therapy—right? If I can bring you through that a little bit and guess at what that might’ve felt like, we can start to give names, labels to what that was like. Because you’ll feel it. You’ll know it if I get it right. “Oh my God, you felt embarrassed.” “No, f*ck, I felt… you know, shame. Ah, yeah.” So you try to get that a little bit more right, which means then it just kind of names it and tames it into that part of your brain that integrates it. Does that make sense?

[Tania] Oh man, Jody, what a beautiful description. Just beautiful. Yeah, you did that in such a gorgeous way. So really, when I think about it with our kiddos, this is what we’re doing. Is it exactly what you were saying earlier with our boys and our girls? We are, as much as possible, opening up their world by really trying to figure out the delicacies of what they might be feeling and seeing.

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, wondering about it, right? You don’t have to get it right. Like, that must have been really hard, and that’s the acknowledgment piece. You know, when my daughter comes home and says, “Everybody hates me. I’m quitting hockey. They all started a rumor about me today. This is the most terrible thing that’s ever happened.” Or when my son says to me, “Nobody wants to play with me. I can never find my people.” What I want to do—what we often want to do right away—is fix it. Okay, like, “Did you sit on the buddy bench? Did you look approachable today? Were you being a jerk?” You know? We’re really trying to get them out of it instead of saying these three words, which save my ass all the time: “Tell me more.” What was the hardest part? What made you the scaredest? You know? And then really sort of filling in those spaces. “Oh, so it felt so lonely. You wondered if you were ever going to fit in. God, there must have been… were you embarrassed that nobody picked you on the team today?” And you’ll know kind of when you get it right, right? And what you’re doing is labeling emotions for that visceral sense of what’s happening in the body. And of course, we don’t want them to feel that. So there’s always the other side. It’s not like you’re going to stay in this cesspool of crappy emotion forever, but it’s like you name it, you tame it. When you don’t address it, you don’t acknowledge it. And I often say this—I talk about this in Feeling Seen: When you are acknowledged, you rise. And it can take 0.7 seconds, or you can sit in that for days, particularly if it’s heavy-duty trauma or grief. But it often doesn’t take much to simply acknowledge it and then move up the other side.

[Tania] It’s beautiful. And that acknowledgment, it’s huge. It’s where it starts. Yeah. Jody, as you’re talking, I just had a memory. I had foster kids before, my two little girls now. I remember, we were with the kids for four and a half years. They were from Enoch, and they were a sibling group. One of the little boys—well, he wasn’t that little, actually—he was about 12 and a bigger kid. He was destroying his bedroom. Everything was down—holes in the wall, posters had been ripped down, the bookcase was overturned. I was in the room but backed away from him. I’d been trying to say different things, all the rest. And there was just this moment where I looked at him and I said, “Dan, you’re feeling so sad.” And he looked at me, stopped, and then burst into tears. And you’re right, you know when you get it right. I get it wrong often with my girls. I have one kid who’s highly sensitive, and she’s like, “Don’t use validation on me!” She hates it when I name her feelings. But in that moment with that kid, it just came from this place where I could see him in that moment, and he felt seen. The whole trajectory of what was happening changed. He started crying, sat down on the floor, and we were good.

[Dr. Jody] Yeah, and you have access to the best parts of him, right? So when he’s destroying those things, he’s lost access to the best parts of him—not his ability to be great, he’s lost access to it. And our only job as parents is to get back into that place of access to our babies, right? That often looks like getting eye contact, validating their feelings, giving them a drink of water. If they’re so far gone that they’ve lost access to language, then you need to shut up too. Because if you can’t produce language, you cannot process it. So if your kid is verbal and they get really dysregulated and start to hiss or growl or make guttural sounds, you know those “eeeh,” “ssss,” you know? It’s like when you’ve been in a bar fight and you lose access to all your language—all you can do is like, “wop wop,” you know? It’s the same thing. And it’s not like you’ve had a stroke. You still have the ability to speak, you’ve just lost access to it. And so when you get that deep, what you want—or when you see a baby get that deep—is they start to urinate or defecate or do any of those things that show complete loss of control. Stopping speaking is the first order of practice because they can’t produce language at that moment. You know, and we tend to do stupid things like this: “You’re in the red, stop, you’re not making good choices, use your words.” Like, fuck off. It’s so unhelpful because they can’t process it. It’s our job to do everything in our power to keep them safe, whether that means restraining them or staying in the room—whatever the situation is. But you stay present. And as soon as they can tell you to “fuck off” or that they hate you, or whatever, you’re in business. Because we at least have access to the prefrontal cortex. I know that the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas are now online. So I might say things like you did here: “Man, this sucks, dude. You’re so scared, buddy. I’m scared too.” Or “I’m… you know.” And then when that comes back online, oftentimes the next thing I do is offer food or a drink. Why? Because you can’t chew and swallow with a flipped lid. It’s neurobiologically impossible. So it’s not a reward. We’ve often used food, drink, or whatever as a reward, but I’m using it as a skillful device to get you back to me. Because as soon as I can get you to speak calmly, you’re safe, and so am I. So I might say, “Man, you know what, let’s just get some juice and talk about it. Do you want some juice?” They might say, “I hate juice. Do you have any pop?” Yes, sir. Like, it doesn’t matter to me. I will die on the pop hill. It doesn’t matter to me, right? And oftentimes we’ve been trained to not die on that hill. You know, like, “I said juice or nothing. This isn’t a restaurant.” Zip it, Susan. And if you don’t have pop, that’s okay. You can say, “Buddy, I wish I did. All I have right now is orange juice or maybe some water. What feels better?” And it might feel like you’re placating or condoning the behavior. None of that is true because it’s not about teaching them when. I want to get you back home first because that’s the only place where you’ll learn. So particularly if you won’t do that, I’ll offer a cookie or a snack or something that can kind of help them start chewing and swallowing. When kids do that, they usually take a deep breath like this. You also can’t do that when you’re dysregulated. So that’s a cue to me that now you’re safe, and so am I. And then I can start to teach: “What happened here, Buck? I can see this is really… holy moly, you’re mad at somebody or something. This doesn’t feel fair.” Yeah, you know what, this fucking—so if I were to say, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, we don’t say the F word in this house,” what happens to the lid? It’s not the time yet. You’re right, we don’t say the F word in our house. That is the rule. They know it, so do you. But this isn’t the time to teach that because they don’t have access to enough yet to be taught. So I’m going to say, “Okay, let’s take another minute. My gosh, this was a tough one. What happened here, my love?” “Well, you said I couldn’t do this. I’m never going to get to see my mom again if you don’t…” Okay, that would be scary in your body if that’s what you heard me say. I’m so glad you told me that. Holy smokes. Alright, that part’s not true. I promise you, to the best of my ability, we are going to connect with your mom. And I missed it, so what do we need to do here, right? To start to slow this down.” “Well, okay, do you think we should clean it up?” “Yep, let’s do this together. Do you think we can apologize? Is there anybody that needs to be apologized to?” “Yes, but I don’t know how,” which is often true. If nobody’s ever apologized to you, you can’t give it away. So we do stupid stuff like this all the time: “You need to apologize, Jesse. You need to apologize to Jackson.” And they’re like, “I’m sorry.” And you’re like, “Say it like you mean it.” But nobody’s ever said to them, “Look at my eyes, Jesse. Mommy is so sorry.” They don’t have the capacity to give that away. So you sometimes have to model it. “Okay, Jess, come here. This is what I might want to say to Jax. Can you just stand beside me while I do this? You tell me if I get it wrong, okay?” So I might say, “Jax and Jesse and I just want to say, we’ve been talking about it, and Jesse feels really bad about what happened today. Is that right, Jesse?” “Yeah.” “And if he could, he’d want to apologize. He might want to say something like, ‘I’m so sorry for telling you you’re a fat cow,’ or whatever the deal is, right?” And I’m going to navigate it, and no doubt sometimes they’ll jump in and be like, “Yeah, but I still think you’re a…” “Okay, okay, come here, look at me.” Right? And so it’s that ability to sort of teach and model. You can imagine the more access we lose to our children in terms of proximity and looking them in the eye, we are also losing these opportunities to walk them through emotion. Because you don’t have a script for how to do that unless somebody shows you. You’re not born with empathy. You’re not born with kindness. You’re not born with the ability to apologize. Somebody has to show you. And the more proximity we lack to people who are calm and regularly present—less access to grandparents, grandparent-like figures, less access to siblings—all of those things that offered those opportunities have become, statistically speaking anyway, less and less available to many, many, many of us. And so the consequence or the result of that is what we see: significantly more dysregulation.

[Tania] Jody, I love how you just explained how we walk our children home. I could talk to you all day, but I know we need to finish up now. I’d love to keep you here for another few hours, but the kids at the sleepover will be just fine. Jody’s book Feeling Seen goes into tons more detail. It’s just such a beautiful read. Honestly, this is probably one of my new favorite books. It’s so beautiful. And it looks at it from a much wider cultural and community perspective, and then brings it right back into people’s homes too.

[Dr. Jody] Thank you, Tania. Well, thank you. It’s so great to finally get to do this. Thank you for having me.

[Tania] We’re done! Yes, this was so fun. Hopefully, we’ll chat again soon. Thanks, Jody.

[Dr. Jody] Yes, I’d love that.