Ep #110: Managing Big Emotions (Both Yours and Your Child’s) with Dr. Alissa Jerud

What if the real secret to better parenting is learning to handle our own emotions first? If your child’s meltdowns leave you frazzled, if you feel guilty for losing it, snapping or shutting down, if you ever struggle with needing to yell or just having a bad day, you are so not alone. And today’s episode is exactly what you need. I’m joined by Dr. Alissa Jerud. She’s a clinical psychologist, a professor, a mom, and the author of Emotion Savvy Parenting: A Shame-Free Guide to Navigating Emotional Storms and Deepening Connection. So good. She’s here to share tools parents need to ride out emotional storms without guilt, shutdowns or shame, so important.

We talk about how to stay calm when your child can’t. We talk about repair. And we talk about building emotional agility that helps your whole family thrive. This one is packed with both science and soul. Let’s get into it. Now, it’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast, where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow, and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves, because, you know what? We all really need and deserve that, too. I am your host, Amy Nielson, let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy:Dr. Alissa Jerud, welcome to the show.

Alissa: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Amy.

Amy: I am so excited about this conversation today. So many things that I think, oh, all of us as parents, teachers, we all just need to talk about this over and over and over again. So many good things. Before we get into kind of talking about staying steady through the storms of parenthood, right? Like emotional savvy parenting, can we just maybe start with your story and kind of tell me what led you to specialize in emotional agility, anxiety, like this stuff?

Alissa: Yeah, for sure. So, I am a licensed clinical psychologist, and I actually primarily treat anxiety-related disorders as well as emotion regulation difficulties. So the types of treatments that I use are forms of what’s called cognitive behavioral therapy. And so specifically, I use exposure-based treatments for anxiety-related disorders. And then for those emotion regulation difficulties, dialectical behavior therapy skills training. And really, at the heart of both of these treatments is the idea that we can feel strong, unwanted emotions, painful emotions, and still do things that matter to us that are important to us, right? Still show up in the world in ways that are effective and consistent with kind of who we want to be as people.

And so, I’m seeing these treatments transform people’s lives and help them relate more skillfully to those unwanted emotions. And I realized early on, relatively early on in my parenting journey, though maybe not as early as I wish I had, that these treatments, these ideas from these treatments really apply beautifully to parenting as well. Right? Because as parents, oh my goodness, we feel so many understandable and normal, but yet very painful, uncomfortable emotions at times. And so often, as parents, we kind of find ourselves trying to fight those emotions as opposed to learning that maybe we might instead be able to welcome those emotions, let those emotions tag along for the ride, and yet not need to let them control what we do or don’t do, how we show up or don’t show up with our kids. And so, I really wanted to write this book and work with parents to bring these ideas to parents specifically because I just find them so powerful and helpful in my own life and in the lives of the patients I see.

Amy: Oh my gosh. Oh, this is going to be so good. Let’s chat. Okay. So let me ask you this first. How common is anxiety in children?

Alissa: Ah, so I should know. I actually work mostly with adults. So I see kids from time to time, but I can’t give you stats on anxiety and kids. Honestly, my probably I’m going to be off on my numbers in adults as well. What I will say is that we all feel anxiety from time to time, right? And so there’s the difference between feeling anxiety and having an anxiety disorder. And yet, ideally, whether we meet criteria for an anxiety or disorder or not, we can still respond to that anxiety in the same way, right? We can still take a more skillful approach when anxiety shows up that will not only help us if we do have an anxiety disorder to maybe overcome that, but might also help prevent an anxiety disorder from taking hold in the first place.

Amy: Oh, I love that so much. Okay, so first of all, let’s just put it out there. We all experience anxiety at some point or another in some form. And these tools, these skills can help at any level. And if we, I think, learn them as adults, then we can help model that and speak to that for children which helps bring them hopefully kind of along with us and we can show that. Is that kind of what you’re saying?

Alissa: Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah.

Amy: Oh, so good. Okay. So do you feel like, I know you’re a mom, has your work like impacted the wayyou parent? Has this impacted how you work with your own kids?

Alissa: Oh, without a doubt, right? Like if I didn’t treat anxiety, if I didn’t treat emotion regulation difficulties, I’d be struggling. I really would be. To be clear, I struggle even still, right? Even with all the knowledge I have, all the tools I’ve got in my tool belt, I still struggle because parenting is hard and we’re all going to struggle no matter how much we try to learn and grow. And I’d be struggling so much more. I think the ideas of respectful or gentle parenting really resonate with me and always have. And yet it really wasn’t until I realized the overlap between those ideas and the spirit of the treatments I provide that I was able to really more consistently show up in the way that I want to show up with my kids.

Amy: Oh, it’s so good. Why is parenting like, if you could just put it into a sentence or two, why is parenting like so challenging? Like even when we think like we’ve learned everything and we should be fine now, right? Like you’re a licensed clinical psychologist and it’s still hard. Like why, why is it so hard? Can we just normalize that for a minute?

Alissa: Yeah, oh my goodness. Yes, and doing so in a sentence or two might be tough.

Amy: Take what time you need.

Alissa: I think the biggest thing is that our kids sometimes or often engage in behaviors that can be annoying, frustrating, infuriating for even the most cool, calm, and collected among us, right? So there’s that. But then in addition to that, we’ve got like a million other balls oftentimes that we’re juggling. There’s all this conflicting advice out there in the world that we’re trying to make sense of and pick from, right? And then there are also like these comparisons that we make between, you know, ourselves and other parents and our kids and other kids. It’s a lot that we have to contend with. It’s almost like it says something about me if my kid does this thing and everyone’s going to judge me because they did it even though I tell my kids to brush their teeth. I try to help them brush their teeth, but if they didn’t brush their teeth, you know, whatever, things like kind of like that. All of it.

Okay, so I love that you have a framework that you use from your book. Got your book here. This is amazing. And talk to me about the ART and what that is, the three pieces, like that acronym, and let’s kind of go into your framework and talk about it.

Alissa: Yeah, of course. So I refer to it in the book as the Art and Science of emotions or the ART tools for short. And so this is, like you said, a framework to help us navigate not only just the challenging emotions, but all emotions in general that we encounter as parents or even people. So really, the acronym stands for accept, regulate, and tolerate.

Amy: Okay. I like that. Accept, regulate, tolerate. Ooh, there are some good things in there. I’m excited. Okay, so tell us more.

Alissa: So accepting is really about accepting the things that are out of our control. And I think one of the things that keeps us as parents struggling so much is that oftentimes we find ourselves attempting to control our kids in an effort to not have to feel so uncomfortable ourselves. Right? So we try to control them and in some way it’s for one or more reasons it ends up backfiring, leaving us feeling even more out of control. So accepting is about accepting not only our emotions, our thoughts, our urges that we may be having, but also those of our kids. And also our kids’ behaviors, assuming they’re not hurting themselves or other people, and their words, the volume with which they speak those words, it’s kind of accepting all of that stuff that can sometimes be really hard for us to accept.

And the reason for that, why I think acceptance is so key, is that we know that when we try to reject or push back against reality in some way, that oftentimes turns ordinary pain into a great deal of suffering. Right? It doesn’t work so well for us. And so we’re so much better first accepting things exactly as they are, because also once we accept things as they are, we can better understand them and maybe then even bring about some change. But if we’re just trying to kind of reject it flat out without trying to understand what’s going on, it’s usually not going to work out so well for us.

Amy: Interesting. Okay. So, I love this. And I think the thing that comes back is like, okay, but what if I can’t accept, like, we don’t want to just enable a behavior that we think is not acceptable or not going to be good for this child in their life. So how does that kind of fit in? And I think you kind of started to address this, but how does that fit in with this idea of acceptance? Like, we are where we are right now. And that not meaning that we have to never do anything different or work towards other things. Can you kind of speak to that discomfort there between those things?

Alissa: Yeah, yeah. So, it’s a great question. I think there are a few different pieces to that. One is that, sure, we may not be able to always accept certain behaviors, right? We can’t accept, like, you know, this isn’t anyone harming anyone or anything, but you mentioned like brushing teeth. We can’t accept that our kid just wants to skip brushing their teeth every day. That actually would harm them, right? But, you know, there are other things that maybe might not cause harm, but we’d rather not see that maybe we know aren’t going to be so effective for our kids, especially in the long run.

But what if we actually just focus instead of on accepting even those behaviors on the feelings, the thoughts underlying those behaviors. That’s something we can do. And often times if we can accept those, then maybe we can better understand why that behavior is showing up in the first place, help work through the feelings, the thoughts that are leading to those behaviors, which might even allow those behaviors to change on their own.

But the other piece I’ll just add is, like you’re saying, we’re all learning new skills every single day. Our kids included, us as well, right? And so, sure, we may not like how something’s – what’s happening right here, right now. I may not like it if I lose my cool in some way one day with my kids. That doesn’t mean I’m always going to do that every single time that I’m with them. Right? There are things I can do, strategies I can learn to help make it less likely that I’ll do that the next time around, just like with our kids. Maybe there are things that they will eventually learn, even if not today or tomorrow, that will make those behaviors less likely to show up down the road.

Amy: Mmm, okay. I want to keep talking about that. But let’s walk through the other steps of the framework. So we talked about acceptance. Let’s talk about regulation or regulate.

Alissa: Sure. Yes. And I’ll just I’ll add before I jump to those just that with acceptance, there’s a skill called mindfulness that is really helpful at bringing about or kind of fostering that acceptance. So that’s I talk a lot about that in the book, mindfulness and how that can allow us to accept more. Moving on though to the other two kind of tool or the other two skills in that acronym, there’s regulate, right? Which is all about one, first, again, as we talked about with acceptance, we can’t really change something unless we first understand it. So regulating our emotions in order to regulate them, we first have to just understand them, understand that our emotions are oftentimes much more complex than we realize, or actually I would say are always more complex than we realize. And understanding that complexity can allow for many more points of intervention than we might otherwise realize.

So regulating is about understanding our emotions themselves, like what makes up our emotions. And it’s also about doing things that are going to make us less vulnerable to experiencing painful unwanted emotions in the first place. And it’s about learning how we might be able to tweak those emotions, change those emotions when they show up, painful emotions, when they show up and aren’t serving us well, maybe are leading us to act in ways that aren’t so helpful for us or for our kids.

Amy: Oh, there’s so many good things in that. Okay. So regulating is about a lot of pieces. I like the idea of, to me, I kind of think about like perspective almost a little bit and trying to give just a little bit of space between you and just the really strong. I mean, still as an adult, right? And we talk about this happening with adults, and I try to imagine being a child and in this body where, I was talking to my daughter the other day, she’s a teenager now about like freaking out over not getting the right colored cup, right, when she was a child, right? Like I need the pink cup and it just feels so big in that moment, right? And now looking back at it, I mean, she just giggles at herself, right? And she’s like, but I remember, like that was a big deal, right?

And so almost just being able to kind of for me like step back and be able to like, I don’t know, is this kind of that part of it where we’re kind of like naming what we’re feeling, trying to talk about what’s happening and just notice it and talk about it and kind of try to get ourselves back to a space of curiosity again and I wonder what’s happening here and what I can do with that.

Alissa: Yeah, exactly, right? Because unless we’re curious about that emotion, why it’s there, what might be kind of maintaining or exacerbating that emotion, we’re probably not going to be able to make all that much dent or all that much change in that emotion. And so yeah, we’ve got to understand it a little bit more and try to get a better sense of what’s actually going on within us for sure.

Amy: Yeah, because I think when you’re at that really heightened state, I think it’s hard to be curious, but I think curiosity can kind of start to bring you down, right? And then of course, we’re like, what? I don’t know, I think initially our reaction, especially if we are also tired and having a hard time regulating possibly at the moment. We’re like, oh my gosh, it’s a cup. You know, like it still works, right? This is not an issue. But that’s not what’s happening inside of them, right? And so being curious, I wonder why this cup is such an issue right now. There’s a reason why I don’t understand it, but there is a reason. I wonder if I can figure out why. I don’t know, that’s kind of the example coming to my brain right now because I just been talking about it with my teenage daughter.

Alissa: Yeah, yeah. And I will just add to that that like in many ways, the book, I try to write it to help parents regulate their own emotions, right? Like to better understand what’s going on within them and manage those emotions. But often times, the thing that is triggering us so much is what’s happening for our kid. And so we can use these same skills that I talk about in the book with our kids. Not even necessarily getting our kids to use them themselves, but just like you’re saying, getting curious about what might be going on because chances are for in those moments, like it probably had nothing to do with the cup itself for your daughter, right? There were other things often times going on if I had to guess that led her to have such a strong reaction to not getting the pink cup.

And so just recognizing that, oh, you know what? Maybe she’s really hungry right now, or maybe she hasn’t had a chance to move her body all day. Maybe she’s upset about something that happened at recess earlier today. Just like thinking about that can sometimes maybe help us to make a little more sense of what’s going on and make those seemingly unreasonable emotions seem a little more reasonable, which can make it a little easier for us to accept them.

Amy: Yeah, and I think too, I don’t know if this fits into like the framework of tolerate, but in my thinking, like this seems to be fitting in, but almost this idea too of when we get triggered by something our child says because it feels like it’s a personal attack on us or it’s not grateful or it’s something that like is going to make us look bad or whatever that’s, you know, that’s happening. And then being able to kind of get curious around it instead of just feeling defensive, right? Because I think sometimes my kids do things that I’m like, that is so unfair. Do you have any idea? You know?

And so being able to get curious around it and say, wow, okay, you are having some really strong feelings right now. And to me myself too and saying, oh boy, I’m having some feelings about the things you just said, right? And then having to like, oh, I wonder why I’m feeling so strongly about this. Well, it makes me feel invalidated or it makes me feel unappreciated or it makes me feel, you know, whatever, right? And then being able to say, like kind of go through it for both of us. I wonder why I’m feeling such a strong reaction to the thing they just said. And maybe I wonder why they’re having this thing that they’re saying or they’re having this strong emotion that led to this or whatever. And so kind of doing that on all sides and being able to come back down because we’re getting into curiosity instead of defensiveness and then work from there.

Alissa: Yeah, for sure. I love everything you just said there. And yes, like you noted, right, so many different kind of pieces that we have to be curious, we have to identify those thoughts that are maybe kind of fueling what we’re feeling, what our kids are feeling. There are lots of steps in there, but again, that comes back to that complexity piece that I talked about. And the beauty of that complexity is that there are so many different points for intervention. It’s not that like, oh, I’m feeling this emotion and now it’s just going to stay here, right? Like different things we can do to shake up the systems that maybe we might be able to go ahead and feel a little bit differently down the road.

Amy: I love that so much. Okay, so that takes me back to the first step because we talked about acceptance. And then this is almost like, but is there something I could do if I want a different outcome? Which I feel like brings back your power. So like acceptance almost feels like a place to me of, I think we all want to feel like we’re in control. I think our brains want to feel like they’re in control, and yet it seems like such an illusion. Whenever we feel like we’re in control, and then we’re like, oh wait, really wasn’t. Oh shoot.

But like that idea of accepting, like this is happening, this just happened, or whatever, or oh, I don’t have quite as much control as I wish that I had or, you know, whatever that feels like. But then going to this place, the way you just talked about it, is when we’re getting curious and thinking about it, there’s like I’ve had to do this for myself a lot. But whatever the event that we just accepted that it’s our reality, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s our fault per se, but is there something I could do differently if I want a different outcome? And that I feel like you kind of feel like you’re almost letting go of control, but then you’re getting like this feeling of power back because you’re finding something you can do which feels almost regulating in and of itself. Is that sound right?

Alissa: For sure. Yes, right? Like maybe we can’t change what’s transpired thus far, but there are things we might be able to do to maybe allow things to go a little more smoothly from here on. And I just also want to note that sometimes we can’t change a given emotion. That emotion has fired and it’s going to be there for quite some time. And that’s where the tolerate piece comes in.

Amy: Let’s talk about tolerate. Let’s go there. Yes.

Alissa: So that is all about when those painful unwanted emotions are there, they’re intense and they’re pulling for some pretty strong reactions that aren’t going to be helpful for us, right? They’re pulling for us to yell at our kids, school, punish them, whatever it may be, right? How can we instead tolerate those painful emotions, sit with them, allow those feelings to be there without doing something that’s going to make the situation worse. So maybe we might be able to take the edge off the emotion a little bit so that that will help us to not explode even though that emotion’s still going to be there and it’s still going to be really intense. But can we cool it down a smidge so that then we might be able to use other skills to help us regulate and accept that emotion once it has come down enough that we can actually like we’ve got our brains back and we can use those other skills.

Amy: Oh, I love this one. This one’s something I didn’t know. I think I was kind of raised in this framework of you should never be angry. If you’re feeling anger, then you did something bad or there’s something, I don’t know, there was like being angry was bad. And I’ve had to kind of try to work through this and and this idea of being able to tolerate uncomfortable emotions and that they are going to happen. They will guaranteed happen no matter how much you try to try to fix everything and avoid it and all that’s never going to work. You will have negative emotions, uncomfortable emotions. How do we do that? How do we tolerate them? How do we learn to be able to sit in those as adults? Like what’s the mindset shift? What do we have to say to ourselves? Or is it like a physical thing we do? How do we do that as ourselves so then of course that we can model that for children?

Alissa: Well, again, that comes back to the complexity that I was talking about. And they’re knowing that there are different components to those emotions and thinking about where are we going to intervene. So if part of what’s making it really hard to regulate the emotion are the like physical sensations that we’re noticing in our body. Our heart’s racing, our muscles are super tense and we’re sweating, we’re hot. Right? Well, then maybe we want to go after those. We want to like kind of try to see if we might be able to change those physical sensations, decrease the arousal a little bit.

Maybe it’s that we are, you know, just kind of having really strong urges to yell at our kids, right, to do something that isn’t going to be so helpful for us or for them. Well, then maybe we might want to practice a skill that I call opposite action, which is essentially kind of doing the exact opposite of what you feel like doing when that emotion isn’t serving you well. Or maybe it’s that we are just having these really intense thoughts that keep kind of intruding on our minds that are like leading us to then want to act on those thoughts. And so maybe it’s about practicing mindfulness as a way to let those thoughts be there. Like, can we be mindful of those thoughts? Instead of treating them as facts that my kids are horrible and they never listen and all of that. What if instead we just notice, oh, I’m having those thoughts, and we let those thoughts buzz around us as long as they need to without latching onto them and treating them as though they are indeed true.

Amy: Interesting. Oh, okay. So I kind of like the idea, the picture that comes into my brain, right, is this idea of like mail and packages. Like this is how my brain kind of sorts through it. So if people are delivering mail and packages to my door and I don’t want them. I’m not sure I want them to come in my house, whatever. So I’m like blocking the door. You can’t come in. Then they just start to stock and stock and stock and then nothing good can come in. It’s a whole thing. It’s bad, whatever, right? But if I just bring them in, then I have maybe the ability to look through them and choose and keep what I want and kind of let go the other ones and get to open all of the junk mail or see it or whatever and sort and kind of go through it and whatever. And then I can let it kind of back out again, right? Because then if you’re trying to keep it all too, it doesn’t work and you can’t block it, you can’t keep – anyway, so this idea kind of like flow and letting it through and come out again and kind of working through it. I don’t know. That’s kind of like a visual I’m seeing in my brain.

Alissa: Yeah, I love it.

Amy: They were coming in through and sorting through it and acknowledging it and having it and you can’t block it all from coming, but you can’t really get the good in if you don’t allow it to come through.

Alissa: Right, right. And we end up often times wasting so much time and energy when we try to suppress certain emotion, right? Try to keep them from coming out there, right? We waste a lot of time and energy and we miss out on really valuable, meaningful experiences as well because instead of just being in the present, enjoying the present moment, we’re so caught up in trying to like quell our own discomfort or keep it from showing up in the first place. And so, yes, I 100% that like we can allow those feelings and knowing that no emotion lasts forever. All emotions have a natural course, even when they’re really, really, really intense. And so the key is can we like learn how to surf those waves, those emotions that come up, and know that when they come down, often times those urges that we might have that are really intense at first, those will subside too. So, right, like if we can just wait out the emotion, let it run its course, then maybe we’ll be in a place where we can proceed a little more skillfully.

Amy: I love that. It’s almost like that like just taking a deep breath and counting to 10 and even just in a few seconds, almost it feels like some of those urges can go or when you’re learning about communicating with people, I’ve been taught, you know, like give it 24 hours before you respond, right? If you need to just respond immediately and type something up, that’s fine, but then wait. Don’t send it yet. Give yourself 24 hours, then re-look at it and see if you want to change it a little bit before you send that things like that. Just kind of allow, yeah. Oh, so good. So when we’re kind of figuring this out for ourselves, are we kind of using this language with our children and trying to help them through it? Or do you think it’s kind of more just that they learn from watching us? Like, are we trying to kind of talk them through some of these things that they’re going through? Or what does that look like when we’re kind of working with this for our children as well?

Alissa: Yeah, I mean, you certainly can, right? You can use this language with them around accepting, regulating and tolerating, but I think it’s more modeling for them, right? That like, oh, you know, and so that could be even like acknowledging, wow, I’m like really angry right now. And maybe making it clear that’s me, right, that’s my anger. That’s not your responsibility. And I’m noticing I’m really angry right now. I’m going to do something because I want to make sure that I can show up in a way that’s going to be helpful for you, in a way that’s going to be, you know, where I’m supporting you and doing all the things that I want to do here. So I’m going to take a few moments. I’m going to do something to kind of regulate my own body, to soothe my body a little bit before I come back and I help you here.

So I think we can model that for ourselves. We can also just note, you know, start kind of helping our kids, like, oh, yeah, if our kid is saying, I’m so mad at so-and-so because they did this, this, and this, and they’re really big jerks or whatever they’re saying. And you just even note like for them, oh yeah, I’d be pretty mad if I were thinking those thoughts too. Right? That even just kind of gets them noticing over time that like those thoughts do impact how we feel. Same thing, the other night, my kids were up really, really late, and the next day, my daughter kind of was like melting down at one point and I just at some point I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, like first of all, you know, I validated her feelings but I also noted, I had a guess, part of the reason this is so tough right now is probably because we were up so late last night, right? I was like, we could all probably really use a good night’s sleep tonight. It’s even noting that, which then helps our kids to see, oh yeah, those emotions are complex. There are many ingredients and again, many points for intervention.

Amy: Oh, that is so good because it is, it’s always, it feels like a just a pile of things. And I find that as I’ve gotten better language for myself and I’m like, this feels like the thing it’s about, except for this is like one little tiny thing at the very end that it’s really not about this. It’s about all these other things we could talk about that and say, oh, I just I think I need a minute to just be able to have a really actually like healthy conversation around this. So I’m going to just take a minute and can we come back to this in a little bit when I’m feeling like I’m really ready to like show up for you and be able to have an actual conversation about what this is really about instead of what I’m just all the feels I’m having right now, you know, because I’m having a lot. Which is normal because we’re in a relationship and when we’re this close to people and we love each other this much, we’re going to have things come up. It just happens. It’s the thing. I love that.

Okay, if you could give parents like a simple shift, we have a lot of parents on here, a lot of them very busy that are like, I just, I need like a little bite-sized like thing. What’s the next thing I could do? Like, what’s one thing they could do this week to just kind of improve their emotionally savvy parenting like this week? What’s like that one top thing you would say?

Alissa: I think the big thing would be to notice those urges to control and just notice them. Not even try to change them necessarily this week, right? Because again, we can’t change a behavior unless we first understand or are aware of that behavior. So maybe just like noting that. And if you want to, not that you have to do this, I don’t even recommend this in the book, but like one thing you can do when trying to change a behavior is even just to monitor that behavior, like to actually record it because we’ve got data to suggest that just the very act of monitoring our behavior can lead to behavior change in the desired direction. Plus, it allows you to like, maybe even start to track progress over time. So every time that you try to control your kid in some way, right, to change when it maybe isn’t actually necessary, maybe just writing it down, just start becoming aware of that for yourself. And then you could build from there.

Oh, right. What’s going on in those moments where I’m doing that? And I have a skill I talk about in the book, it’s called a chain analysis, which you then follow up with a solution analysis to better understand like the links in a chain of events that lead you to engage in a certain behavior. Because often times we think, oh, our kid does this and boom, we do that. But there are often times a little intervening things that happen, whether sometimes we can’t even see them. It’s the thing we’re feeling, what we’re doing with our bodies, our kids’ facial expressions, different things that lead us to act in a certain way. So just taking time to better understand what’s happening each time that you’re trying to control. And then thinking about again where might you intervene to maybe next time around or even just at some point in the future, not always grasp for control in those moments where you find yourself feeling so uncomfortable.

Amy: That’s so good. And I loved that you had the word shame on the front of your book. I think one of the things is that we kind of avoid thinking through these things because then there’s an automatic judgment that we give ourselves with it, right? Which brings shame and shame is such a yucky emotion. So how do we do that without bringing on this shame for being human and for having human moments on a regular basis?

Alissa: I think it’s one just recognizing one that that we are human. We’re going to make mistakes and this is just so hard. Parenting is like truly the hardest job there is. I’m convinced of that. And so none of us will ever always get this right, right? Or always do parenting perfectly. There’s no such thing. And where we’re going to make those mistakes, recognizing that everybody makes those mistakes. We’re not the only one. Often times we feel shame when we think like, ah, this is something bad about us as opposed to no, this is just part of being human and a parent. So I think recognizing that. And then again, just like we kind of give our kids ideally grace and our compassionate with them when they mess up, doing the same for ourselves, right? Like being gentle with ourselves. This was hard. And so of course I messed up here. We’re all doing the very best we can with the skills that we have at any given moment in time. And so doing the best I can, I messed up. What might I be able to do down the line? What skills might I need to learn to maybe be more effective down the road, knowing that again, I’m still going to make mistakes at times.

Amy: So good. I was listening to Kristin Neff talking about self-compassion, and this video I’ve watched over and over again, it’s so good. But this idea of talking to ourselves like we would talk to our best friend instead of, you know, like we’re talking to ourselves because we’re not the nicest to ourselves, sometimes. I would never say this to a friend, but I’m saying it to myself in my head, right? So being able like, what would you say to a friend who’s having a really hard day and who calls you and just says, oh my gosh, I tried to control my kids again. And I just, you know, like, uh, and how would we speak to them and how do we encourage them knowing that they’re trying, that they want to, you know, be the best they can and that they are human and then speak to ourselves that way. And then like you said, just noticing that over and over again, I just that seems like such a powerful tool.

Alissa: And recognizing that, right, like none of us, when we feel really badly about ourselves, we are leaving ourselves more vulnerable to other painful unwanted emotions because we didn’t talk about like the complexity, what makes up our emotions, but one of the things are vulnerability factors, right? And a vulnerability factor is just like sometimes can be an emotion. Feelings. So if I’m feeling really a lot of guilt and shame and I’m feeling ineffective, well, I’m going to be more likely to experience other painful emotions, more vulnerable to those that are going to then potentially have me hijack me and leave me acting in ways I don’t want to act too.

So just recognizing that that like when we berate ourselves, you know, and talk harshly to ourselves, we’re not actually positioning ourselves to be able to do all that much better down the road. If we’re able to speak to ourselves as we would a friend, well then again, maybe that’s going to help us feel a little better so we can think a little more clearly, be a little more skillful potentially down the road.

Amy: Oh, that is so good. I feel like I experienced that this week. Like because we all have our inner voice saying you’re not good enough or you didn’t do this right or you know, whatever. And then yes, you feel like yucky already and then you’re on just less tolerant maybe because you’re already just feeling so emotionally worked up about whatever this thing is. So good. Okay, so we just talk to ourselves like a friend. And I love that too because I have another daughter that’s kind of going through transition of changing friends, getting out of high school, starting university, looking into moving out, and all these things that are just hard and it’s scary and I’m going to have to make new friends and it’s scary and all these things. One of the things I love about that is that if we become a friend to ourselves, our inner voice can talk to us nicely, then that’s a friend we can carry with us wherever we go. Oh, this has been so good. Do you have any like one last final thing that you would share with all of the amazing parents and teachers listening to this, this message?

Alissa: You know, I think the final thing I’ll say too, kind of building off of this thing of that we’re all going to make mistakes is recognizing that it probably wouldn’t do our kids all that much good if we really were perfect parents or educators at all times, right? Because then that would then set the bar exceptionally high for them and they’re going to make mistakes. They do make mistakes and will for the rest of their lives. And so I think if we can model that it’s okay to do that. And it’s also, we can then provides an opportunity to repair. And so there are ways that we can repair that are going to help to build connection, help to build connection with our kids, and model that it is okay to make mistakes and it’s also okay to own up to those mistakes. And so if we can do that, that can go a long way for our kids to make those kinds of repairs. So seeing when those moments where we do make mistakes, we go astray in some way, not as horrible things, right, that like we should never happen, but instead as normal, natural, and actually valuable learning opportunities for us and for our kids as well.

Amy: Oh, that is so good. I’ve almost been thinking lately too, and I’ve been learning more about this, that the idea of that really we cannot become stronger without having moments of doing it wrong. Like that is how we learn. So it’s not even like, oh, we messed up. So it’s almost like we need to have mistakes because it’s really the only way to learn. Like if you’re not ever making mistakes, then you’re not showing up. It’s the only way to grow and learn is by doing that and showing up in your life, you will happen. And so normalizing it into a way that it’s this will happen to you and it should because you’re a human that’s growing and learning and becoming the next version of yourself. And so in that, we’re doing it too. I’m doing it too. We’re all doing it. And here’s what we do when that happens or here’s some ways that we’ve figured that out. Oh, that is so good. This has been the most amazing, amazing conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us today.

Alissa: Oh, thank you. I’ve loved getting to talk with you today.

Amy: This is so good. Okay, and I want to tell you about this book, Emotion-Savvy Parenting: A Shame-Free Guide to Navigating Emotional Storms and Deepening Connection, which I just like that title says it all. So good. And we’ll put the link in the show notes so you can go and get Alissa’s book. It’s just so much of this. And I love that you’ve built it into strategies and tools and kind of a guide to help us, help ourselves, which then puts us in obviously the best possible position to help our children.

Alissa: Well, thank you so much.

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