014 - Why are we triggered by our kids reaction? - With Linda Sanderville

Parenting the Intensity · Oct 03, 2023

Transcript

welcome to the podcast today we're welcoming our first guest Linda Sanderville she's gonna talk with us about how our own childhood impacts the way we react to our kids when why they are triggering us what we can do to be less triggered and what we can do to set up our kids so they're less triggered when they grow up and a few different ways to regulate ourselves so we can stay calm and decay us Linda is the host of the selfless killed podcast and founder of the joy reclaim summit she has 14 years of license and specialized experience in the mental health field treating trauma anxiety and disconnection between couples Linda is also a registered yoga teacher and we will talk about that on the podcast she created her signature course self love skills to specifically address the items trust of eye-performing women using accessible practices to create minds and shift and an emotional violence and put boundaries into action she supports those who are juggling multiple demands on their time and energy as well as those looking in increase to increase their confidence and self-love I know juggling multiple demands on your time and energy is something you all are dealing with so without further ado let's welcome Linda on the podcast our first guest welcome to parenting the intensity where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents together we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids chances are deep down you know what they need but you need a little encouragement to keep going on our other days and permission to do things differently and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional but challenging kids welcome Linda I'm super happy to have you here today yeah today we'll talk about something that is for me a little funny which is how our inner child can impact our parent parenting and I want to like preface this by saying that I'm recovering yellow I'm totally honest about that and like when I when my older ones were little I was often yelling because I didn't know what else to do because I was repeating myself a thousand times and they were not listening change things change since then but I'm really curious because I think what you're gonna talk to us about to the talk to us today anyway I'm having trouble with my sentence will let us understand why we are doing that like why I were yelling or why why we're triggered by what our kids are doing in the behaviors they have and yeah so that's the topic but I would like for you to start and tell us like why why are you doing what you're doing what you're doing yeah it's a bit in the intro but a bit more of the why behind and what brought you there basically yeah I'd be happy to gosh you know so much of my career as a you know a clinical social worker doing psychotherapy has been working with children youth families and women like those are the groups that I've worked with the most and they're the ones that I have the heart for so I think my own experiences growing up and challenges you know with my own family unit and then helping others with either their immediate family unit or years later as adults right dealing with all the effects of how they grew up all of those things combined for the passion I have to help people to to heal and to better understand themselves and to release a lot of that a lot of the baggage and the negativity that comes from some of our less than healthy relationships inside of our families yeah yeah yeah so you know I do a lot of work with core beliefs right so the work that I do really kind of centers from and flows back into over and over again the core belief makeover because so much of what we do on a daily basis so much of how we function is very automatic and it very much stems from the beliefs that we hold way down deep inside things that we are only barely conscious of but they are actually determining like so much of how we act respond what we think what's triggering to us right it really stems from that place so that's a lot of the work that I do yeah and I I love that and I have to say it probably where I stopped being so overwhelmed as a parent is when I stopped being like doing most of the things automatically like when I start doing things more on purpose yeah like deciding things instead of just going with what was happening and reacting I think that made a huge impact so yeah that I think that makes a little sense right right well I love you sharing that because there's a way that we can come to that somewhat intuitively but for a lot of folks that that is actually quite difficult to do yeah and you know what you're describing is you know where I take folks from where we're working on that like core belief you know makeover but then we're moving through that reconnection of mind and body where the intuition comes in which I'm guessing is part of what kind of got you where you got to right definitely yeah following our intuition is like something we were so disconnected from and it's so essential exactly so essential but it's hard and I would say it I got there by myself but it took 10 years like if it if it can take a little like shorten that it's better you know yeah wouldn't that be nice for you not to have 10 years of like oh I can't believe I did that I can't believe I said that or said it that way yeah yeah regretting so much things at the end of the day when you go to bed and I'm gonna do better tomorrow and you get them right yes I think all of us have been there so yeah I would love to know for you to share more about the how that inner child's car can impact and like it can explain why we're we're triggered basically yeah yeah you know and everyone's pathway is different everyone's story is different some folks have beliefs that were set in place by something that was very dramatic right very like obvious like oh of course you would you would have some hang-ups because of the way that you were brought up or things that you saw or heard somebody say and then for others of us it's much more subtle and sometimes that's where it can get really confusing you can feel like well but I grew up in a pretty good family like I didn't really have major issues I wasn't abused right so but I'm why am I still yelling at my kid right so yeah but it doesn't have to be these sort of like big things you know in the psychotherapy world we call it like big t trauma it doesn't always have to look like that to impact you later on and we know well as parents that even as well-meaning as we are there are things that we do that hurt our kids right and it's and it's not always things that are very it's not like we're being cruel to them or anything like that but they may have a sensitivity that we're just not really aware of and so they take in something that we say or a way that we look at them or something that we do you know to them versus their sibling or whatever it might be and they and now they have sort of a little bit of a wound right so I just want to preface that with that statement because it's not always like these intentional horrific acts that can lead us to having these these challenges with their inner child sometimes it's by what very well-meaning people who loved us and and sometimes we do the same the good news is that there's a repair we can always repair so I don't want you know our listeners to feel like oh no like I'm messing up my child or I'm messed up you know like but there's always room for repair so yeah as far as the inner child goes it can be something again just a small moment of something that we took in as rejection and maybe it was even like our parent trying to protect us or saying like oh that's not how that works honey and in that moment we think oh they think I'm stupid you know like I could just right because it's the understanding of a of a small child yeah it's not necessarily because the parents is doing anything wrong it's just kids understand things differently than often what we think as adults it's like the same way a child can make a big fuss about the color of a plate for them it's super important but most of the time as parents especially when we're stressed and short on time we'll dismiss that thing as not important and like it because it's it doesn't look important for us as adults you know and we're all we're all guilty of things like absolutely you know there's this comedian and I'm gonna be so upset with myself later because I'm gonna suddenly remember who you know what his name is but there's this can send me later I could put it in the notes put it in the show notes it's so important yes so the comedian has this bit about how people you know someone was like making fun of a small child because they lost their balloon right I'm sure some people listening have heard this joke but the the they were outside the child lost you know a grip on their balloon and it went floating up into the sky and the parents like that's not important and yeah you know I mean in the grand scheme of things losing a helium balloon not the end of the world it's not the end of the world they're gonna be just fine and we know that but the comedian was saying well you know to better understand what that child is going through why don't you just tie your wallet up right at the end of a helium balloon and then just let it float off into the sky and have someone tell you it's not that big of a deal why are you so upset you know or I would say now maybe your phone or your right even more than the wallet actually isn't that funny I think so that would upset me I might cry so so just being able to to see that in the context of their world things that seem really small are really important right I heard someone else mention once when you're a toddler like your baby gives you like a piece of a twig off the ground when you're going for a walk it can be like okay why are you giving me that I don't I'm just gonna throw that in the ground you know and it's like well but to that child they don't really have anything they don't have all the earthly possessions so in that moment they're giving you like a thing that they have yeah they're giving it all to you yeah and I just like the gesture is super important much more than what it is yeah right right and that that just imprinted on my mind right I was like oh my gosh yeah they're giving me something it's like all the things they have in the world they just hand it over to me right so so even if I'm in the midst of feeling like okay we're on this walk but it's hot and I need to go cook dinner and stop yelling and stop walking in the street you know like I can I can get caught up in all those things but even just to slow down right slow down for a moment take a breath and just like look my child in the eye and give them a smile just yeah just appreciate that moment and the gift even if as adult of course that gift is gonna disappear soon but and like it's okay because we could not keep everything our kids are giving us we wouldn't even end out of your house just for that no all the things my kids give me every day the scraps of paper the crumbs off the ground I'm not I'm not actually keeping all of them right it's just that would be an entire other problem you'd be having a different episode podcast you know right now um but yeah I think it's just those small moments where we can we can affirm and we can validate and just show value to our children where it doesn't take a big gesture and it can just take a couple of seconds and that's a way that we can nourish their inner child for like way later in life right and so we may not have had all those moments because our parents may have been under stress all kinds of things I mean my parents were immigrants to the U.S. and they were actually great parents to me you know for the like 95 percent right like I also didn't have major dramatic no parents are 100 percent perfectly that doesn't right anyway like no no and that would be an impossible standard to try to live up to but the truth is they had you know they had a lot of demands in their time and attention so there might there's little moments that they absolutely you know missed thankfully I'm okay right like it still can turn out quite all right but yeah there's there's different ways in which we still can be impacted and having like an awareness of that just having an awareness that like as good as our parents did for us or as good as we had it there there's just little breakages that had an impact on us that we can be compassionate to ourselves about that I think it just gives us a little bit of room to to accept what is and just accept that we have our flaws in our sensitive spots and that as long as we're kind of just knowledgeable about that that actually does a lot of the work in terms of keeping us from being really reactive and really like trigger happy like when there's moments coming up that are getting under our skin yeah and like would you say the awareness is enough to not be triggered or is there other things that we can do to avoid being triggered by our kids reaction or action or yeah I think that awareness is really powerful I think often it's not quite enough for one it would take us being conscious in the moment all the time of like our entire emotional history like while we're like dealing with you know the kid who just hit the other kid on the head with the block or whatever like we it's hard to to maintain that level of consciousness around that information all the time but I do think like you know the second step in my framework after that core belief work is that that realignment that reconnection with mind and body so if you are able to incorporate practices on a regular basis that help you to get back into connection so that your head is not floating up here above your body and you know there's no nothing happening nothing speaking to the other part if you're able to have some practices that help you to reconnect those parts of the body that helps too for some people breath work is really powerful and and that really does the trick for them for others having some mindful yoga can be really great for just helping you to maintain a baseline that is more regulated and certainly doing some kind of subconscious work and so I I would refer to things as like hypnosis or emotional freedom technique tapping those kind of tools can be really helpful for integrating the subconscious mind in with your daily sort of like reactions and habits and thoughts so those tools can be really powerful too. I think pretty much everybody is aware of what yoga is I don't think we need to explain that much with breath work is kind of self-explanatory to some extent but if you might be touched just a bit on that and maybe a bit more about hypnosis and tapping because I think for lots of people those are less known approaches so how do they work a little bit like yeah yeah well so the the breath work yeah you know like you said it's kind of self-explanatory but there's so many different ways to do breath work you can literally google it and there's like 10 options that'll come up on the first page right like but a simple example would be something like in actually in yoga we do something called alternate nostril breathing so starting with your left nostril open you would close off your right nostril obviously people can't see me doing this but maybe you can hear the difference in my voice yes right okay confirmed and then he would breathe in through that side and then he would close both nostrils and then open up on the right hand side and breathe in breathe out and then alternate that one can be really great as a as a quick simple meditation practice to just bring you back to yourself right it doesn't have to take very long that's something that you can do in anywhere from like a minute to I mean if you really wanted to be wild with it you could do it for like 10 minutes and just have a whole experience right but it doesn't take that long so hypnosis is there are folks who do self hypnosis but I do guided you know hypnosis with folks that I see and it's just basically a way of using very deep relaxation so getting into a very deep state of relaxation with the aid of your your guide or the recording you're listening to and then while you're in that state being able to either visualize you know just kind of do a light hypnosis visualizing positive things or a safe space where you feel really calm and regulated so you can bring your nervous system back down from that higher activation from the in the midst of a stressful day or you can actively process like oh you know what's going on and kind of have a conversation with you know parts of you on the inside about why am i so like why am i yelling so much at my teenager right now i i know that they need me to be gentle and kind with them and yet i just keep yelling at them and it's not what i want to do right going inside and having that time to explore and to maybe make peace with something that needs some attention internally so that would be an example of what hypnosis would look like in terms of working with your own inner child to help you as you're dealing with your physical child right out in the real world yeah yeah and i would say like from experience from my my household when you have people who don't like don't function well in speak therapy trying those different approaches can be interesting because some people just they don't they're not comfortable or they just don't want to do speak like talk therapy because it's just not them and i would say let's have kids that are emotionally intense are neurodivergent they often don't feel good in those settings so like looking at alternatives can be interesting also so that's why i love the idea of like you explaining a little bit more those approaches because sometimes we're like quick to go see a therapist for something for a child or for ourselves and it doesn't work for x y is like y z n or or a child just doesn't want to go or we don't find the right person so sometimes just looking at something else might be helpful too yeah yeah absolutely i like that it's a very gentle approach it doesn't it doesn't have to be really gut-wrenching i mean it's you know again you're very relaxed so it makes it feel a lot easier to look at something that might normally feel really painful but to feel safe while you're doing it and to not feel overwhelmed and flooded while you're doing it yeah so that might be great for people with some bigger trauma maybe also yeah yeah also i mean it works for a wide spectrum people do it you know for performance enhancement because they give a speech you know but and then some people are doing it because yeah they they have something that's really deep and buried and painful that they they want to kind of move past you know so yeah it works for a wide spectrum i think it's interesting because i'm gonna have i'm gonna have someone specifically traveled today on red work on the podcast in a few weeks and i'm gonna have some people talking about adoption and trauma so i think that's also interesting because when you have an adopted child you don't know their past necessarily so like hypnosis can be interesting in settings like that i think because the parents cannot tell the child's story right sometimes yeah they might have the child from birth but sometimes they got it like the child came in their house at three years old five years old ten years old so yeah they might have a big past often traumatic so i think that's that can be also an interesting path to go right and you also talked about tapping yeah eft tapping so tapping actually uses several acupuncture points so points where they would normally put the little tiny needles inside of you instead of doing that you would just be using the pressure of your fingers just tapping on different points around like your face and upper body and so the idea is that it seems to affect something with our energy systems there's no like really known reason why it works but most people who try it get really quick relief from it so whatever it's doing it works right we don't really know what's happening but we don't know we're like okay well it feels better so but it's even if it's just placebo as long as it works you know yeah i mean you have like the placebo effect is also powerful yeah it's very powerful like so and like that's that's my take on amoeopathic medicine i'm like i don't care if it works or not like the plastic effect my kids is wonderful so i continue using them i don't care about thank you placebo effect exactly it's like yeah like belly ache for example you cannot do much but for kids often it's just doing something like the placebo effect is so and that's like like studies have proved that placebo is even more effective on kids than on adults because like they don't like the classic i'm gonna kiss your boo boo like it works it's the total that's all they needed yeah no adults is gonna be fooled by that and but it works with kids because they're still like believing in magic exactly so yeah like yeah anything that and often i'm just taking an action with kids when they don't feel great it works so any technique might work because i think sometimes people are like a bit skeptic when there's no like scientific proof but i'm i'm always like honestly if it works do we really like it's not if it's not as if there was any side effects of it or it would cost you a lot of money right there's nothing negative can come from it so why not try you know if it can help even if it's just the act of for yourself or for the kids just taking the time of tapping yeah maybe that's just it you know just like taking right of concentrating some some things it's kind of a mindfulness practice too in some way absolutely well it's funny what you you're saying about the placebo effect with kissing the child's boo boo too because it's like a validation right they're saying that hurts and instead of being like whatever go play you're like oh come here let me kiss it let me give you a hug i know that doesn't feel good right so there's like this you're attuning to them and the fact that they feel the way that they feel instead of dismissing it and so they're able to more easily release it well tapping actually does a very similar thing so sometimes i'm working with folks and they're like why are you making me say these negative things out loud i should be doing positive affirmations and thinking positive and i'm like well did that work last time so you know the thing is with tapping like you can acknowledge the way you feel or that oh man i'm so i'm so frustrated with myself or i feel like such a failure and you're saying it out loud as you're tapping through these points and you're giving yourself self-validation this is how i feel this is my truth right now i don't have to judge it like you know it just is what it is at this moment that's okay and so you're getting just what i say like people are not seeing you but you're doing it as you're talking you're tapping like what is she doing yeah i knew i know a little bit about so i know what we were doing but you were tapping as you were seeing it yes yes and you can even you can tap without even you know i teach how to do statements and things like that but you can just literally tap as you're talking about something that's bothering you and even that again it's the acknowledgement and then the releasing of it that then can make room for you to feel and think something else so i think that's very important what you said about like it's validating and it's giving yourself permission to feel what you're feeling because i think socially is something that we don't do we dismiss our feelings especially like our negative feelings like we'll we want as a society to move like past those negative feelings as fast as possible for ourselves and for others like how many people are comfortable just sitting there with someone's crying like most people want the person to stop like i'm i'm sure you like me can do that because we're trying to do that right i used to say that my only work tool was a box of kleenex oh yeah i i i i was working with a lot like like like physical therapist and like a commissioner therapist and like psychotherapist and like people that had a lot of material and i was coming with like my pen and paper and a box of tissues and i can do without the box of tissues not so much no you can't do without that yeah so i would say like but that's not common like other than if you work in a mental health like field in general people are uncomfortable and lots of people that cry in our offices are uncomfortable doing so and they will also say i'm sorry i'm crying and we're like right no that's okay you can cry yeah you can cry here you can cry here that's why i'm always using that and it makes them laugh and cry at the same time because i like if you if you cry i make my like i i've done my job like yeah to some extent like it sounds weird but we don't have room to cry and be sad and exactly live our feelings in our society so like it's so true that you're saying validating them and then releasing them but the same as a child that we're dismissing their feelings they're getting bottled up and then they will get out in some way that is not yeah good that is not sane it's not socially acceptable right turning of the life it's getting dark here so yeah it's like it's it's very important and we are i think more and more doing it for children like it's getting there slowly and with positive parenting and everything but it's it's still hard because it's still not a mainstream culture and i think it's hard because we're not doing it for ourselves exactly so yeah i think what you're saying is very powerful because it's allowing yourself to just give yourself permission to feel those bad things and not always think positive thoughts because yeah that's great but it's not possible to always think positive thoughts and we might even feel guilty for not being able to do it and then it's just getting worse you know right right then you're failing at thinking the positive thoughts oh you failure yeah it's not it's not helpful yeah i love that you're saying that it's not helpful yeah i love what you're you're pointing out though because you know just either you know our our society it's not mainstream really to kind of validate and be with feelings people are very uncomfortable with that generally speaking like you're saying and a lot of us had parents who were very uncomfortable with that because they didn't get that either and then they didn't know how to do that for us and so we learned that oh okay we don't we don't air out our feelings you know ever so like make sure you put that away unless you're crying in the shower maybe something like that yeah that's okay that's all right don't let anyone know that you do that but yeah cry in the shower yeah yeah so i think just they we haven't had that experience ourselves we have to get it somewhere so we can get into our bodies so it can be familiar and we can we can grab it in the moment when then our kid needs it from us yeah yeah and i think like i i and it's it's very different than like we know we might know that it's okay to cry but how many time have we cried in front of our children in general almost never unless like someone died or we hurt ourselves real bad we don't cry in front of our children so even if we say it's okay to cry we don't show it yeah because we we still carry that baggage of it's not okay to cry so we don't let and it needs we need to feel safe to cry basically yeah which is not necessarily a case if we're hurting our children yeah right yeah let's be honest there and it's okay to some extent like they're not there for that for for sure for us to be like crying on them yeah no no that's not what i'm saying but also right yeah i think that's very important is there anything that we haven't touched that you wanted to share no i think you know just give yourself grace give yourself room to acknowledge that there may be things even small simple things but that hurt you right when you were when you were a smaller you had more magical thinking you were more vulnerable and it doesn't have to make sense i think so often we want to look at things with our logical adult brain for something that happened when we did not have that brain we did not think that way we did not have our prefrontal cortex developed yet and so we're looking back on it and being like well that didn't shouldn't matter blah blah and it's like well when you were a kid that's not how you thought so you developed that belief or that hurt or that wound when you had a very different way of understanding the world around you so it is hard to perceive now but there's still a part of you that is very much in that time and doesn't know that anything has changed and so i think just have some compassion on yourself and recognize that there may be something that needs to be addressed that hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet yeah yeah definitely yeah right i i wanted to just ask if there's anything that any resource that you love that you would like was important in your for you that you would like to share with the community so i just learned about this really cool thing today i was like and just in case i feel like someone must have mentioned this by now but um in the u.s and this is available for anyone anywhere but there's a toll-free line called parents helping parents it's the parents stress line and that number if anyone's interested is one eight hundred six three two eight one eight eight and so it's available 24 hours a day seven days a week and it's for parents or guardians who are having problems with their children and they offer support to anyone who who needs it so i thought that was call from anywhere in the world yeah great never heard of that one so okay that's great love it and so if people want to learn more know more about you where can they find you and i of course i would like you to share like i'm part of a summit that you are having right now when the podcast will be released i would like for you to share about that but any other things that any other way people can reach out to you yeah yeah so my website is linda sanderville.com and i'm sure i'll be spelled out in the show but that's my website and if you go there there's actually a link where you can get some free resources and i highly recommend if you have connected at all what i've been saying today that you download the hypnosis recording that is there for free it helps you to process just negative thoughts or or negative thinking patterns that you're having and it's a really nice easy light introduction to hypnosis just so you can get a taste and feel for it and it's something you can just keep and use whenever you want to have a moment to yourself so that's one thing i would highly recommend you can also find me on instagram linda sanderville and then also yes i am hosting a summit during you know the month of october 2023 and it's called the joy reclaimed summit so for anyone who's interested in getting a ticket to come attend and you will be one of our wonderful speakers the speakers for the summit are really incredible so i i'm very excited but please come and join us if you're interested in anything that has to do with reclaiming your joy with your physical health your emotional health your finances whatever it is you probably have someone talking about it so come on by and be sure to sign up at joy reclaimed summit.com yeah i love it because like it's some i feel it's something we don't take time like as adults to just feel joy play joy like it's things that we we forget to do and like all the to-do list it's not on the to-do list it's not on the to-do list that's the problem yes we need to add that to the to-do list and come check the summit clear your to-do list and come yes clear your clear the whole list and then just come to the summit you'll feel much better and you're going to be able to tackle the list after that exactly like for real actually yeah yeah like when you feel better you can do many more things like that's that's for sure yeah thank you so much for being here with me i want to say tonight because it's tonight but not that much for you right almost couple more hours yeah but yeah and it's really it's really early in the morning so and i don't know where people when people are listening so that tonight is not really but today but yeah so thank you very much for being here was really great talking to you and knowing a bit more about all over all of it and i hope that if anything resonated and i'm kind of i feel i'm going to end every episode that way if anything resonated with you even if you don't know why that's your instinct talking so just seek out the information the resource that inda shared because often when something is resonating with us if there's a reason we might not know what it is but there's a reason so yeah i encourage people to just follow that little instinct that little tweak is this part of listening to our parental instinct instinct right that's true so thank you very much thank you bye anew i'm so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids to get the episodes as soon as they drop make sure to subscribe to the podcast and please left a rating and review so other parents can find it too also check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments.ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now and take a deep breath keep going we're all in this together you