Eps 136: Kelly Bos talks about how NOT to become your child’s inner critic

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hey everybody, welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the conscious parenting journey. Conversations you'll hear on this show are all intended to offer you tools for moving forward, expanding your lens and shifting your narrative to one of possibility, connection and empowerment. When we bring deep, listening, acceptance and courage to our relationships, we are doing our part to evoke it in the world. I am thrilled to partner with you on this path. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited for my guest today, Kelly boss is back. You will remember her from Episode 32 where we talked about navigating two different parenting styles. Kelly is a clinical therapist focusing on individual marriage and family relationships. She helps people find meaning and joy in those relationships, both with themselves and with others. She's a well known relationship expert, and has appeared in a professional capacity in countless media markets as a guest and a writer. I'm super excited to have Kelly back on the show to talk about how we influence our children's inner voice. Hi, Kelly, welcome back to the podcast.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 1:28
Thank you so much for having me.

Casey O'Roarty 1:30
I'm so glad that you're here. Please remind the listeners about who you are and what you do in the world. Okay,

Kelly Flannigan Bos 1:37
I'm a therapist. I hail from Canada, although I think last time we talked, I was living in the Caribbean At the time, so our families moved back to be closer to family. And I do individual, couple family work. I do a fair bit of online counseling these days, just because a lot of my clients are all over the world now after moving. And I write and do media appearances. So that's a little bit about me. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 2:02
and today, I'm really excited. Speaking of writing, today, I want to dig into an article that you wrote, that you wrote back in November that really hit home by me. Yeah, it was one that I shared in my community, and the title of it was, I don't want to write the script for my child's inner critic. And I have to just say that the title alone, it's probably already become a meme, but the title alone is just, is enough, right? Tell me a little bit isn't a meme that's awesome? Well, I don't know if it is yet, but it should be. Maybe I'll make it into one.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 2:34
We'll meme it. Yeah, I'll

Casey O'Roarty 2:35
meme it. Tell me a little bit about your inspiration for writing this article.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 2:39
So it was certainly my relationship with my daughter. She's nine, my son too, but this was a bit more of a song to my daughter. So to speak. I've been studying and doing a lot with self compassion lately in my work, and also personally. And so I'd had this, this knowledge that you know, often our critical voices. You know, certainly as a therapist, often our critical voices come from earlier experiences and early influences, right? So could be a parent, could be a teacher, a coach, something like that. We take some of these negative perceptions or presentations or criticisms, and we take it inside, eternally, and sometimes it comes out against ourselves when we are having a hard time or feeling down or feeling bad about ourselves. And I thought, oh, gosh, this is probably, you know, I've got a good chance of being the person that provides that script for my daughter. And so this article I've been thinking about for some time and passionately. It's so badly that it was hard for me to even write the article. I just wanted to do it. Well, do you know what I mean? I wanted to present it in a way that people could digest and understand and work with. And so it took me a while to write it because I just wanted to do it correctly. I felt like the title is a little long, but I had a hard time of even shorting it. So if it becomes a meme, then it's all good? Well,

Casey O'Roarty 4:02
yeah, and so tell me a little bit like, how to self compassion. So there's, and I love that we're talking about this, because this shows up a lot in my community and in with the members that are a part of my membership program, that that conditioning, that some of which, you know, yay, we get. There's so many gifts that we get from our parents and our life experience, and then there's also, like, ah, there's so many gifts that we get from our parents and our life experience. And it's really challenging, because I think a lot of time that self talk, that inner critic, sounds like truth.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 4:36
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So a lot of work done by Dr Chris Neff around self compassion. She's not someone who came up with it, but certainly someone that's, you know, calls herself a self compassion evangelist. I actually heard her talk in, I think was October, and it was just wonderful to hear her and do some of these self compassion exercises with her. But basically, there's three tenets around the idea. One is to show self kindness versus self judgment. The second idea is to believe in sort of the common humanity in our issues and not over or to sort of isolate ourselves in them. And then the last idea is mindfulness versus over identification. So those are the three ideas. Yeah, go back to the common humanity one. Yeah, absolutely. So common humanity looks at the idea that everyone has issues to deal with. Everyone suffers at one point or another. We can sometimes isolate ourselves feeling like we're the only one. We're the only one that's screwed up like this. You know, I'm the only one that can't get my relationship with my son, correct? Or, you know, everyone else is, you know, doing so well in life and and I think that those are assumptions often. Maybe social media doesn't help with everyone being sort of their best face forward sometimes. But yeah, so I think that that can be some really helpful piece. It's not in that sort of shame yourself, because you should be so happy you have clothes on your back and a bed to sleep in. And those are certainly things we should be grateful for, but it's the idea that other people are in the same place and we don't have to isolate ourselves.

Casey O'Roarty 6:14
Yes, yes, I just recently had a conversation, you know? I think about the teen brain, right? And because I live with one, and recently, like, in in an effort to encourage and inspire, mentioned like, I know how you're feeling, which is, everyone, don't say that to a teenager, because the response was, how do you know that you know how I feel? And I did in that moment, I got to say, like, well, because everybody experiences heartbreak, like, it's not, you know, every single person on the planet experiences heartbreak, and while some of the details and the flavors might be slightly different, it's a common experience. I don't think she bought it, but

Kelly Flannigan Bos 6:59
keep saying it, but yeah, but I can now back you with that idea. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 7:05
thank you. I'm gonna be like, listen, it's science. Listen to this podcast.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 7:07
Yeah, that's right, it's on my podcast. Yeah, and

Casey O'Roarty 7:10
then the mindfulness tenant versus, what did you call it? Over identification? Over identification, yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah. So

Kelly Flannigan Bos 7:21
that's the idea of being in the moment, right? So mindfulness, when you're, you know, there's a lot of work on that from, certainly, you know, folks like Jon Kabat Zinn, you know, practicing mindfulness, but this is also sort of the mindset, right? And being in the moment and over identification problem, that's where you are the problem, right? You know, you get confused between what feels like and what is. And so the reality is, in this moment, everything's okay, yes, you missed that meeting. You're not a complete failure. You don't now the failure who missed the meeting. You're someone that now has to problem solve about the meeting you missed, right? Yeah, and so in this moment, I do have to figure it out, but often the moment isn't even the problem, right? The moment is fine. You know, the meetings already passed, or, you know, we've already sent the email to try and rebook. So this moment's Okay, short of the house is on fire, and we have to act in this moment. The things we often worry about and get stressed about are the things of the past and the future, right, right. So mindfulness takes you back to this moment. It's okay that, you know, I haven't been fired yet, or that person hasn't come down on me like a ton of bricks yet, or everyone's not talking about me. They don't even know that I missed a meeting yet. You know, this kind of thing. So I think it's kind of taking it back to sort of what you have power over what you can do. And a lot of this stuff is past or future, and you not not much control, not much action can be taken than what you've probably already done, right? So that's that mindfulness piece. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 8:49
I have a friend who does a training called grace for women. I mentioned her often on the podcast, but she talks about, if her name is Krista petty Ramer, and she talks about how, if we're going to make meaning, we might as well make meaning that works and forwards us, right? And it comes up for me when I hear you say, you know, being in the present moment, everything's okay right now, you know. And and I can sit and worry about the future I've been I I'm a parent of a teenager, so it's really easy to find things to stress about, and none of it is true, right?

Kelly Flannigan Bos 9:26
Exactly, if anything. I mean, the thing is, we're not necessarily as good at future predicting as we think we are, right? So we'll worry, and we'll get 10 scenarios and 10 things we're going to say, if you know, she blah, blah, blah, or this happens, and then it doesn't even turn out that way. And then we spent all that time worrying and trying to scheme about a situation that never came to fruition. It probably came to fruition some other way we didn't expect and we're unprepared for and said the wrong thing for us. Yeah, we can't, that's what, you know, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 9:57
And the same thing happens when our kids are really young. I'm thinking about my clients who, who are, I call it in the weeds, with the kids under five. And, you know, right?

Kelly Flannigan Bos 10:06
I'm pretty sure our podcast is gonna be interrupted by mine at some point. So, yeah, great.

Casey O'Roarty 10:11
It's real life people. But you know, the whole idea, like, I have to get them to stop hitting, or my toddler bites at daycare, or are they ever going to learn? You know, even in our head when we know Okay, social emotional skills are developed over time, right? Even as we know that in our head, it's so easy to get trapped, like you said, in that over identification, and get really stuck in that fear and stress and worry about, is my kid going to be the one? You know, yeah, exactly who does x, y, z, the

Kelly Flannigan Bos 10:42
juvela delinquent in the teenage years, when nothing's happened, you just put a cohort and take care, right? Yeah, exactly. That's as far as it went, Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 10:58
And you can't, well, this is a whole nother podcast, but I just, what just came to mind was nothing circumvents brain development. So teenagers will be challenging people, regardless if you're regardless of what's happening when they're three or eight. You know, it's, it's all a part of of development. But I really appreciate how when we start to recognize So, and let's go back to that. So recognizing that we're over identifying, because I think we all do it. I mean, I know that I do, Oh, for sure. We all do it. Yeah. So what kind of practices do you have, or do you support parents with or couples with? Because I'm sure it's same thing. I mean, it doesn't have to just be the parent child relationship. All of us get stuck in this emotional whirlwind. How do we get out? Right? What are some thoughts that you have on? So

Kelly Flannigan Bos 11:43
you have to definitely recognize what's going on for you. You know, what is actually the thinking? You know, sometimes we think we're very angry, but we're sad or afraid. So let, let's look at that and look at our reactions, and then be really kind to ourselves about them. We're not always going to have the perfect reactions, and we can certainly if certainly apologize when we haven't kept our cool or done the right thing. There's, there's, you know, ways to model other things, which is, you know, resolution or forgiveness. There's lots of great stuff there too. So don't worry when things don't go as you'd planned, but when, when you are able to catch it. Can you just sit with yourself and say, this is hard. This is so hard my toddler has absolutely destroyed the kitchen that I just spent two hours cleaning up, which I had no time for because I actually had some work demands. It shouldn't have been cleaning my kitchen, but this has happened, so I'm going to sit and just hold myself. This is a lot of the self compassion practices. Just, you know, giving yourself a compassionate stance. Maybe it's putting your arm around yourself, or putting your hand on your heart, or holding your own hands, just being there to cover yourself and saying, This is hard. This is hard because we'll probably all say, Yes, we suffer. But how often do we actually stop and recognize our suffering in a kind way. How often are we there for ourselves?

Casey O'Roarty 13:03
Yeah, I'm visualizing, like, as you're talking, I'm actually putting my hands on my heart and hearing the words, hearing the words. I am suffering right now,

Kelly Flannigan Bos 13:12
exactly. And I actually ended my article with this experience I had because I was outside raking and I was having feelings. And probably I try not to deem because I'm trying to work on this self compassion piece. But things I'd say generally were like ugly feelings, like, maybe it's resentment, or, you know, jealousy, any of those kind of ugly feelings that I was having, some of those come up on a situation, I just held myself so this is hard, and I didn't judge myself, right? I didn't have that extra measure of condemnation on top of it to then deal with. Because how does that feel? Right? Do you feel good when you've beaten yourself up? Do you feel really proud of yourself when you've done something like that? Do you feel like you've heard yourself out? Would you ever do that to a friend? I mean, that's the big question always, right? Self Compassion is, what would you say to a friend, did you talk to a friend this way? And so, you know, I just stood there, and I held myself for a second, and my daughter's outside with me, and she noticed, right? Actually made her notice, because I thought this is a good teaching moment. I said, you know, I want to teach you about self compassion, because right now, Mommy's having a hard time. I think I was actually grieving something a little bit, I can't really remember the total topic, but, you know, maybe a missed opportunity or something. And I said, Mommy's having a hard time, but I'm showing you. I want to show you how I can be there for myself. And she's like, You're crying, I'm gonna go get dad. Yeah. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't this is the point of it, honey. I don't need you to get dad. I'm okay. I just want to show you that this is how you can be there for yourself when you don't feel understood, when you don't have anyone to talk to, when you actually regardless, even if it had someone to talk to, this is a great practice, just being able to be there for yourself and hold yourself in that

Casey O'Roarty 14:51
moment. That's so lovely. And how did she respond to that?

Kelly Flannigan Bos 14:56
I think, yeah, she she heard me. I mean, off. And you know these great little counseling tidbits, she's not overly keen. I want my friends to tell her, because then maybe she'd be like, Okay, that sounds great, but, you know, she is my daughter, but,

Casey O'Roarty 15:12
like, on a daily basis, I'm so glad that my mom is a therapist, because I hear that all the time. I'm so glad my mom's a life coach.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 15:17
I know, no, I don't have that. I wish I did. Yeah, so she, she, she did hear me though on this one, and maybe because I was a bit tearful, and yeah, she's, you know, empathetic to that. But I'm just trying to explain, like, isn't this such a great lesson? Like we should all have this so much earlier in life? Yeah, think about the heartache and the maybe approval seeking, or the wine to fit in, or the stuff it might circumvent just by being able to be there for yourself, giving yourself that strength, you know, and also to that whole loving touch. I mean, that's like cuddling. That's like oxytocin, like all that mammalian stuff, is released by just you holding yourself. Imagine that you can give yourself a hug.

Casey O'Roarty 15:56
Yeah, I love that. And you know, you also wrote in the article I'm just going to read straight from it, because I heard you say you were in your experience without judging it. So something that you wrote that really landed for me was, for some reason, we're drawn to the self flagellation. We have beliefs that if we aren't hard on ourselves or self critical, we won't make changes, and we'll become lazy or stuck. This Outlook does have the occasional result which spurs us on. It could be the same in parenting. You could chastise until a desire, a desired end is reached. You could criticize so much that a child could toe the line. But what else would be produced. What might that child feel regarding their self concept? What might their relationships be like? The same is true for us. Does a good brow beating make us feel better, more able to face the challenges ahead of us? Usually not. We often shame ourselves into inertia. Would we ever like you said already? Would we ever say those words to a friend? There is a better way we can be kind to ourselves and get better results. And I definitely want that self talk for my kids. So what really was powerful for me in that passage is, you know, because so often in the work that we do, you know, we kind of both fall under the positive parenting umbrella, and there's always that counter argument of, and I was just looking at something online. It was like an ad for a class or a course for parents of teens and tweens. And I couldn't believe the comments like, well, you just have to raise them right, and then they won't, you know, misbehave, or you just gotta show him who's boss, or, you know, and so when it says, when you wrote, you could criticize so much that a child could toe the line, but else, what else would be produced? What might that child feel like regarding their self concept that just, you know, right now, it's in my own personal practice, like there's, there are things that I definitely want to land right. There is encouragement and prodding. Yeah, I mean, literally, I want to be prodding her. I would, wouldn't mind, like a pitch more if it was helpful. But, you know, I I'm also really well aware of, you know, that whole being in the moment thing, because my daughter is a freshman in high school, and there's this, like overarching pressure of the college application. And I don't know if I don't think that I'm creating it, but it's definitely a part of my family. Of origin is this, you know, you gotta be on it from day one, if you want, you know, she needs this, and it needs to look like this. And it's the same pressure that I got when I was in high school, but I was a different kid, you know, and I was a super joiner, and she's not much of a joiner, and she's just kind of good with, you know, just kind of hanging back and figuring it out and going through the transition of even being in high school, and it's just so interesting where I notice inside of myself, like wanting to say something that's gonna motivate her into action, but at the end of the day, I want totally to feel so connected. And I want her to be a, you know, I want her to connect to things that fill her versus, like, have a great college application. I mean, both and there would be great, but if it's simply like, Hey, we got to fill out your application, it just feels so empty and then and then it feels like I'm letting go of pieces of our relationship. And actually, sorry I'm totally talking right now. But recently, the a comment was made by someone that I love and I respect, but she said, sometimes you got to be firm instead of being the best friend. And I was like, I My goal is never to be the best friend, nor is it to coerce or strong arm my children into things that I don't I see more value in them coming to their own conclusion about so. What do you think?

Kelly Flannigan Bos 20:04
Absolutely, thank you. Because I think the whole thing does validation. I think, I think, you know, I'm in a totally different age group, but you know, this is, this is a daily struggle for me too, like I would love to just say that I resort to the self compassion piece, but it's hard. I mean, you sometimes want things for themselves, for them that are maybe not something they want for themselves, only because it's so unlike you to not want it. Or, you know, your kids are so different than you necessarily think they're going to be a bit more like you, and they can be quite different, but also they're going to react differently or be encouraged differently. And this is a whole process. I mean, we're at nine right now, and I just feel like there's a little bit of pushback right as she figures out who she is and what she wants. But pushback doesn't work great when you're running late for the bus. And you know, I'd love to say I took a more self compassionate stance than me starting to lose the plot because we're running late again. So it's a constant journey, but it's one I know I want to be on, so I just keep starting again. And if I can be compassionate myself, then I've got something to give outside as well, when I'm beating myself up and being harder myself, then I'm going to have little to draw on for the next day. We're running late and disorganized or no, there's any kind of pushback. But if I can fill myself up, this is the problem. I think a lot of us run on empty, right? We aren't taking care of ourselves. We're not being kind ourselves. We are judging ourselves. We are isolating ourselves with the problem. We are over identifying with things that we deem as failures or shortcomings. And so when it comes to these difficult times, we don't have a lot to draw on, but when you're showing yourself Self Compassion, then you've got it's just a, you know, automatic to give more compassion out there as well. And we're often we want to give the compassion, without the self compassion. I think that's where we lose it a bit. I mean, you know, we're happy to tell a friend how well they're doing, and we're not happy to do it to ourselves. And I think again, we get depleted. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 22:14
well, and I think that like parenting. Oh, go ahead. No. I was just

Kelly Flannigan Bos 22:21
saying. I was just thinking with your as your daughter's doing something different, and you want to be there and you want to be supportive and you want to be encouraging, but you also want to help her meet goals. It can be it can be challenging, of course, but I think if you are saying, hey, like, you know, the intentions are good and we love each other, we need to find the dialog. But if she can see me modeling this self compassion piece, you know, and then, you know, maybe you can feel more confident in her decisions, what she's making, if she's also able to use that and be there for herself and make decisions from a strong place,

Casey O'Roarty 22:56
yeah, and I just makes me think about how the parenting journey is like the potholes of self doubt are just everywhere.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 23:07
Yes.

Casey O'Roarty 23:08
I mean, at least in my experience, you know, even when it's like, well, you know, especially when you know, when your foundation is really long term parenting and relational parenting, I think that there aren't immediate it's not immediate gratification. It's not immediate results, like you really have to trust the process and, you know, as they get older, or even when they're young, because I'm thinking about, you know, even when they're young. And my good friend Julieta comes on to talk with me about toddlers and preschoolers. She talks about how those years, the kids are just relentless. That's the word that she uses, yeah. And it's repetition, repetition, repetition, with the learning and the lessons and the modeling and and we really have to trust that one day, they'll get it. And I think that it's probably now that I'm at the part of my journey that I'm at and that, like, I've never felt a sense of urgency until recently, and I've never felt, you know, like, oh, it's going so fast. I'm always thinking, You know what? It's going at the perfect speed. But this year, you know, these last couple months, I've realized, like, wow, you know, we're, like, we are on the downhill right now, and it, it is feeling fast, and there is a sense of urgency. And that's just another thing to be aware of, right? Because when it starts again, that mindful piece, like right now, she's at home right now. They're here, they're under our roof, that they're learning their love. They're, yeah, you know all the things. And you know, yes, one day they'll be out of our house, and they'll be on their own and making choices, and I get to trust, and I get to

Kelly Flannigan Bos 24:50
breathe, and then you'll have the the resources and the wisdom and the experience to do it that day, when that day comes, for sure, that day yet, right,

Casey O'Roarty 24:58
right? And it turns out, my Oh. My friends whose kids have gone off left the nest, they're like, oh, it's not over. Like, don't tell me that. No, exactly,

Kelly Flannigan Bos 25:07
exactly.

Casey O'Roarty 25:13
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Kelly Flannigan Bos 27:41
exactly. So we want to to model how to be kind ourselves. I mean, that I don't remember ever seeing that. I'm sure I saw, I don't know. I mean, it's a tricky one to even imagine modeling. So I had to do it in the way I did it, which was to explain the whole process. Instead of walking around saying, this is hard for me. I'm really there for myself, you know. But I could show her what it what would look like in action, right? And, you know, and give her a glimpse of what I was trying to do. And I can tell her about the concepts, right, and in an age appropriate way. Or I can tell, you know, my son as well, you know, being able to say, okay, buddy. You know, accidents happen, so that's okay. We can, we can try again next time. And of course, we all do say that, but we can also use a language, and you also have to be nice to yourself, you know, and you can, you can understand that mistakes happen, and you don't need to keep talking about that, that you spilt, that, you know, that's okay, you know, whatever it is, like using it in a way, to take them on the journey with you. I guess, more than being able to really show up, because a lot of it is sort of internal, maybe even personal. But yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 28:46
we use family meetings, and a lot of my clients do as well, or even family dinners, as a place where we can prompt our family like, what was something that happened this week where you started to feel kind of down on yourself, but then you were able to encourage your way out of it, or something, you know, as far as like, tools to take away, yeah, just make it a part of the common language. You know, this is what we do. This is the human experience. Yeah, another quote that you have. This brings me to my fear, if I want to be the narrator and the script writer for my children, then as this key influencer, I want to be aware of what and how I'm saying things, yes, yes, yes. And I wonder, can we also overthink this too? So we want them to have an encouraging script, right? One that keeps them going through hard times. And as I read that, and even as you were talking earlier in the in the conversation, when you said what it feels like versus what it is, when we were talking about over identification, it made me think about the importance of separating. You know, when we're in the parenting moment, the importance of separating the child from the behavior that we don't necessarily like. Amazing, or whatever. That's, yeah, that's

Kelly Flannigan Bos 30:01
a great example of that, right? You know, being able to positively parent around something like, you know them forgetting to bring home, I don't know their teacher, the note you need to sign for the teacher several days in a row. You know, you could jump on lazy, forgetful, you could sort of name, call or categorize them, or you can look at like the behavior and again, could you browbeat it into getting home? Sure, and probably it's happened. But you know, a more positive stance might be, you know, how can I help you? Remember? How can we figure this out together, helping to be part of the solution, instead of getting to a point where they might over identify and then become I'm just lazy, I'm just forgetful, right? That's just who I am, and sort of take that on as part of them, or that self talk, right? I'm so stupid, I'm always forgetful, which really isn't going to be part of the solution for them, is it?

Casey O'Roarty 30:57
No, it's not. It's not and it's not helpful. I think that's the interesting thing for me, when things come up, and that gut reaction of, what, what should I threaten them with so that they do what they're supposed to do, assuming that they have whatever the skills are to help themselves do better, which is not always the case. So looking for solutions and being a, you know, being an ally for them is so much more powerful. Plus, we're developing that problem solving mindset that everything's and everything's figureoutable

Kelly Flannigan Bos 31:31
Exactly, I think, too, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about anxiety in this, because I think a lot of sometimes this wanting to fix it in the quickest way possible. Can come from sort of an anxious or fearful place, and so we want to jump on it, or nip in the butt or say something that just gets them thinking. And sometimes that can be sharp, maybe even nasty, or, you know, labeling. And I think that comes from not necessarily anger as it comes out, but more anxiety as parents. I just feel like so many parents are walking around with so much anxiety around the parenting process, along with many other things in their life. And so being able to look at that like, what is my you know, I'm actually I'm fearful. I'm not angry, I'm afraid that they're not going to learn that. So that's on me to work through that, but also I can look at how I can help them with that, because my fear is they're never going to learn this. They're always going to do this. I'm worried about way down the road, which we talked about earlier. Oh, yeah, scale that back a bit. Yeah, exactly, because they didn't. They're not being responsible texting as soon as they get to their friend's house, right? And so then we are. We give them the rage of, I found you in a ditch, you know, right? But it's, it's, really is that it's not about that, where we've run off on something. So I just wanted to comment too about that, that being able to look at our own emotions, mental health, whatever we're dealing with, seeing if we can get that under control, it's going to help us. And self compassion can help with that, as well, being able to be again, more present and more solution focused. Love it.

Casey O'Roarty 33:04
And so tell me more. Tell me about how self care plays in here.

Kelly Flannigan Bos 33:08
Oh, self care, right, right. Well, that's that empty, emptiness where we're trying to fill the other that the analogy is pretty famous of the oxygen mask and how you have to put yours on first. And I think that is I think we are depleted. I think self care is so important in this like, what are we doing for ourselves? Sleep. Let's get to sleep. Sleep is really important. Exercise is eating, right? These are all things that play heavily into our mental health. Are we doing anything that makes us feel good, like volunteering, giving? Are we focusing on the good, the gratitude? There's so many places we can go with self care, but it's really about taking care of ourselves and making ourselves the healthiest we could be. And some of the basics are really key in that. And so you know, taking deep breaths can be really key. Going to yoga, making you have time, make sure you have time with your girlfriends to talk and chat and have fun. So there's lots of things you can do. I always suggest my clients, and I'm sure you do too, is just to make a list so that when you're feeling a bit blah or not like you're taking care of yourself very well, that you can go to this list and think of things that you like to do. Yeah, walk can be great. To clear your head. They don't have to be complicated, like, I feel so much better when I'm on a cruise. Well, naturally, but yeah, you might have a hard time pulling that one out of the hat so it could you walk around the block? Could you, you know, buy yourself flowers today? It doesn't have to be even monetary. It could be, you know, something very simple as reading a book you enjoy, so making sure that you're feeding into yourself. I know that how you're doing in life can kind of be reflective on a couple of things. For me, it's often like the state of my car inside my purse, but the other one is how much self care I have, and if they're all disastrous, and probably things are kind of disastrous everywhere else too,

Casey O'Roarty 34:56
yeah, well, and I appreciate what you're saying, and I know that. There's probably going to be at least one person listening who feels like I don't I don't have any space for self care, and I just want to speak directly to that listener right now and say, you do. There is room. There is space you can get creative. It doesn't need to be you alone. There's all sorts of ways that you can do small things for yourself. And it is so important your children need you to take care of yourself. So please. And if you are thinking, I just I don't even know where to start, or you're feeling overwhelmed, you know, I'll have Kelly's information in the show notes. My information in the show notes, there are places to go where you can just simply say, help me. And mothers will come to your assistance with ideas and thoughts and encouragement, because it is so key, so important, so key. Yeah, well, in the context of everything that we've talked about today, self compassion and mindfulness and that inner, inner self talk, what does joyful courage mean to you? Kelly,

Kelly Flannigan Bos 36:07
yeah, I think this, this question is such a great one, and it changes often a little bit on what we're talking about. But I wanted to bring it back to sort of a self compassion idea. So joyful courage, when we talk about it today, I'm thinking it really means being able to be loving to myself, you know, even when I don't feel very lovable, be loving to myself and find that sense of happiness and peace and joy, Right? So being able to push on through things, still hold myself and know that I'm going to get through this. There's going to be I can do something different tomorrow, or I can continue to do it this way, whatever it is, whatever the message needs to be, that you courageously give yourself that message, and you push forward and you're loving and kind, not self judgment or not, judgmental yourself and finding that you're a part of many, many people struggling today, and you're not the problem. You're just you're okay in this moment. Beautiful.

Casey O'Roarty 37:10
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Where can listeners find you and follow your work? Well,

Kelly Flannigan Bos 37:16
please come over to www.kellyboss.com that's 1s or you can find me on Facebook. Bit of a mouthful, but it's that backslash. Kelly Flanagan, F, l, a n, n, I G, A N, boss, B, O, S, therapy on Facebook.

Casey O'Roarty 37:34
Great and listeners, I will have links for both of those in the show notes. Thank you so much again for being a part of the show. It's so great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

Kelly Flannigan Bos 37:45
you. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 37:50
joyful courage community, you're amazing. Big. Thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper. Be sure to join in the discussion over at the live in love with joyful courage group page, as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, or really, anywhere you find your favorite podcasts, you can view the current joyful courage swag over at the web page, intention, cards, bracelets. E course offers the membership program one on one coaching. It's all waiting for you to take a look. Simply head to www dot joyful courage.com/yes. That's joyful courage.com/y. E, S, to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. Any comments or feedback about this show or any others can be sent to Casey at joyful courage.com. I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way, reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay

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