Eps 129: Solo Show – Using the Iceberg Metaphor to Understand Behavior

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, my friends, yes, a place to be inspired, informed and hopefully entertained on the parenting journey. I'm your host. Casey o'rourdy, parent coach, positive discipline trainer, and even more importantly, mother to two children who teach me every single day about how to practice showing up in a way that is helpful, connected and humble, who also point out when I am not showing up that way, when we choose into joyful courage, we are choosing into rejoicing in the opportunities for self growth and discovery that exist on the parenting journey. Yes, I did say rejoicing in those opportunities, and it's work, but so worth it. The path we are searching for is in our practice. Super grateful you're here to practice with me. Thank you so much for being a part of the community. Enjoy the show.

Okay, I'm gonna do something a little crazy this week, and I'm sure my man, Chris Van, is gonna be thrilled with the quality of this audio, but I am currently driving to yoga class, and I'm thinking about what I want to talk about for next week's solo show, for this week's solo show, and I'm driving along and I'm thinking, Oh, I should leave myself a voice memo about what I want to talk about. And then I thought, well, what happens if maybe I do a voice memo? And it turns out that it's so good that I want to use it on the podcast. So that's what I'm doing. My friends, welcome to my drive to yoga. Shout out to spark yoga in Snohomish, headed there to do a little hot Hatha. How many of you are hot yoga fans? I love hot yoga. There is just something about the heat and the sweat and that holding the poses, and I know the routine and the pull of my muscles and eagle pose the pull of my muscles in Warrior I just there's something really beautiful to me about yoga and life, and so I'm stoked, one, that I'm on my way to go do it, and two, that I'm gonna be talking to You on my way there. So yay. This week, I want to talk about one of my favorite metaphors that I know you've heard me speak of, which is the iceberg. The iceberg. So there have been a few different things that have shown up with private clients and in the membership program and on the live in love with joyful courage page. And I don't know if it's the fact that I'm talking more about teenagers, that I'm parenting my own teenager through some challenges, but I feel like parents of teens, you all are coming out of the woodwork, and I'm so glad, and we're having really powerful conversations, and I so appreciate your willingness to share and to be vulnerable. I think it's really important for all of us, no matter what age your child is, to know that adolescence shows up and it's challenging and our kids are making choices on their own, which they should be doing, because that's how they learn to become an adult, is by navigating the world. And they make really dumb choices sometimes, right? They make really bad choices sometimes. And we get really worked up because our adult brains go to dead in a ditch, prison, pregnancy, like we immediately go to worst case scenario. I say we, because I'm including myself. But I think, more than ever, this period of time, this period of time, adolescence, is one of those places that is really important to remember the iceberg right? And so for for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, imagine, visualize an iceberg right? When you're floating along in the ocean and you see an iceberg, you see the tip right? You see what's above the surface of the water. And what do we know about icebergs? We know that there is this large mass of ice under the surface, and so using the iceberg as a metaphor oftentimes, you know, the behavior that gets under our skin is the tip of the iceberg, right? So we see things like defiance, like sass. Like aggressive, aggression or avoidance, back talk. What else? What are the other things that our kids do that are annoying, not wanting to get up in the morning, not wanting to get out of the house, not wanting to go to bed, right? Not wanting to eat, you know, screen time drama, not wanting to do any chores, you know, fill in the blank, right? With our as our kids get older, it's drugs and alcohol, it's risky, other risky behavior, right? That's what we see. That the behavior is what we see. That's the tip of the iceberg. Now, when we go under the surface, when we stick with this metaphor, and we look under the surface, right under the behavior, behind the behavior, at what is opening, basically what's opening the door, oops, to the behavior. This is where, this is the most powerful place for us to look right, because it's things like, how connected does my child feel To peer group, to school, to family, right to community?

How much influence does my child feel? Believe that they have over their life, right? Like, how what are the what do they control? What are their choice? Option, options, opportunities? Do they know that they matter? Are they in contribution? Are they making contributions? Right? Do they have opportunities to contribute any kind of trauma that exists? And, you know, trauma is an interesting thing. Trauma isn't always like, you know, the worst thing that we can think of in our mind, right? Sometimes trauma is like a traumatic birth experience. If your child has been adopted, there's trauma there. Sometimes, if there was a messy divorce, there's trauma. Any death of a close family member, that's trauma. And you know, trauma is a really heavy word, and while I want us to hold it that way, trauma is also not like a death sentence, right? Trauma doesn't have to be something that completely derails our entire life, right? Adversity, if you want to use the word adversity instead of trauma, if that helps you. That's fine. But all of these things, right, any kinds of things like this, that happen right as they're happening are to our young kids, they are making meaning, right? And if they're really young, like 2345, and they have adversity in their life, the meaning that they make. They only have a brain that's as old as they are, right? So they don't necessarily have a lot of skill around meaning making. However, they're still making meanings of whatever the event is that's happening, and because they're making meaning, they're then forming beliefs about themselves and the world and their caregivers. So that matters, right? That is part of the lens that they see the world and themselves out of. So that's part of under the surface, right, lacking in skills. So as our kids get older, and the mischief is like making us pull our hair out instead of, how could they do this, or why are they doing this, what are the skills that are missing for our kids, so as not to be, you know, so that they don't have to navigate, you know, the experiences that they're having better? Does that make sense? I'm going to try to say that a different way. So our kids do weird things, and we feel, you know, that we want to go straight to the Why did you do that? And so what if we shift from that to what are the skills that you're missing, right? What are the skills that you're missing that weren't available to you to navigate that situation better? So really going under the surface with and it's scary. I understand some of the behavior that our kids are showing up with right now. Feel really scary, right? Sometimes they feel life or death, and we go into that desperation mode, and we get really rigid, and we want to just cling to what do I need to do to this kid to get through to them that what they're doing isn't okay? And I get that 100% I get it. And. And what's going to be more helpful is, instead of looking from that point of view, changing it up to how can I strengthen my relationship with this kid so that I can be available for them? How can I strengthen my relationship with this kid so that I can understand what's going on below the surface. And you know, sometimes kids, what they need is a really great therapist or a counselor or another adult that they trust to help them tease apart what is going on with them. Because if we just say what's going on with you right now, you know they don't necessarily know they can't necessarily articulate well, back when I was five and you and dad got divorced, and you know now they can't articulate that, just like we as adults can't always articulate that. I mean, I feel like every day I have another little layer unfold around like, Oh, of course, I'm thinking that way about this situation, because that was what was modeled for me, or because of that one experience, or that one relationship I had, maybe not every day, But pretty regularly, I think like that. So again, this, this iceberg metaphor, what happens is when we, when we really focus in on what's going on under the surface, the stuff at the top, the tip of the iceberg, starts to take care of itself. And my friend and mentor Jody McVitie says something, I heard her say that I really like, like, if you take an iceberg and you chip away at the top, it just keeps floating up, right? It just keeps coming to the surface no matter how much you chip away at the top. But when you melt it from the bottom, when you can melt from the bottom, the iceberg, it eventually sinks. Right? It eventually sinks. So I love that, right? I love that because it speaks into this idea that when we focus on under the surface, we're going to take care of what's happening, behavior wise with our kids. So this is a short one today. This is a short one today, but I wanted to share it with you because it's just really been on my mind, and some tips around having conversations with our kids. So sometimes I'll hear from parents like, oh, they they don't want to talk to me, or they just say, I don't know. So if you are currently in a dynamic with your child that that feels strained and disconnected before you dive into, you know, tell me what's going on for you. Tell me how you're feeling before you do that, you have to nurture the soil of your relationship. So you need to work on the connection. And that can look like just simply spending time near them without talking. It can look like biting your tongue, and I'm saying this to you and to myself, you know, biting your tongue when you have an opinion about something, and just being curious about what you know, what they want to talk about without judgment. It looks like special time. It looks like owning your behavior,

right? So if you have flown off the handle, if you've gotten really rigid and controlling, if you've, you know, had those not great parenting moments, always in the name of love, I know, but if you had those moments, you know, one of the ways to start to repair relationship is to own your stuff. Go back to my episode with Kristen, 104 I think it was where we talk about making amends. But sometimes the most powerful thing we can do to strengthen relationship is to own our own bad behavior, right, own our own bad behavior, not from a place of, you know. I you know, and that shouldn't sound like I know that I yell at you sometimes when you're back talking me like, just keep them out of it and own that you sometimes struggle with self regulation and that you don't always show up well for them, right? Like, just own that and let that be a starting place for conversation and trust that the more that you dig in develop. Up, strengthen, nurture relationship with your child, whether they're two or eight or 12 or 18, trust that that is going to make a huge difference and a huge impact on them and on the way that they show up in the world, right? And there's no guarantees. All of this is going to increase the likelihood of more cooperation and contribution and relationship with our kids. But there's no guarantees, right? So, you know, keeping that in mind, keeping that in mind, working to melt the iceberg this week, all right? And all weeks, I would love to know what you think about this. I would love to know what are some of the things that you do to remind yourself to look under the surface and to keep in mind that there's something bigger going on than just the behavior you're confronted with. I'd love to know so will you head over to live and love with joyful courage on Facebook, if you're not a part of the group, join it's a great place for supportive conversation. It's safe, and everybody has this mindset of relationship based, brain informed, connected parenting, right? Everybody's a joyful courage fan over there, so head over there, join us, right? And today is what is today? I think it's the 30th. So you have today and tomorrow to sign up for journey to joy, which, let me just tell you this program, it's really awesome, and it's short, and it's just basically a guide for you to get ever more clear on your patterns, the ways that you show up to the tip of the iceberg, right, the ways that you show up, and how to help yourself in being ever more present and shifting into and getting really clear on the parent that you want to be. So you can find journey to joy at joyful courage.com/joy again, it's $29 till the end of the day tomorrow, the 31st and then the price is going up to $39 so check it out. Happy Tuesday, I'm so glad that you listened. I would again, love to get your feedback. You can shoot me an email at Casey, at joyful courage.com, if you want, or on Facebook. I'm on Instagram, so be in touch, because I love, love, love to hear from listeners makes such a huge impact on me when you share what your takeaways are. And I don't know if you get my newsletter, but every week, every Tuesday, I send out a newsletter, kind of reflecting on the previous week's show, and I always highlight some of the feedback that I get from the parents. So if you shoot me some feedback, you might see yourself in the following weeks email. And isn't that so exciting? All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week. Joyful courage community, you're amazing. Big thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris man 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.