Eps 406: Joyful Courage Book Club – Chapter Three

Joyful Courage means loving your people through their hard times and trusting they are learning and growing through exactly what they are meant to learn and grow through…. And man, it can feel SO HARD!

Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
parenting, freight train, recognise, feel, experience, control, joyful, mistakes, talk, kids, hard, learn, emotional, life, children, train, happening, trust, book, choices
SPEAKERS
Casey O'Roarty

Casey O'Roarty 00:05
Hello, listeners. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast a place for inspiration and transformation as we work to keep it together while parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work. And when we can focus on our own growth and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact, and life skills to be developed. My name is Casey Oh Bertie, I am your fearless host, positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent lead at Sproutsocial. Also mama to a 20 year old daughter and a 17 year old son, walking right beside you on this path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting you are in for a treat. This episode is part of a 10 part series where I'm reading from my book, joyful courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey that was published in 2019. I'm sharing the book with you and reflecting on where it holds up, and how the work has been expanded in the four plus years after writing it. If you're finding the series in the middle, I encourage you to start at the first episode, joyful courage book club the intro so that you can follow along from start to finish. The series is meant to be a resource to you and I work hard with everything I put out in the world to keep it real transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Along with this series is a free companion guide designed to prompt you in reflecting on what you're hearing and taking steps to integrate it into your life. You can find the guide and buy your own copy of the book by going to www dot fece browsable.com/jc book. And please don't forget, sharing really is caring. If you love today's show, please pass the link around, snap a screenshot and post it on your socials or texted to your friends. Together we can make an even bigger impact on families around the globe. Enjoy.

Casey O'Roarty 02:06
Hi, everyone. Welcome back. It's Thursday, Thursday, another joyful courage Book Club series episode. We're going to talk about Chapter Three today. But before I get into that, I want to know, how's it going? What are you taking away? What are you putting into practice? What are you noticing? As you learn about the emotional freight train? Or maybe you're relearning? Right, maybe you got my book and read it back in the day. And now you're listening to the series. And you're like, oh, right, I get to pay attention to the experience that I'm having. So where are you at with that? How's that going? Are you noticing physical sensations that are giving you that indication that you're about to flip that you're about to get on the train? I noticed while I'm reading this, you know, the last chapter, I think it was that I talked about the physical experience. I talk a lot about my belly. But any more. I really notice when I am triggered when I'm having a hard time, which lately it's not as much with my kids as much as it is in my marriage. It's in my chest like I really feel it in my heart centre. So, you know, it's good to revisit these concepts and take stock in where you're at. I encourage that, I encourage that. Yeah, and you know what you can always let me know how this is landing. You can make a comment on the post. If you see it on Instagram or Facebook, you can shoot me an email at Casey at joyful courage.com You can leave a review on Apple podcast. There's lots of ways that you can be in touch about what you're noticing. And I love hearing from you. So be sure to do that. If you're moved to. Alright, chapter three is called who is causing your derailment? who's causing your derailment is derailment the right word to use? I don't know who's pushing you on the train. Maybe that should be the subtitle. When we ride the emotional freight train, we typically don't write it alone, we tend to bring along whoever is closest to us that means our children or our partner, our past hurt pain and trauma ride with us on the train as well as does a deep need for control. And you know what you guys as I read that, that deep need for control what I'm really thinking about is safety. Right safety is so slippery, right? It really gets us into mischief, our perception of safety right it can take on the illusion that we need control. But why do we need control? We need control to feel safe. That's what I mean when I say you're not the only one riding the train, we don't live in a vacuum. We are emotional beings having emotional experiences, and raising other emotional beings who have limited life skills. Is it any wonder that things get dicey. There are so many entry points to get on the train. Choosing to parent with joyful courage requires that we learn to recognise when we are being swept up in a way, that's the goal, right? As I read that, the goal is to recognise that the train is pulling in the station. And a lot of times, we miss it. And so then the next goal becomes being aware enough and observant enough to recognise Oh, I'm on the train. How much more damage do I want to do? How can I pivot that awareness? And then the willingness to see the choice point? That's what we're talking about here, my friends. All right. If your partner comes home in a bad mood, complaining about something that happened in their day, they might be short with you. How does that feel? Right? How does that start to feel for you, and they come home with their own stuff, and then it kind of feels like it's spilling over into how they're treating you. Or your son won't stop complaining about a sister, the weather, how he never gets to pick the TV show, when the family sits down to watch something together? How does that start to make you feel some of us are better at letting others energy roll off of us and others are super sensitive about it. I'm gonna guess most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Again, this chapter in this podcast is about learning to become ever more aware of what's happening in our experience, and perhaps discovering some places where we have been unconsciously allowing that outside energy to pull us onto the train. Our children also have emotional freight trains everybody does. For many of us, definitely, for me, the emotional freight train experience really took root and began to happen after having kids, even then perhaps it took a few years for us to really understand how deeply their behaviour could affect us. I mean, true that right? I'm sure that people who choose not to have kids, or don't have kids have plenty of things in their life that trigger us. But because you're reading this book, I'm assuming you're a parent. And if you're a parent, you know, I mean, oh my god, they get under our skin so quick. It's so it can feel violent, almost right, the level of response that we have to these little people that we love that we made, and yet they have a life of their own. And an opinion matters. The fact of the matter is children increase your stress level Never before has so much of our self worth been connected to someone else. Even when they're babies, we feel a sense of pride when we can say, oh, yeah, they sleep through the night, or yes, she took to breastfeeding right away. When we dread others asking about how our children's slept fed or took to potty training, it was typically because we were emotionally invested, and how our kids performed. It could be painful to share the truth. Maybe they were up all night, maybe they weren't able to latch or struggled with potty training. Right. And this isn't just an early years phenomenon. As I've mentioned, while working on this book, my daughter was in her first year of high school, I've never been more confronted with my control and attachment issues than I was during that time. Well, so I thought the train was always right there. It was, like idling in the station with the doors open, waiting for that moment where I just couldn't take it anymore. Why does this happen? We know in our heads that all children are individuals that they're moving at their own pace that they're in development and that they need to make mistakes and experience the world so that they can learn to navigate it. Yet we find that we tend to take their behaviour on as our own personal failure. How dare they not get it right the first time? Don't they know how that makes us? Look? I remember literally saying that to my kiddo. Rowan when she was going through her stuff. That's when I really pivoted towards working more and exploring teen years and parenting in the teen years because I needed it because I was like what is happening? And I remember her like half jokingly saying to her like, Hey, I'm a parent coach doesn't look so good for me that you're off the rails and that you're Trying the things and that we are in such a dire place in our relationship. You know, what I found was, the morethe , it's hard. And it's messy. And there's no perfect way of parenting. That avoids what's hard during the teen years. And, you know, as I read this book, especially that word freak show, I really like to use that word. I have a client who likes the word dumpster fire, which I also appreciate that visual. But I think it's so important to talk about how hard it is to navigate the mistakes our adolescents are making. You know, we want to pretend they're not making mistakes, we want to keep it quiet. We want to, we want to protect their privacy, which is important. But in doing so, our world gets really small and we isolate and we're not hearing from other people that they're in it to write. So again, that's what this book is all about. That's what this podcast is about. That's what my work is about is bringing people together to have real conversations about the messy about the shit show. Right? Okay, back to the book. When we aren't paying attention, our children can jump on their own emotional freight train, and pull us along for the ride. How fun is that? As I mentioned earlier on, fear is a big piece of what gets in the way. I think another part of it is the idea of permanence, the mistaken idea of permanence, now that we're in whatever the current challenge is, we're here to stay forever. Right? We're back in that always and never mindset. We think it's forever and we brace ourselves, we're in resistance. When we do that, we find ourselves in a fighter stance, either metaphorically or physically, when we're ready to fight, we assume there'll be a winner and a loser. And I sure as hell, I'm not going to be the loser. And it becomes a standoff on the crazy drain on the emotional brain drain. Not everyone does this. I am an author of parents who seemed to have mastered the art of surrendering. They're the parents who allow their children to make mistakes. I love the word allow in that sentence.

Casey O'Roarty 12:30
They seem to really trust the process, they believe that all paths lead out of the forest, I look at them with envy, imagining that they have no fear for their children, and that they've truly let go. Okay, I'm gonna pause here because two people really exist who are like that, who are so zen that they can just be with it? I don't think so. I think there are some people that have more skills, more practice in just navigating the emotional turmoil, I think the emotional turmoil shows up. And our experience of it is based on our skill set, how practised we are, right how willing we are. And that comes with time, and a commitment to the practice. I love the sentence. They believe that all paths lead out of the forest. So again, living through the years that followed the publishing of this book, with my daughter, things got dark, which you know, you listen to the podcast, if you haven't listened to the podcast, and you really want to know how dark things get. Listen between episodes like 202 and 302 52. Specifically, I have Rowan on and we talk about things we talk about what she's been through. We're a little bit further from the peak crisis experience. Although, you know, when I say that, that wasn't one day. Right. And I think that's important too, is when we talk about permanence. And I like to say, you know, things are temporary, it's not always going to be the way that it is today. But it might be like this for a minute. It might be like this for months, or even a couple of years. Right? teen years are hard man. And it takes a while to move through it. I'm going to blame the teen brain and the adult brain. I mean, it's both and but teen brain development happens over time. So they're in this vortex of adolescence. It's uncomfortable, it's unsettling. They're in high repetition of learning, interpersonal relationship, learning how to set boundaries with their friends with their partners. They're having first, left and right first time experiences left and right and sometimes first time experiences teach the lesson. And other times it takes a second, third, fourth, fifth, or more experienced for that lesson to learn. And in the meantime, we're like trying to keep our shit together as we watch them step in The pothole after pothole, make bad decision after bad decision. And it is understandable that we get to a point where we're like enough stop, right? Where we're flipped, and we're judgmental, and we're critical. It makes sense that that is calling us as we watch our sweet teens make the mistakes, right? And all we have control over is how we respond. Ultimately, that's where we have influence. Right? So yeah. Okay. All paths do lead out of the forest, though, I'll tell you what, I am stoked to be able to talk about my experience with my oldest, who gives me permission to talk about it. And say, she is out of the dark forest, she found the path out, we walked it together. Sometimes they were parallel paths. Sometimes we had to deviate a little bit. And she was definitely on her own making her own choices about the forks in the road. And, you know, it took longer than I wanted, for sure. But she did move out of the forest. Is she in a different forest? Sure. You know, as she navigates early, her early 20s, she's 20. So weird. You know, there's more forest to be navigated, but that dark, dense, what felt like, Oh, my God, a cage. That forest she's moved out of, she's moved out of it. So yours will, too.

Casey O'Roarty 16:35
So yeah, back to that person who's you know, super Zen and not letting what's happening with their kiddo affect what's happening with them, you know, who I'm talking about, when the early years, it's the parent at the park, who has a child that's falling apart, and they calmly rub their back and seem to have no tension at all in their face or body. They have that smile that isn't for the watchers benefit. It's some inner knowing that this is all a part of life, and everyone's going to be fine. Again, as I waded through the early years of my daughter going to high school, I was learning to let go, while still setting boundaries for her. I was so fearful, and I questioned my every move, I was called into a new relationship with trust. It's a trust that's bigger and deeper and more profound than simply saying, I trust you, right. And let's just take a minute, I trust you is loaded. When we say that to our teenagers as they go out into the night, we're saying, I trust you not to do anything wrong, and always make the right choice. Right? I trust you not to make mistakes, which is crazy. They are literally wired for mistake making. So this new relationship with trust requires me to acknowledge and hold space for my children to be on their journey, and to believe that we're all going to be okay. While I did experience my teen and continue to experience my teens, trying on some risky behaviour during the high school years, I did not expect everything to show up during her first year. They say that risk taking is part of the teen brain development. And it develops faster than the risk assessment part. Not only that, it's not so much that they don't assess, like what might happen. They have this part of their brain, which says, Yeah, this could go wrong, but it probably won't. Right. So that is happening in their brain wiring. This was clearly the case with my daughter, the high school environment proved to be incredibly discouraging to her on levels that I had no idea of actually at the moment. And this sense of discouragement coloured her decision making. So trust has become I trust that you're going to learn from your mistakes, right? Sounds simple. And it's actually really big, and can feel really scary. But here's the thing, if our kids are going to learn from their mistakes, and they have to make them, please point me towards the sand so I can stick my head in it. Right? I trust. So I'm going to caveat here. I trust that you're going to learn from your mistakes. Right? So I talked to parents about this all the time. Talk to clients about this. And it's such a huge shift. I just recently got an email from a mom that I was her and her husband were on a call with me. And I helped her reframe trust this way. Because if we hold it as I trust it, you're not going to make mistakes. We're feeling hurt all the time. be disappointed, because they're going to make mistakes. So what if we know the mistakes are gonna happen? What if we hold that the mistake making is going to happen and instead of being hurt and disappointed, we use it? We use it to help our kids recognise and connect the dots around how those mistakes are leading them towards or away from what they want. Want, this is what I write about. Our kids only learn from their mistakes when we stay out of the way. That means it isn't about disappointing us or how angry we are or what we're going to take away from them because they made the mistake, we get out of the way. And we engage them in conversations about their choices in a way that allows them to connect the dots between what they want most and what they want now, right? It's so much more powerful than the control over punitive responses that we get when our kids are making mistakes, which sounds like Oh, you went to a party and got drunk and now you're grounded, or you snuck out, I'm going to take your phone away, you know, and it feels like we're not doing anything if we get if we let go of those punitive responses. But here's what we are doing. We're shifting the dynamic, so that instead of them being mad at us, because we're so annoying, and we don't get it and they feel disconnected to us, they don't feel safe enough to share what they're going through, and why they're making these choices. We're shifting the room, and instead we're looking at their choices. We're standing next to them and saying like, how was that? You know, what are you feeling now? What are you learning from this, and helping them process their choices in a way that is so much more expansive and useful, and leads them towards that life skill development of critical thinking and self reflection? Which, gosh, man, there's a lot of adults who could use more skill in that for sure, for sure. I say, there might be another book about parenting teens and my future. Parenting with joyful courage means growing and expanding what we know to be true, and being open to new ways of thinking, when our past shows up on the train. So we might sometimes find that our past is a passenger keeping us on the train. I talked a little bit I touched a little bit on this last chapter. Our life experiences influence how we behave, how we respond and how we see the world. We've been conditioned by the messages, both spoken and unspoken by the adults in our life as we grew up, and the siblings and the friends and the experiences, we learned to do what we needed to do to stay safe and connected. Remember that I mentioned the work of Alfred Adler landing on the idea that human behaviour is movement towards belonging and significance. From our earliest days, we're looking to connect, and to know that we matter. And we're making sense of relationships and experiences that we have early in life. And it's important to note that we're making sense of those relationships and experiences with very limited life skills like at age 125 10. Right? In attachment science, it has been determined that babies develop trust in their caregivers and in themselves when their needs are met, when babies cry, and they're fed. Or maybe they're not hungry. So the adult keeps searching like what else is going on, Oh, you got a wet diaper. You know, you're lonely. They learn to trust those around them will take care of them. Those responses helped to shape babies overall sense of trust and safety in their world, which continues to develop over time. And parents are always doing the best they can with the tools they have. So this is not parent shaming here, people sometimes. Well, our well intentioned parents left us with the perception that we weren't good enough, as we were that we were needy, or extra. In an effort to connect and have significance we may have developed into overachievers, or perfectionists, while also carrying the weight of low self worth, which is no bueno. Or perhaps those well intentioned parents didn't want to see a struggle. Maybe they always came to the rescue. They wanted to make us feel good and safe. But their helicopter parenting resulted in us having deficient coping skills or perhaps entitlement and or perhaps a victim mentality. Looking through the lens of belonging, we may now feel connected. And as though we matter only when others do things for us. We all carry beliefs and ideas about the world based on our experiences, and not so much based on our experiences, but on our perception of our experiences on how we made meaning of our experiences. What kept us safe and connected as children turns into our default operating system in adulthood can turn into our default operating system in adulthood. We all move through the world with the lens we developed in the first part of our lives, and sometimes this lens adds to the challenges we're having with our kids. The exciting news is we can expand our lens, we can expand it, we can shift it, we can grow it, we can broaden it. We can shift our perspective and interrupt the thoughts and beliefs that are keeping stuck. They're old. They're limited. It just takes practice. And yeah, I'm going to help you with that, with this book.

Casey O'Roarty 25:12
Our need for control. The final passenger that shows up on the emotional freight train is a need for control. Control is a slippery thing, isn't it? We can shift from feeling like we have it handled. to feeling like having it all handled is actually an illusion. Parenting is fertile ground for discovering and addressing control issues. Hello, my name is Casey, I have control issues. Don't get me wrong, keeping the household together, managing the calendar, feeding the family, doing all the rest of the things that no one realises I do take skill, it takes organisation systems, routines, attention and forethought. I have skills to pay the bills, people. Yes, yes, the controller mentality has its assets, for sure. There are positive aspects of being in control. But problems develop when I become inflexible. It sends the message to the people around me that they aren't good enough that they haven't done it right. And no one can do it as well as I can. This mentality invites power struggles, it can also be something that really breaks into our relationship with our kids. They decide they don't want to help because why bother? Or they drag their feet or they become slow distracted or simply ignore us who wants to be criticised by a controlling mom? No one, no one has their hands up right now. Then, of course, we react to that behaviour, we react to the power struggles to the feet dragging to the selective listening often without recognising that it's actually our rigidity. That is the main source of the problem and not our children. Okay, I want to tell you a story that happened yesterday about control. And it's you know, it's bigger than control. For me, I like having an agenda that everyone signed off on. I like having a plan that I can depend on, it's probably a safety thing for me. And so it shows up in the funniest places like, we are totally redoing the landscape in our backyard. It's a small backyard, but it's a big job. And we are on Phase Two yesterday and the day before we're phase two. And we needed to rent equipment, my husband had to go get a sod cutter. And so you know, we have this plan, we know what we're gonna get done. We know what phase two is all about. He gets the sod cutter, and he cuts the sod in the backyard. He does what we talked about doing. Then he's so excited that he has the sod cutter that he goes into the side yard, which is not fazed too, but he tears up all the sod in the side yard. I'm like, Oh my God, what's happening right now. So then we start doing the work in the backyard. And we realise there's another machine that's actually going to be more helpful than us, you know, using a shovel and digging the dirt by hand because we're levelling things out, blah, blah, blah. We're doing it all ourselves with our amazing friend who came to help us. So then they go get another machine called a dingo, which I don't know about you. But anytime I hear the word Dingo, I immediately think the dingo stole my baby, because it's hilarious. So I had to say it out loud on the pod. So he has the dingo, which is like a earthmover, right. So it helps us flatten out, create the space for the patio we're gonna put in. But of course, he's also like, got the machine now gonna totally use it in the side yard. So anyway, the side yard becomes a part of phase two, which we never talked about. I'm not ready for it. And I went to him and I said, I'm feeling really stressed about what you're doing in the side yard because I don't have the plan. I don't understand the vision, you know, which to which he got really defensive, blah, blah, blah. But I kept saying like, No, this isn't about like, I understand why you did it. It's just hard for me to hold that we're deviating from the plan. Right. So yes, that sense of control shows up in so many places. And I managed it. I navigated it. It didn't get ugly, but man. Yeah. Freight train in idle in the train station yesterday. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there you go side yard drama. Here's what I heard from the joyful courage community. Mama Lauren says, a few months ago, I flipped my lid when my six year old daughter wouldn't let me brush her hair in the morning. In the moment, it felt very important that she not leave the house with her hair mask. I shamed or blamed her and ultimately forced her to let me brush her hair. Not my best moment. I love that this is Lauren talking about her six year old now project 10 years into the future and you've got a 16 year old and you don't like the clothes that she's wearing. And you have all sorts of storylines that are going to play out because she's got on short shorts and a crop top. Right? Anybody relating to that I know that you are right. We get into these triggered moments and we don't show upgrade for our kids and we send all sorts of messages. Another mom shares my daughter is intelligent and her handwriting is often illegible, which drives me crazy part of me has this need to control how she presents her work so that her intelligence is seen. But it stems from my childhood issues as well. She had an assignment in second grade, which I made her do over again, the teacher emailed me that I didn't need to put pressure on her regarding her handwriting. At such a young age, the concepts were more important than the writing, I will still need to work on that piece. Okay, funny story side note from me recently, and I shared this with my membership community recently and had done an assignment for Spanish class. And it was late, and he was catching up. And he showed it to me, it was like, look done, did it. And all I could see were the places where he crossed things out. And, you know, changing his handwriting I said, okay, so you're gonna rewrite that before you turn it in, right? And he was like, No, I'm not, I'm done. And I was, you know, not in my best moment. And I was like, Whoa, here's what I think, you know, your teacher wants to be able to read what you're writing, you know, your teacher wants you to see that you've taken pride. And he was like, No, she doesn't. That's not what's happening here. Anyway, he turns in the paper and he gets full credit. So there you go, happens it in second grade happens in 11th grade. So what next, right, we have these experiences, what next? We don't have much perspective, when we're on the emotional freight train. It exists. Perspective is there for us. We just don't have access it when our brain is fully flipped. And we're in that freeze, fight flight survival mode, the emotional freight train is all about us. We are the star of the show in the moment, we are the ones with needs, right? Everyone else is to blame. When we're on the train to parent with joyful courage to use those opportunities to grow into an evermore evolved, present connected human being, it's important to explore it the landscape of where you are. Okay, we're going to talk about that. Remember, joyful courage is parenting on purpose. And parenting on purpose can only happen when we expand our awareness of what is happening in the present moment. Yeah, there you go. The passengers on the emotional freight train, I would also add, I made note of this sensory issues, you know, what's so funny, I tend to have the emotional freight train come up, when I'm driving in a new city, and I'm not sure where I'm going. And the music's too loud. Like, that's enough to create the physical experience of stress and anxiety. You know, sometimes it's physical clutter, right? When there's a lot of physical clutter that can prompt us into some really choice, non thoughtful, non conscious behaviour. And then the internal to like, when we've got a lot going on, I am a crazy person, when I'm getting ready for a trip. And my kids know this, I don't know if I mentioned this in the book. But going to the airport, if we're travelling as a family, I'm already at a certain level, like the train is just waiting. It's, like I said, idling in the station, you know, and that idle is really, that underlying current of stress and anxiety. And, you know, to my credit, I have let my family know, you guys, you know, I'm a little on edge when we travel together. And I'm going to really work hard not to take that out on you. And what I need is just some grace and just know that when I'm quiet, I'm just really doing my work. So we get to know ourselves ever better. And we get to invite our family to also recognise and see that we're working hard. And it's not their responsibility to support in that it's just, you know, it's just important and we get to model, right, we get to model what it looks like to be a healthy adult and to recognise our own needs. And, you know, that comes down to self regulation, what it looks like, even the adults are struggling with that. So all of this is really out in the open. Right? I think it's so important, like I mentioned before, that we're having these conversations that it's hard, it's hard to maintain control. It's hard to be a conscious parent. It's hard to practice positive discipline and the reason that it's hard exists inside of us. It's not because the doing and the tools and the practices are the hard part. The hard part is recognising what is getting in the way of choosing something different of choosing to self regulate of choosing to do the work of dismantling the conditioning that is created the lens the limited lens that we see the world out of. That's the hard part, but it, man, the rewards at the end are good. The rewards at the end are good. So there you go, chapter three, chapter three. So you might have noticed if you've been listening the whole time, so I started off thinking I was going to read the chapter and then discuss. But as I've now that I'm done with chapter three and recognising I got to stop in the middle and add my commentary. So that's what's happening. You're getting like the expanded audio book of joyful courage. Because, yeah, I'm just seeing places where I have more to say. So that's, that's how I'm gonna roll for this next part. And we're actually in part two. So next week, part two will be the beginning of how to get off the emotional freight train. Yay. I'll see you there. Okay, download the guide, right, because there's lots of prompts and questions to help you continue to expand into this work. So download the guide, you'll find it in the show notes. And let me know how things are going. All right, friend. See you next week. Bye.

Casey O'Roarty 36:10
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my routable partners, as well as Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting this show out there. Don't forget, get your free companion guide to this series created to expand your learning and your own copy of the book by going to be spreadable.com/j C book. I'm so appreciating you and I'm here to support you and your journey of parenting tweens and teens. Find me on social media or shoot me an email at Casey at joyful courage.com to discover how we can work together. Tune back in on Monday free brand new interview, and I'll be back with another solo show next Thursday.