Be Your Own Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Partner/Lover

I have a new favorite song. It’s such a favorite that I guarantee it’s going to show up as my number one song for my 2023 Spotify Wrapped. : ) The song is Be My Own Boyfriend by Olivia Dean. Now before you stop reading because you think this doesn’t apply to you, just hold on a minute and read the lyrics…I’ll fill you in on why I’m writing about this song after that…

Oh, I can't do this anymore
I don't wanna get involved, no
With all these men I'm so much better than
Maybe it's a little cold
But I think I could play the role 'cause
No one can love me the way I can
Catch me out in Paris on my ones
Stay up dancing 'til the dance is done
I got me, I don't need anyone

Hold me close
Love myself, the most
Lately, I've been just what I need
Stole my heart and I'm gonna be my own boyfriend
Be my own boyfriend
Lately, I've been just what I need
Be my baby, yeah
Gonna be my own boyfriend

Oh, I could save myself the stress
Wear the trousers and the dress, Yeah
Girl, you look so goddamn good tonight
And I say that with my chest
You and me could be the best
I can do whatever, whenever the fuck I want

Hold me close
Love myself, the most
Lately, I've been just what I need
Stole my heart and I'm gonna be my own boyfriend
Be my own boyfriend
Lately, I've been just what I need
Be my baby, yeah
Gonna be my own boyfriend

Be my own boyfriend
Be my own boyfriend
Be my own boyfriend

Ha-ah, ha-ah
Ha-ha-ha, ah, ah-ah
I'm gonna be my own boyfriend
Be my own boyfriend (be my own boyfriend)
Lately, I've been just what I need
Be my baby, yeah
Gonna be my own boyfriend

Songwriters: John Barnabas Greenwell Lister / Jonny Lattimer / Olivia Dean

On one hand, parts of the song celebrates hyper-independence and being “better than” which is not what I’m advocating for. On the other hand, I’ve been partnered for 25+ years and one of the things we’ve learned in that partnership is that in order for “us” to be well, we need to fall in love with and nurture the “me” first and foremost. Here are some reasons to fall in love by dating yourself…

  1. When we are learning to love even our shadowy parts (these parts tend to have the most self-discovery and wisdom though!), we have so much more to contribute to a relationship of any kind.

  2. We get to know ourselves better! We learn what we like and don’t like, what rows our boat and what doesn’t. When we get to know ourselves better we bring that self-awareness to relationships which is essential to healthy connection. We become more capable of teaching others how to be in relationship with us.

  3. We build self-trust. Many of us are healing and growing patterns of avoiding rejection and abandonment at all costs. We can disrupt those patterns by dating ourselves and building trust in our ability to navigate tricky life stuff; stuff that often comes up in relationships. Self-trust is a really grounding feeling. It feels SO GOOD in our bodies. Delicious even.

  4. We experience more joy. We look within to cultivate it versus looking at others to play that role. There are dozens and dozens of opportunities every day to cultivate joy and when we date ourselves we are empowered to do that.

What are ways you’ve fallen in love with yourself date and how do you see that process positively impacting your other relationships?

Set Yourself Up For Success

Just a quick note to remind and encourage you to set yourself up for success over the next few weeks! Here are a few things to consider to help you do that:

  1. Define success for yourself! Don’t look outside yourself for this - it fuels comparison and that, my friends, is the the thief of joy.

  2. Create a Feel Good Plan that you can use reactively and proactively to nourish your nervous system in this frantic season. We don’t need to go with the frantic flow - we can choose simplicity and anchor ourselves to practices that feed our souls.

  3. Spend a few minutes giving yourself a shoutout for the year that is almost complete. Write down a few things that you’ve healed and grown this past year and sit in the deliciousness of that. Like, roll around in it. Our brains and bodies need and want that kind of attention so we can get more of it!

Give yourself the gift of entering the new year with energy and calm versus dragging yourself to the finish line because you didn’t prioritize caring for your nervous system in December! Every little bit helps because little by little, a little becomes a lot.

Giving Kids a Pass

I love that so many parents I interact with have so much compassion for the social, emotional and mental health challenges of their kids. We have so much more information about ways we can support our kids in these areas (hint: participating in the SHIFT community is one of those ways!) and many of you are leaning into them! What I also see is parents showing empathy instead of compassion. Empathy means we put ourselves in our kids’ shoes which can be dangerous in a way because our energies become blended with theirs. We can end up giving them a pass on building skills they need to become healthy, whole adults. Compassion, on the other hand, is boundaried. It has guardrails/fences that allow us to guide our kids in helpful ways while we hold space for the tricky things they are navigating.

Adults…We do kids no favors by removing difficult life things from our kids paths. The trajectory of that is NOT great in adulthood. Instead, what they need is for us to help them NAVIGATE the challenges so when we aren’t around, aka they are adulting, they have a skill set that will support their well-being.

In the first modules of each of my online courses (one for parents and the other for educators/adults) I share an activity that can help guide your everyday decisions regarding when and how to support kids. Anchoring our decisions to our values and the skills/traits we hope to help our kids develop before they leave our care is one of the most important practices we can develop as individuals and as adults who care for kids.

The bottom line is that we need to avoid rescuing our kids from discomfort (chores, school work/attendance, relationships, accountability in general, etc.) and instead model and teach them how to navigate it with as much skill, grace and compassion possible. Consider what parts of you get in the way of allowing and encouraging your kids to be challenged? Are you trying to avoid your own discomfort of seeing them struggle? This is often the case and we can use the steps for healthy emotion processing and other resources like therapy, coaching, skilled friends, community resources and so much more to manage our own discomfort.

I Have To...

How many times a day do we say “I have to…”? For many of us, it’s many! The phrase “have to” reeks of obligation, shoulds and all kinds of heavy experiences. And I get it! As adults, there are a lot of things we have to do AND (you knew it was coming!) many of the things we have to do are also things we “get to” do. Meaning they are gifts, opportunities, privileges, blessings, whatever you’d like to call them. We have to feed our cat several times a day AND we know what a privilege it is to do so especially after losing one of our beloved cats recently. Saying “We get to feed our cat several times a day.” exhibits gratitude for the task. Shifting “I have to go to work.” to “I get to go to work.” feels lighter to my inner landscape. Less of a burden on my nervous system.

I invite you to try it! What is something or a few things you can shift from “I have to” to an “I get to”? Consider pairing this with a thought triangle. Write your new thought down, then the feelings that come from that new thought and then imagine what you might say and do with those new thoughts and feelings! Remember, we aren’t sticking our heads in the sand with this strategy. We are simply inviting more lightness and joy into our lives which ALL of us need more of. A lot more!

Have You Ever Been Ashamed of How Your Kids Have Behaved? How You've Behaved?

I get it. Child throwing a tantrum in front of a bunch of glowering strangers in a store? Phone call from school saying your kiddo had misguided behavior on the playground? Teen is grumpy and non-social in front of your guests? Or maybe you’ve lost your shit with your kids or fought with your partner in front of others? SHAME. When we and/or our kids are navigating that feeling we can do a lot to lessen its intensity. Here’s why we want to do that: Shame is a feeling that takes up a lot of space on our nervous systems. We will then have less bandwidth to show up with compassion for ourselves and others. Shame is inevitable in life. Sitting in the soup of it is not and modeling and teaching our kids a different experience with it can go a long way towards them having not carrying unnecessary burdens into adulthood. Let’s break this down:

  • So much of our shame comes from behavior (our own and/or our kids) that is developmentally appropriate and HUMAN. We were shamed or are ashamed for our human-ness showing up.

  • How much shame shows up also indicates where our social and emotional skill set needs some development. Lots of shame? Boost self-awareness and self-management (see the Cultivating Wellness Course in the SHIFT membership area for that work).

  • Misguided (not bad, please don’t use that phrase!) behavior communicates a lagging skill and/or getting needs met in a (usually) non-relational way. We unpack this in Community Calls every week so hopefully you’ll join us there!

  • Many of us were shamed for getting our needs met and/or not having the skill to navigate the situation. Read that again. And we perpetuate that in our own relationships and families until we learn to do differently and better.

  • We can manage shame and any uncomfortable feeling by following the steps for Healthy Emotion Processing. Will following those steps make the discomfort disappear? Probably not. But will following the steps lower the intensity of the feelings so you can access other parts of your brain and stay in connection with yourself and/or others? Yes.

  • Some of us need professional help to heal shame and learn different skills to navigate situations differently and better than what we currently know how to do. There are a lot of free and low cost resources out there to do that. The SHIFT community is one of those low cost places to do that btw!

Giving and Receiving Feedback aka How to Potentially Eliminate A LOT of Conflict

A SHIFT member brought a really valuable parenting dilemma to the group a few weeks ago: How do I give feedback to my teen with the least possibility of putting them on the defensive? Does this dilemma sound familiar? How many of us either come into conversations like this “hot” or silence ourselves/walk on eggshells to avoid the potential conflict (not actually possible by the way)? SO MANY OF US. Here’s the thing: giving and receiving feedback is ESSENTIAL to healthy relationships because we learn (and unlearn tbh) how to be better parents, partners, friends, coworkers, etc. Without feedback we are just moving through relationships in OUR way which may not be THEIR way. Navigating feedback also gives us opportunities to heal and grow parts of ourselves that show up in all kinds of wonky (yet purposeful) ways.

I also have some good news! There is ONE strategy that is the creme de la creme when it comes to giving and receiving feedback and then there are a few things that can make that one strategy even MORE successful.

So let’s set you up for success as much as possible…I say as much as possible because we can’t control the outcome of the conversations, we can only control what we think, say and do in the interaction so do your best AND let go of the rest. Try again. Have a do over. Make a repair. You’re human and so is the person you’re connecting with.

  1. Set the picnic: Don’t surprise people with these conversations or pepper them feedback off and on throughout the day/week. Set up purposeful conversations that they are aware of the topic so they can prepare for them. If this tends to increase anxiety for some, keep the invitation as low-key as possible. “Hey, when do you have 15 minutes to talk about supporting the family team around the house?” At first, they might answer with “Never” if they are a teen but you can smirk along with them and invite them again with “I get that. But really, we can do it now or you can give me a better time to talk about this.” For partnered relationships and families, I suggest having weekly check ins where you have celebrations, calendar for the week and spend a few minutes giving and receiving feedback about whatever you put on your list to talk about.

  2. The ONE strategy that will set you free in a lot of interactions: Begin with and maintain CURIOSITY throughout the conversation. Questions like “What do you think are the strengths in the report you wanted me to review? How can I support you during this busy week so our whole week/family doesn’t get derailed because of the stress level? Last week was really hard on all of us and I wonder if we can navigate it better together. Prepare for the conversation with notes that have potential questions. Be genuine and not condescending.

  3. If anyone is getting dysregulated, put a pin in the conversation and say something like “Let’s come back to this when we are ready. This is important and we both need to be in the headspace for it.” Use your Feel Good Plans and return to the convo as soon as possible.

  4. If you’re on the receiving end of the feedback, take a breath, check your self-talk and also use curiosity to your advantage - Curiosity/wonder is associated with rewards centers of our brains. Those reward centers send out all the feel good, yummy hormones/chemicals we want more of like dopamine and seratonin so you’ll be caring for your nervous system just by getting curious. You can process more of the conversation afterwards if it’s a particularly heavy topic for you. REMINDER: Someone giving you feedback about something you said/did is not feedback about who you are as a person. The generous assumption we can all give each other is that we are good humans. And the best humans say and do things or don’t say and do things that are okay sometimes.

  5. Whether giving or receiving feedback or both, be super aware of any defense mechanisms that pop up like gaslighting, name calling, bringing up all the times THAT person said or did unkind things, etc. Again, take a breath. You’re okay.

I can’t wait to hear about your victories practicing these strategies! For the parent who expressed the dilemma in the first place, curiosity was a game changer and allowed them both to stay in connection during a difficult conversation. YAY!!

Care, Then Repair

Human behavior is fascinating and confusing! The more I learn about brains and bodies, the more certain things in the world within me and around me makes sense and also don’t make sense. Wait what? Yeah, it’s not an either or friends. It’s a both/and. The thing is, some of the ways most of us were raised, modeled and socialized to behave aren’t the most relational. In fact, they can be downright disconnecting from ourselves, our kids, friends, partners, anyone, really! So here’s a behavior anyone (including your littles) can practice that is foundational to staying in connection to self and each other - the skill of caring, then repairing. The breakdown:

  1. When one or both of you feel in any way dysregulated for whatever reason, pause and care for your nervous system/s. If you’re a parent, focus on co-regulating (depending upon the age) with your child. That means you model and encourage deep breaths, helpful self-talk (I can calm down, we can calm down) and whatever else you and your child pick from your Feel Good Plans.

    • The science behind this is that we are NOT in the part of our brains that allow for problem solving, rational thinking, etc. so any reteaching of expectations, making repairs and staying in connection in whatever situation you’re in is not even possible, depending upon the intensity of the feelings.

  2. Once ALL of you are more regulated; you’ve maybe lowered the intensity of the feelings from a 7 or 8 to a 4 or 5 at least, you can move into making whatever repair is needed. You can visit the Parenting and Cultivating Wellness courses to learn more about the do’s and don’ts of making repairs!

You’ll notice the more you practice pausing and caring for your nervous system/s when you’re feeling elevated, the more ground you can cover in the interaction. Shifting from reactive ways of interacting to responsive ways of interacting, the more likely you are to be nurturing your relationships and showing up in the ways that align with your values.

More On Navigating Challenging Behavior

Before we get into the content around challenging behavior, I have a new offering I’d love for you to share with all the people! I’m offering two evening sessions in October for parents and caregivers of kids! One event focuses on teen mental and emotional health and the other is geared towards elementary and pre-k aged children! They are super affordable at $25 a class and I’d love to see you there!

Last week in the community call we discussed how to navigate challenging behavior - our own as the adults and our kids. Yes, adults have their own misguided behavior and for all humans, it stems from trying to get our needs met and/or being unskilled in some way. A few things to note about misguided behavior:

  1. It has a function, meaning a purpose. Those functions are attention, a tangible, escape and/or sensory (ex. too much sensory input).

  2. If we don’t get underneath the behavior, we will keep seeing it over and over again. I call it playing whack a mole. It just keeps popping up!

  3. We need to develop the social and emotional competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision making and relationship building to say and do (that’s what behavior is!) in more connecting, joyful and healthy ways.

  4. Developing these competencies aka relational skills aka wellbeing is life work.

  5. If you are an adult caring for kids in any capacity, it is our responsibility to develop these competencies so we can MODEL and TEACH. Kids learn by observation, repetition and imitation so the modeling aspect of social and emotional learning is essential.

In our community calls, parents share a dilemma, we ask clarifying questions and then we get into brainstorming possibilities for how to navigate whatever issue is presented. We utilize the concept of mutual aid to offer each other curiosity, encouragement and experience. It’s a beautiful thing to witness! Here are some steps you can take as an individual, parent and/or caregiver of kids to become a behavior detective and model and teach a more healthful mental and physical life:

  1. Identify the misguided behavior you’d like to shift (overeating, over shopping, gossiping, tantrumming, hitting, drinking too much, etc.)

  2. Connect that behavior (or symptom) to an unmet need/function of behavior (see above).

  3. Identify any social and emotional skill needing to be developed to meet that need. 9/10 that skill will be using healthier coping strategies to navigate tricky life stuff. This is why a Feel Good Plan is SO important!

  4. Make a plan for helping yourself and/or your child get their needs met through skill building, etc.

  5. Offer yourself and/or your child a lot of compassion. We come by our automatic ways of getting needs met inter-generationally and experientially. That is not our fault! And, it becomes our responsibility to do differently when we become aware of it.

Thank you so much for creating a safe space in the SHIFT community to wrestle with such vulnerable, deeply personal issues. The more we shine light on them, the more we can heal and grow through them!

Making and Keeping Friends - Community Call Recap

This week we discussed middle school friendship issues as well as SHAME. Oof! I’m going to save that topic for another post because it’s a big one and deserves its own space. : )

Middle School is difficult in and of itself; not only individually as far as mental health, puberty, etc. but socially as well. In fact, the social aspect of adolescence overall is a roller coaster to say the least! We can all vividly remember our own experiences with friends and romantic partners (see previous post on that time in development for more info) and because I respect the time you take to read these posts, I’m going to keep the recap and additional thoughts as concise as possible with bullet points below…

  1. Creating friendships from scratch take time. Often, our kids (and the parents!) are anxious to make things happen quickly and it’s just not typical for that to happen. Practice patience and model that to your kids.

  2. We need to be careful about not laying our own friendship experiences/trauma on our kids. This is one of my MAIN suggestions as a parent coach and therapist - Let your kids have their own experience in every context! That doesn’t mean you don’t coach them based off of your experience but don’t project all of your stuff on them and/or expect them to follow your same path. If we don’t have boundaries around what’s ours and theirs, we can create more intensity that doesn’t need to be there. We can add a lot of stress to an already difficult situation. Asking your kiddos questions about what they contribute to a friendship, what the other does, etc. can help you understand what’s important to them in those relationships.

  3. Start teaching kids from a young age that there is a ME, a YOU and a WE in every relationship. We can honor individuality and both contribute to the WE. If the energy put into a relationship doesn’t equal out over time, we may need to reconsider if the friendship is healthy for us. Question for yourself and your kids: What fills your bucket about each relationship? Where might it be a little or a lot lopsided in a relationship?

  4. We are meant to have several people in our lives meet our needs, not just one or two people. This goes for friendships and romantic relationships. Each friend can serve a purpose and fill our buckets in different ways. I have some friends I love to go out with, some that I vacation with, some that are “my people” for helping me navigate tricky life stuff, etc. Any age of human can draw a person or write their name down and identify what that person contributes to the relationship. Then identify what YOU bring to the relationship. Are there areas of growth for you? Dig deep on this one. In relationships, it takes two to tango and being accountable for how we show up in relationships is essential to its well-being. We can always be learning and growing how to be a better human in relationship with other humans. You can anticipate a lot more of where that comes from in the book I’m writing… : )

  5. We go through phases in our lives where we may have lost some relationships for a variety of reasons. These phases call for extra self-compassion while being open to possibility. We can ask ourselves, “I wonder where I will meet my next friend/partner?” and then proceed to put ourselves out there in ways that may feel slightly uncomfortable until we aren’t uncomfortable anymore. We can’t expect friends to fall from the sky into our lives - we need to actively pursue opportunities to expand our social circles if we have some friend spots to fill.

  6. Last but not least, we need to remember to speak the OTHER person’s love language to them, not our own love language to them. That’s like speaking Spanish to someone who only speaks Japanese. Not much connection is going to happen there. So learn your friend’s/partner’s love language and speak it to them. Lots of possibility for connection there!

Friends/partners come and go. It’s only been in the last half a century to a century that humans are living as long as they are and that puts some interesting pressure on relationships to last a long time. Let’s be clear: Longevity is NOT a sign of a healthy relationship. Joy, connection and growth are and those things can occur in a 6 month relationship and a 60 year relationship. Consider how what you think, feel, say and do in relationships impacts the health of who you connect with AND what you’re modeling to your children/students/grandkids/etc. As always, leveling up how we move through relationships always positively impacts what kids observe, imitate and repeat.

Know a Teen? Have a Teen? Was a Teen?

In the past few weeks in our weekly community coaching call we discussed a range of topics that related to a range of ages - modeling and teaching personal body safety, how to guide your kids towards completing tasks (chores, etc.) and supporting routine transitions (before and after school, etc.). We cover a lot of ground in those calls and I can’t wait to connect with you in that space! Another topic that came up is teen behavior that can feel well, uncomfortable to say the least. Infuriating to say the most!

Phew. Just saying the words TEEN or ADOLESCENT can send shivers down our spines. I get it! I was SUPER fun as a teenager. Mental health issues. Social concerns. Tricky home stuff. All kinds of things swirling around that brain and body of mine and very few skills to navigate it all.

Fast forward a decade and a half and I was entering into the world of raising my own teens! How could that be?!! At this point, my kids are 22, almost 21, 18 and 16 and I have a whole new perspective on that stage of development. I LOVE teens. Give me all the teens! If only we could bottle their passion and energy (sometimes) and if we could, we could solve the world’s problems. Here are a few things we know about teens at this point in time:

  1. Teen brains are pruning away any neural connections they don’t use anymore. We gain TRILLIONS of neural connections by the time we reach adolescence but by that time we don’t use them all. In order to be the most efficient it can be, the brain prunes away wiring it no longer uses. Use it or lose it as they say!

  2. Because of where the brain is in development, most of the energy is in the limbic system or “feelings” brain. That’s why teens feel things so intensely! Remember, we feel things in our bodies and feelings go a long way to dictate our behavior so…

  3. Did you know that we have enough electrical activity in our brain to power a lightbulb! That being said, In FMRI scans of the adolescent brain, there is very little electrical activity in the Prefrontal Cortex or “thinking” brain. That’s why a lot of teen behavior can be very perplexing. Our once super neat, organized and social kiddo can turn into a morose, messy and anti-social teen. Scary, right?

  4. We know so much more about teens than ever so definitely lean into resources like podcasts and books AND the SHIFT Online Community. My favorite books are Brainstorm by Dr. Siegel and Out of Control by Dr. Shefali. Also, anything Positive Discipline is fantastic.

  5. We often want to control more of what our kids say and do at this age yet that only creates disconnection and often power struggles too. I encourage you to pause, ask yourself helpful questions like “Is my intense reaction more about me and my “stuff” or is it truly about what my teen just said/did?” and “How can I consistently provide support for my kids but not micromanage all the things?”.

Don’t you wish we knew all of these things back when we were parented? What a game changer understanding basic child development and neuroscience concepts would have been! If that strikes a chord, i highly recommend you give yourself some love. If you weren’t raised by self-aware and self-managed parents then your teen years were probably more difficult than they needed to be.

Teens have incredible capacity to do good things in the world and we want to do everything we can to help them channel their energy in helpful directions. This does not mean we tell them what to do and when but that we collaborate with them to move them closer and closer to THEIR goals. We are the guardrails but give them a four lane highway to experience the world. We need to take a lot of deep breaths and use a TON of helpful self talk to do this. And we might need to get our own healing and growth work going to be able to show up this way.

Friends, being a teen is tough. Parenting and caregiving teens is tough. I hope you practice a lot of self-compassion so you have lots to give your kids who are navigating an unprecedented amount of challenges and need safe, calm, supportive adults guiding them through it. We can do this together! I love to help parents and caregivers of kids distill all of that information floating around and share how to actually put it all into practice. It’s literally my FAVORITE thing to do. Parenting and caring for kids in any way is such an incredibly important job and literally determines our future. Are we raising joyful, connected, socially and emotionally skilled kids who will do great things in their communities and the world? YES WE ARE.

So take care of those teens of yours and give them a hug or a high five for being who they are. They deserve it and so do you!

NEED MORE SUPPORT WITH THE KIDS IN YOUR LIFE? I’D LOVE TO SEE YOU IN THE SHIFT ONLINE COMMUNITY WHICH IS FOR GRANDPARENTS, CAREGIVERS, EDUCATORS, AUNTIES, UNCLES AND PARENTS! It’s super affordable at $19 a month! PLEASE SHARE WITH ANYONE AND EVERYONE ABOUT THIS RESOURCE! YOU NEVER KNOW WHO REALLY NEEDS IT!

Take care of you!

Setting Our Anxious/Highly Sensitive/Etc. Kids Up for Success

This past week in our community call we discussed supporting our kids through anxiety and I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about anxiety. Years ago, I had a client share an experience where she created a Feel Good Plan (see Module 1 of the course!) for a wedding she was attending. She experiences social anxiety and decided she would be really intentional about caring for her nervous system in that setting and it went BEAUTIFULLY for her. We celebrated lots of victories around that event and since then, I’ve highly encouraged folks to be intentional about setting ourselves up for success for specific interactions and settings (like school for our kiddos). Here are some things to keep in mind…

  1. Anxiety is a symptom and we want to get curious about what might be underneath it. Is your child highly sensitive or an empath? Is your child an introvert who’s bucket get severely dipped in when around lots of people? Does your child need more skills to manage the uncomfortable feelings in their body? It’s helpful when we can get as much information about our child’s nervous system so we can coach them in how to care for it.

  2. We each have our secret sauce for feeling good. This is something I talk about a lot on all of the platforms (here, in my courses, on social, etc.) because the world tells us that we need to look/act a certain way and that is just not true. What we really need to do is try out things to think, say and do to feel good most of the time (aka our Feel Good Plan or FGP from Module 1) and figure out what we need to move through the world in the best way for each of us.

  3. That secret sauce aka Feel Good Plan can be a huge part of setting your child up for success in all kinds of settings. For example, say your child is invited to a birthday party and at first they are so excited to go but as it draws closer, they are saying they don’t want to because they feel anxious about it. Here is where we want to guide them to create a Feel Good Plan for the specific event/setting. We can ask questions like “I see there is a part of you that doesn’t want to go to the party. Is there a part or a few parts that really does want to go?”. If yes, ask your child what would make the experience feel the best it can? Do they want to go to the party for the first 30 minutes when things are more chill? Can they take bathroom breaks where they practice helpful self-talk and deep breaths to manage their nervous system? What can they do before and after the party to give their nervous system a break?

  4. One caution: An option always is to not go; however I suggest you be very choosey about how often you do that because research shows that when we remove challenges in any form from our children, it actually sends the message that they can’t handle something. This can actually grow their anxiety or other issues, which is the opposite effect we want to have as parents.

  5. We can hold space for our kid’s challenges at the same time we don’t revolve our whole world around their anxiety. Meaning, kids (and adults!) will often try to manage their anxiety/discomfort by controlling everyone else’s experience. This is an unhelpful dynamic and doesn’t support your child in building the skills they need to navigate the world. This is a collaboration between all members of the family who are involved in that event/interaction. Everyone has a voice in determining how to individually and collectively be set up for success.

  6. Practice, practice, practice! Meet your children where they are. Put time limits on events so you leave BEFORE they lose it. This might mean a shorter school day at the beginning of the year or swimming for 30-40 minutes instead of staying all afternoon. Be clear about the progression that is desired so their comfort zones are being stretched and their confidence grows.

  7. Be compassionate towards yourself and your child! This takes time and effort AND both of those will definitely pay off over time.

Community Coaching Call Recap 7/20/22

I’m popping in to give you a quick recap on what was discussed in our 7/20 community coaching call and hope that the topics spur some self-reflection and curiosity - two practices that support our own healing and growth journeys immensely!

When our kiddos give us “feedback”, we often want to defend our hard work, how much better we are than our parents, etc. I mean, you’re in this community so I imagine you’re very intentional about how you’re parenting! Here’s the thing, kids just need their needs met, even our adult kids, and their need might be to feel seen and heard in that moment. We can take a deep breath when we feel discomfort, give them a warm smile and say something like “I hear that. Is there anything else?”. You might also ask them if a repair is needed and how you can make one if you get a yes. THEN, you can process the convo later with your therapist, friend, parenting partner, whomever as long as it’s not with your kiddo that is giving you the feedback. This is not easy work AND if our goal is to have healthy, connected relationships with our kids then we can lean into these hard conversations.

We also discussed highly sensitive kiddos, how much energy it takes to NOT ACCEPT what is, how to hand people back their story that they are projecting onto you (I also made a Tik Tok about this, are you following me?) and finally, we talked about how acknowledging that our parents did their best but their best may not have been enough for us to be happy, healthy grown ups without doing some healing and growing. I’ll dive deeper into these topics in future posts/coaching calls!

Navigating Change with Grace and a Few Swears

This is an updated version of a post from 2019 and as with anything social and emotional intelligence, it’s still very relevant!

It seems like EVERYONE I know is in a major life transition of some sort. Relationship-wise, work-wise, parenting-wise, all the “wises”. I’m one of those people (anyone else out there?) that loves change, even as it taps everything I’ve got in me to navigate it. When I look back at the changes in my life over the past two years, even though none of them have been easy, they’ve all been worth it. Not because everything is now awesome but I’ve learned, grown, stretched and most importantly, loved. Here are some of the changes I’ve experienced: Launching my two oldest kids, mental health issues, a pandemic as a parent/therapist/human, creating a business, dissolving a business, location change, relationships beginning and ending, relationships ending and beginning again, honing in on the favorite parts of my work and developing those further (Hello SHIFT Online Community!) and much, much more. AND, in the next two years I’ll be launching my last two kiddos! Wild and crazy times over here. What about you? What have you navigated as a human in the past few years?

My comfort zone is being S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-D as all of ours have been and it can take it’s toll if we aren’t equipped mentally to handle it. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve been practicing (it’s a practice folks!) so I didn’t lose my f#%king mind during the changes:

  1. Using my Feel Good Plan/Bliss List/Whatever You Want To Call It. Please tell me you’ve made one and you’re practicing it too! Maybe you haven’t because you think it’s silly or that you don’t need a “list” but I promise if you suspend disbelief, you will be pleasantly surprised by how helpful it is. Resource: See Module 1 of 5 Must Have Tools In Your Parenting Toolbox and Module 2 of Cultivating Wellness.

  2. Checking my narratives - This is part of my FGP but I’m calling it out specifically because I can attest to the fact that at least 50% of my emotional discomfort stems from the old/unhelpful narratives that pop up. I’ve done a lot of work around rewiring my brain but when I’m under stress, the old stuff can show up. I view these experiences as invitations to heal and rewire some more and I don’t get down about it. Resource: Both online courses

  3. Build my capacity for holding space for the world we live in: The other 50% of my discomfort often comes from what folks experience in this life and through historical, racial and intergenerational trauma. We have a tendency to stick our heads in the sand about these things for different reasons but the more we learn and unlearn, the more we understand our place in the world and how we can do less harm to others and ourselves. Resources: My courses offer foundational social and emotional skills to be able to lean into (if you don’t have the skills/capacity yet) books/light workers such as My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, anything Ijeoma Oluo, Ibram X. Kendi and so many more folks you can exchange energy with (aka pay) so you can build your self and social awareness.

  4. Asking for HELP. Folks, this is a hard one for me because I feel pretty capable and productive and all the things most of the time. And if I don’t, I often muscle my way through it. I don’t recommend it. But no longer! I reached out a few years ago and found a therapist for myself (therapists need therapists!) and I’m checking in with my partner and friends and am getting even more support there. Here’s the thing, some of the changes we may be experiencing have to do with losing a relationship/person or multiples of those things. I get that. We can experience a lot of grief as a result of those losses. I call this the stripping down/rock bottom space which is hella uncomfortable to say the least. Also, very sacred because you’re at the spot where you get to build, from the ground up, your own social support system (yay for Bumble BFF) over time and create the relationships you truly deserve with your newly healed and grown self. Pretty amazing to be able to live a life within a life, relationship-wise.

  5. Giving myself an extra dose, or two or three, of self-compassion. I’ve dropped balls, I’ve cried, I’ve felt uncomfortable more than usual and I know I need extra love in those times, not shame and guilt.

    So here is your gentle reminder to be kind to yourself during phases of life that are FULL. Also, a reminder that you can choose to pay attention to the wonderful things happening at the same time as the tough stuff. You can choose to be miserable when your comfort zone is being stretched or you can choose to make the best of it. Both the messy and beautiful life stuff are always happening at the same time.

Ways to Get On the Same Parenting Page...As Much As Possible!

When we consider what influences how we show up as parents it’s not wonder it’s really difficult to provide a united front in our parenting. Our trauma, life experiences, attachment styles, learning styles, beliefs, SO MANY THINGS can impact our parenting and that’s just one person’s stuff. Throw in another person or more (due to divorce, blending families, etc.) and parenting together can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill.

Below I will identify a few strategies to practice AND we can’t do our parenting partner’s work for them. That’s especially true if you’re divorced. What you can do is model what you know and show curiosity towards your parenting partner’s “stuff”. If you are in the same household with your parenting partner, invite them into this space. Watch the videos together. Do the workbook together. Prioritize time once a week, even for just 20-30 minutes, to connect about your parenting. If they aren’t in the same household, see if they’d be willing to join this space to work on things together. Who knows?!

Now, let’s dive into the strategies each adult can practice and then we can go deeper in the community call…

  1. Increase Self-Awareness around our STUFF - We can’t give what we don’t got. Sounds silly, but it’s impossible to show up for our kids with presence, understanding and curiosity if we don’t first do that for ourselves. We can ask ourselves helpful questions like “Why is this behavior triggering me?”, “Are my expectations realistic given my kiddo’s… (neurodiversity, skill level, environment, etc.)?”, “What part of me is blocking me from connecting with my kiddo?” and “What skill do I need to learn and practice so I don’t lose my shit every time my kiddo…?”.

    Resources: Modules 1 and 2 in Cultivating Wellness and Modules 1 and 2 in 5 Must Have Tools In Your Parenting Toolbox.

  2. Shift your mindset about behavior: Most parents need to understand that how we were raised (in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s) and what we know about behavior is unhelpful and even harmful when it comes to our own kids. The wooden spoon/Do as I say, not as I do/Because I said so generation had it all wrong. Misguided behavior communicates an unmet need and/or a lagging skill. It doesn’t communicate that our kids are being disrespectful, or doing it on purpose (because kids do well if they CAN) or any other story we might have in our heads. In order to shift behavior we need to focus on skill building so kids can learn to get their needs met in more helpful, relational ways.

    Resources: Module 2, 5 and 6 in Cultivating Wellness and Module 2 in 5 Must Have Tools…

  3. Discuss common goals/strengths and build from there - We call this a strengths-based perspective in therapy land. We often pay too much attention to where we don’t align and that ends up being an energy vampire. When we focus on where we connect and agree, we can build from there. When we do that, we feel energized, connected and that translates into our parenting. Sit down with your parenting partner, if possible, and go through the Welcome video in 5 Must Have Tools. In that section of the course, you will come across the Gifts/Challenges activity which can help you gain understanding about each other’s goals. You’ll probably find you have more in common than you think! Then, discuss the ways each of you are supporting your kiddos in skill building to develop these characteristics/traits and where you can do a bit more skill building.

  4. Share the burden: If possible, each parent needs to share the burden of developing the skills/mindsets to parent with compassion and structure. It’s confusing for kids to experience such differing skill sets and if that can be avoided, that’s more helpful for them and you. If it can’t be avoided due to divorce, separation, etc. then know that whatever level of coherence you can provide in your parenting, that will be good enough! It is what it is and we do our absolute best. That’s the energy the kids will pick up on versus endlessly feeling like we messed up and they will be messed up because their parents aren’t on the same page. This leads me to the last strategy…

  5. Be self-compassionate and compassionate towards your co-parent: Parenting is so hard. It’s triggering and we get invitation after invitation to level up our healing and growth. This is very uncomfortable at times and yet, we make it more uncomfortable by beating ourselves up over and over again or focusing on the deficits in the other person. Also energy vampires. We can intentionally notice each other’s effort, even in the teeny tiniest of ways, and celebrate that effort.

This is not an exhaustive list! I’m excited to connect with you more in person, in the community calls to unpack this even more.

Be Choosey

We are bombarded with thoughts, feelings, images, voices (our own and others) and tons of other sensory information every second of our waking hours. When I was an elementary school counselor, I taught several lessons to students about the Reticular Activating System (RAS), the part of the brain that sits at the brain stem and connects with many other parts of the brain. The RAS takes in all of the information from our senses and decides which information to send to the other parts of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex (the wise leader), the amygdala (the security guard), the hippocampus (memory saver) or other areas. The RAS filters out everything it deems unnecessary or unwanted and it does this unconsciously, yet we can use our power of choice to be intentional about what and how much our RAS has to filter/prioritize.

The past few years I've worked on carefully choosing the energy I allow into my life - that means I'm choosey about the shows I watch, the people I spend time with, the books I read and the social media I participate in. Being choosey also means that sometimes I read trash mags (People, US Weekly), watch rom coms and mindlessly scroll through Pinterest. I just don't do it with all of my free time because I want to invest in myself. A friend sent me this quote AS I was writing this post. Her timing is brilliant...

"To be healthy, functioning individuals, we need to feel good about ourselves. To feel good about ourselves, we need to feel that our time and energy is spent meaningfully. Meaning is the fuel of our minds. When you run out of it, everything else stops working." - Mark Manson

The kicker is that how I choose to spend my time probably looks different than the next person. The point is to find YOUR secret sauce, your magic formula. What gives you energy? What is an energy sucker? Can you unfollow some accounts? Hide some feeds? Invest in a book that will shake things up like The Untethered Soul, Burnout, Expectation Hangover, My Grandmother’s Hands or Braving the Wilderness? Can you spend more time outside? Which ever way you choose, you are making meaning out of your life. These are all acts of self-compassion, something every human needs more of. Are you figuring out what your secret sauce is? What are you choosing these days?

Hey Grown Ups, Here's How You Can Support Your Kids In Uncertain Times

Social and Emotional Competencies: Self-Awareness, Responsible Decision Making, Self-Management

Fearful? Anxious? Panicked? Sounds about right for the current state of affairs. Our brains really like novelty but not so much the uncertainty and change that comes with the novel coronavirus! We need to be very intentional about developing and practicing tools to self-regulate, be problem solvers and focus on the greater good that can come from experiences like this (if we choose to create goodness out of difficulty). Please keep your head about you. Listen, you’re the grown up with all of the perspective and tools (at least that’s how our kids see us and those are developmentally appropriate roles) and if you’re panicked, what does that mean for them? That means they should for sure fall apart if you are! In reality, our kids never need our worry energy - they need our “I believe in you and the goodness of others” energy. They need our optimism if they are struggling to find it themselves.

Here are some ways you can take care of YOU so you can show up how your kids need you to, which is centered, regulated, hopeful and connected…

  1. Allow yourself to sit with the feelings - don’t stuff, ignore or distract yourself from them. Instead, validate the emotion (name it out loud or inside) and use your FEEL GOOD PLAN to soothe your nervous system. Everyone in your family should have one and be using it right now! Head to www.cheranderton.com/downloads to access a free PDF and video about FGP’s and how to implement them. Let’s also break down a few things that should be on everyone’s list and two things that shouldn’t be on anyone’s list…

    First, everyone should have Helpful Self-talk on their list. Now, our automatic self-talk is probably not super great right now (mine’s a bit anxious at times) but our super power is to choose what self-talk we allow to take up residence on our mental space. I’m definitely not encouraging, and never have encouraged, us to think thoughts that are all rainbows and unicorns like “This is fine! Everything is going to be fine!” or “I don’t need to follow guidelines to keep myself and others safe. I’m not going to get sick!”. NOT HELPFUL. Examples of helpful self-talk might be “This is hard right now AND I will focus on controlling what I can control (thoughts, feelings, actions, THAT’S IT)” or “Hey kids, I know this is scary AND I’m here for you if you need anything. Let’s do this together and I (the parent) am doing my best to take care of you right now”. See? Realistic, validating and hopeful. Stay in that zone as much as possible with your stories/narratives/self-talk.

    Deep breaths. Don’t have a breath practice yet? Now’s a great time to develop one! Our nervous systems need deep, intentional breaths to keep our brains and bodies centered and calm. Try taking deep breaths in on a 4 count and out on an 8 count and do this several times. You can also find all kinds of breathing techniques for you and your kids online (the online loophole in the no screens rule for Feel Good Plans). Having a breath practice means in the moment you are experiencing feelings like fear, anxiety, etc. you will have a tool that can engage your prefrontal cortex so your amygdala (feelings alarm and security guard of the brain) doesn’t hijack your logic and reasoning.

    Movement! Our brains and bodies really need regular movement so while you may FEEL like vegging all day on the couch or sitting at a desk while you work from home you need to override that initial feeling and get those feel good chemicals of dopamine and oxytocin going. Movement will increase your productivity, good feelings and self-compassion while you move through this tricky life stuff. Hula hoop, jump rope, walk or run laps around your house, learn a new TicTok dance a day (that’s what we are doing!), head out in the open air - whatever! Just MOVE.

    Two things to not have on your FGP - Screens and vices. Screens can happen sometimes but studies show our nervous systems are too active on screens and we need solid, evidence-based strategies to reduce the wear and tear on our systems right now. Screens, booze, wine, gambling, binge watching shows, etc. are not evidence-based, healthy strategies to navigate stress.

  2. Filter what you’re taking in. Don’t keep the news on 24/7 and make sure you’re also following social media and news accounts that focus on the positive ways folks around the world are handling all of this. Don’t give into the fear-mongering and sensationalism that many news outlets capitalize on!

  3. Get quiet so you can tune into your inner world and intuition to see what guidance is there for you to follow. Your inner voice (not your random, automatic, unhelpful self-talk. that’s your ego, not your inner voice!) will lead you to where you need to go in order to navigate this in the best possible way.

  4. Be action oriented. When we choose to be helpers in situations like these, we are actually building our resilience and the resilience of others. Pay attention to what you can do in your community to support each other and don’t forget about small, family owned businesses that really need us right now.

  5. Ask for help. Overwhelmed and need to tap out? REACH OUT to someone, anyone before you get to the point of falling apart. Relieve the burden on your system slowly over time instead of stuffing all of this down and then losing it on yourself or your kids, etc. There are so many helpers out there right now! Your job is to find them and connect with them even if you just thank them for being there.

  6. Our brains automatically say “I can’t … because…”. Shut that down and get curious by asking “How can I …?” instead. You’re engaging the part of your brain (the reward centers) that get those feel good chemicals flowing (much like with movement!).

  7. Listen to how your kids are feeling. Validate it and then ask them what they need from you right now. Encourage them to use their FGP’s. Sit with them. Hold them. Even your teens!

  8. Keep your routines or create new ones! Kids need predictability and boundaries more than ever right now so work with them to create schedules for their current situation. Include learning, down time, movement, community action, art, etc.

  9. Stay connected. Technology is a gift right now so use it to practice social distancing while staying connected. Zoom dance party anyone?!!!

  10. Imagine the good that can come from a situation like this! Horrible things happen everyday and so do beautiful, magical things and that’s because folks choose to react positively and make meaning out of situations like this. Be open to the possibility that healing and growth can happen right now. Be well and take care of your mental and physical health so you model and teach your kids how to move through difficulty in the best possible way. Be real, yet optimistic. They are watching us more than they listen to us so you have to genuinely show up for them right now. If you can’t, you need to pivot real quick and get on it by practicing these strategies!

The Paradox of Life

This time of year the paradox of life is very apparent - there are beautiful things to celebrate and there are many who are struggling in numerous ways, all at the same time. Holding these two things together can be very uncomfortable, yet that is exactly what we need to do in order to encourage our well-being AND have energy to put towards the individuals and organizations that need our love and support.

So if the holiday season brings up mixed and/or difficult feelings for you, I see you! Please practice self-compassion and listen to your inner voice when it tells you how to move through this time of year. Avoid the trap of “shoulding” and “coulding” and instead pay attention to what you need and want to feel the best you possibly can. Love yourself through it! I promise you can experience happiness amidst the harder parts of life.

If this season is one of joy for you, please share it with those who need you! Consider at least one person you can reach out to and ask them what they need/want right now. It can be a stranger on the street, a neighbor, an organization you’re a fan of, whatever!

I’m incredibly grateful for all of you. Thank you for sharing this space with me and I’m excited to see what the new year brings for all of us!

Trial and Error: Two Things I Learned About Parenting

When I began parenting over 19 years ago I had an idea of what I didn’t want to do but didn’t realize I would need to build a whole new skill set, essentially from scratch, in order to parent my kids how I really wanted to. I had a rude awakening when my good intentions flew out the window in the heat of the moment and I was the reactive, shaming, ill-equipped mom I didn’t want to be.

Fast-forward a decade or more, add in adopting an older kiddo from foster care, graduate school, a private therapy practice and school counseling gig and I finally began to get the gist of what I needed to heal and grow so I could parent in the way I intended to. Here’s what I learned along the way and want to share with you…

First, I had to focus on me. I could not give what I didn’t have so growing my self-compassion and ability to set healthy boundaries, healing my trauma, work on mastering my thoughts and behavior and soothing my nervous system were paramount to me showing up in any role, especially parenting, in the best possible way.

Second, once I put a good amount of love into my own healing and growth, I needed the actual life/social/emotional skills to model and teach to my kids. Love wasn’t enough! I read a ton of parenting books, had a steep learning curve managing big behaviors in the school (and home!) setting and was trained in the Positive Discipline parenting method. Needless to say, I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve!

Over the past several years I’ve honed in on some incredible life and parenting hacks and I’m sharing them with you in my two online courses, SHIFT: How To Rewire Your Brain for Healing, Growth and Connection and SHIFT: 5 Must-Have Tools In Your Parenting Toolbox. Check out my COURSES page to find out more about the courses. I hope to see you in class!

Words Have Energy

If you’ve been hanging around this space for a bit you know how much I talk about carefully choosing the words you use to talk to/about yourself and others. Language has ENERGY and we can either use that energy for good or evil, so to speak. Have you seen the experiments online where people talk to rice or plants? I did my own experiment with rice a year ago and the difference between the jar labeled “love” and the jar labeled “hate” was pretty wild after only a few weeks. Each day throughout the day I would say positive things to the love jar and mean things to the hate jar. Soon the hate jar was full of slimy, moldy, nastiness and after a few weeks there was only a small chunk of gross in the love jar.

What I found the most interesting during the entire experiment was how my tone and mood changed when I spoke to the different jars. I felt soft and nurturing saying “You’re beautiful and I love you” and then shifted pretty quickly to feeling really low saying “I hate you, you’re stupid and ugly”. Feelings appeared with the words I was saying to the rice, just as feelings show up when we talk to/about ourselves and others. The words trigger an emotional response in the brain and when thoughts get paired with emotions the subconscious mind gets wired. That wiring determines how we move through life - more of what we say, do, think and feel. So if our words/thoughts/stories are loving we get more of that both internally and in our external world. The same goes for unkind, unloving thoughts/words/stories. You will get more of that junk in your life too!

Here’s the kicker - you get to choose the words and the emotions that you allow to take up real estate on your mental space. At least you do once you become aware of them and decide if you want to keep them or not. This is a long game but I challenge you to take a few minutes and write down some of the words (phrases, stories) you use often (be wary of can’t, should, could, don’t, always, never, no one, any name calling or judgement…) and pick preferred, loving words instead. It’s simple but not easy but it won’t always be so hard. As the new neural connections solidify, your new wiring takes shape and life FEELS better.

Navigating Change With Grace and A Few Swear Words

It has been a bit! I’ve been navigating a new job as a trauma informed practices consultant in schools (mostly) and I gave myself some grace to let some things go so I could adjust. The newsletter was one of the things I let go but I want to rekindle our connection and get back on track. Who know, I may even send a newsletter twice a month! Ha!

Change is no joke and like I mentioned above, we’ve been going through it in the last few months. I left a school building I’ve been working at for 4 years, my oldest graduated high school, I got an amazing job offer to work with phenomenal women and coach schools in WA State in Trauma Informed Practices, the kids started school - we have an 8th grader, 9th grader and senior this year! You get the idea. My comfort zone is being S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-D. I imagine you’ve experienced change in the past few months as well and it can take it’s toll if you aren’t equipped mentally to handle it. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve been practicing (it’s a practice folks!) so I didn’t lose my f#%king mind during the transition:

  1. Using my Feel Good Plan/Bliss List/Whatever You Want To Call It. Please tell me you’ve made one and you’re practicing it too! Maybe you haven’t because you think it’s silly or that you don’t need a “list” but I promise if you suspend disbelief, you will be pleasantly surprised by how helpful it is.

  2. Checking my narratives - This is part of my FGP but I’m calling it out specifically because I can attest to the fact that at least 90% of my emotional discomfort stems from the old/unhelpful narratives that pop up. I’ve done a lot of work around rewiring my brain but when I’m under stress, the old stuff can show up. I view these experiences as invitations to heal and rewire some more and I don’t get down about it.

  3. Asking for HELP. Folks, this is a hard one for me because I feel pretty capable and productive and all the things most of the time. And if I don’t, I often muscle my way through it. I don’t recommend it. But no longer! I reached out and found a therapist for myself (therapists need therapists!) and I’m checking in with my partner and getting even more support there.

  4. Giving myself an extra dose, or two or three, of self-compassion. I’ve dropped balls, I’ve cried, I’ve felt uncomfortable more than usual and I know I need extra love in those times, not shame and guilt.

    So here is your gentle reminder to be kind to yourself during phases of life that are FULL. Also, a reminder that you can choose to pay attention to the wonderful things happening at the same time as the tough stuff. You can choose to be miserable when your comfort zone is being stretched or you can choose to make the best of it.