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Hi there and welcome back to the Parenting Without Power Struggles Podcast. In this series, we dive into real parenting struggles and practical solutions that are rooted in attachment theory.  Neuroscience, mindfulness, and decades of clinical experience. I'm Susan Stiffelman, your host. I'm a marriage and family therapist, a longtime parent educator, and the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting With Presence.

And I've been working with thousands of families for over 40 years, guiding them to break patterns that aren't serving them and embrace. Healthy loving ways of connecting with kids and raising kids who are kind, compassionate and confident. You're gonna hear conversations with experts like Dan Siegel and Janet Lansbury, and Mona DelaHooke, Tina Bryson, Ned Hallowell, so many wonderful people.

So if you wanna go deeper, check out the whole series and you can also visit susanstiffelman.com, where you'll find my free newsletter and a lot of classes, in fact, over 50 classes on everything. From meltdowns and anxiety to chores and sibling rivalry. Now, let's get started. Today I wanna talk about keeping your cool.

That is the theme right now because I'm putting together a series and I'm looking at it from so many different angles. There's a good chance, you know what I'm talking about, that you've had those moments, you're, you make a request of your child and they either ignore you or they defy you very openly, or they slam the door, they roll their eyes, they argue, they whine, they fall apart, and suddenly you get taken over and you're not the parent that you wanted to be or planned to be.

You yell, you slam a door yourself, or you go really cold and withdraw and. And you're stuck in this pattern, and we all have those patterns. I, trust me, I have not yet met a parent, including myself, that does not lose their cool or hasn't. So where I have found the most positive change in the most promise for really breaking that reactive pattern is when we understand that there are hidden forces at work and they.

Predate our child. They have to do with things we experienced growing up, other stressors in our present day life, and really about our nervous system because when your amygdala thinks you're in danger, all bets are off. That whole idea of being calm and serene and present and engaged, all those great intentions fly out the window.

When your child pushes your buttons, the first thing I want you to take in is that it's really not just about what they did, it's also about what it meant to you. The story that your consciousness, your body, your psyche is telling, including parts that feel disrespected or overwhelmed or powerless or even unsafe.

And in those moments we lose objectivity. We are merged, or in the internal family systems world, you would say blended with the protective part that's saying alert. Alert danger, because its job is to protect that younger, more vulnerable part of us. That's when it first came on board. That part that would really suffer if we believed we were unimportant.

Or invisible, or that our feelings didn't matter, that we were disrespected, that we had no voice. And so that part still lives inside of us, but thankfully we also have a grownup self. And the more we can connect with that grownup self, both preparing to do that by practices like classes and so forth, but also learning how to manage the feelings that are.

Arriving and bubbling up in the moment, the less often and less intensely we'll lose our cool. So the idea then is that our child's frustrating behavior, refusing to start their homework running around the house instead of brushing their teeth. It can poke at something deeper. And this is the beauty of parenting.

One of the gifts of our children is that they help us look backwards in time and heal parts of us that are ready to be healed. And of course, intellectually that's an idea that doesn't really play out in the real moment, in the real moment. You just can't believe how tired you are and how hard you work to make a nice dinner and be kind and read the stories, and now you're.

Child just won't even brush their teeth. And the part of us that knows that they're tired or they're trying to avoid getting ready for bed, or they're just wanting to have a little fun, that part is offline, and we lose access to that calm, wise, reasonable part of ourselves that knows how to respond skillfully.

So what can we do in those moments? The first thing to think about is that if you can have any kind of arm's length from that flood of emotion that's happening, that feeling of overwhelm or outrage or rage, even the tiniest bit of compassion or curiosity can give you a little bit of a gap so that you're not merged with the part of you that is just in reactive mode.

And one way to do that is just to narrate what's happening. This might sound like. I'm feeling my heart racing. I'm feeling my stomach tense up. I can tell I'm about to, snap might sound like a little thing, but naming your state or your physiological state, your mental state, can help shift your brain activity from the amygdala or the emotional center to your prefrontal cortex where you can think and think about what's happening more clearly.

The next thing that can help you create a little bit of distance from the reactive part of you is to bring in some compassion, and that can be very much just toward yourself. If you can say even to yourself, silently, I'm feeling this way because a protective part of me has gotten activated. It's probably trying to keep me from feeling something painful or difficult from when I was young and vulnerable.

This means you're gonna be less likely to turn your anger outward and you can stay more present with yourself. Now if these ideas are interesting to you and you wanna go deeper with it, please do check out the five Day reset. It's called Keep Your Cool A Parenting Reset For Overwhelmed Parents.

Every day we're gonna focus on a particular powerful shift to help you understand your reactivity. Manage that inner critic, that voice that is, is just flooding you with a very unpleasant narrative that maybe moves you toward anger or shame just to help you fortify yourself so that you're more durable around your kids.

We'll look at how those old vulnerabilities derail all the good intentions and talk about how to make sense of. The really painful moments with your kids without taking them personally, because it's, when we take things personally, at least some of what causes that reactivity is that it becomes personal.

That we feel disrespected, we feel unappreciated, invisible. I always believe that we should listen to our own inner guidance. I can suggest to you that you join me, but only if it resonates for you. So check in with yourself and if you feel that you could use some help. It's a very affordable way to take some practical steps toward shifting out of old patterns of reactivity.

So as we wrap up here, 'cause I wanna keep these episodes short I wanna invite you to do a little reflection with me. Think about a time when you recently lost your cool with your child. What was going on, if possible, what time of day was it? What had just happened in the hour proceeding it? Were you tired with your child?

What external circumstances were conspiring to make this likely a problem? In other words, if it's not a cozy, lovely, relaxed Sunday morning, but it's, at four 30 when you're just dragging yourself back into the house and everybody's tired, it can help to look at the patterns and the circumstances that are often associated with these moments when you lose your cool, if you can't.

Call to mind a recent time, whenever that might have been, and visit. That past version of yourself, but visit from your calm, steady, compassionate, caring captain self, your capital S self. So imagine going back in time to the version of you that was just. Trying so hard maybe, but fell apart, screamed, yelled, shouted, pulled the car over, slammed the door, whatever you did, and let this grownup self, this healthy self, the self that is really floating above the emotional turmoil.

Go back with such kindness and compassion to the you in that maybe less optimal moment when you lost your cool with your kids. And I know that some of you might find this tricky. Some people are, better at visualizing and imagining things than others. But if you're able, just imagine that some very solid, steady, evolved part of you.

'cause we all have, that goes back in time and literally can put. Their arms around that version of you? It could have been this morning, it could have been yesterday, it might have been 20 minutes ago. Not with judgment or shame or how could you, or why did you, but with compassion, that was hard. That was hard, wasn't it?

The more we can bring our mature, healthy, healed selves, present day selves. To the scenarios where other parts get activated, older, younger parts, more vulnerable parts, the better AB will able will be to start implementing some of the strategies that really can help us in those difficult, stormy moments.

So compassion, kindness, understanding. Without discussing or analyzing, and I'm not inviting you or suggesting that the two have a dialogue that the present day, healthy, calm, self listening to this podcast goes back and criticizes the part that lost their quote rather. That. Yes, that happens. It happens to the best of us.

So that's it for today. I just wanna give you some ways of thinking about those challenging moments because I've been doing this forever. It seems like my work, and I would say parents losing their cool is one of the deep, dark secrets. We don't often share how bad it sometimes gets, but I know as a therapist it gets pretty gnarly sometimes.

The more we can bring curiosity and learning and growth and compassion to that phenomena instead of judgment and shame and embarrassment and all that, the less we'll need our kids to behave a certain way so that we feel like we're good parents, the more freedom we have, and the more strength and confidence we have in our parenting.

So I hope you've gotten something from that. If you've enjoyed this podcast please share it with a friend. It would be fantastic if you would take a minute to leave a little review or rating or both. We do wanna get the word out and it's such a privilege for me to have this forum or this place, this platform to share some of the things I've learned in these many decades of working with kids and their parents, and.

The world can be challenging, and I believe with all my heart that the way that we will find our way back to healing and kindness and compassion is to raise kids who have those qualities and what a privilege it is to be able to be part of that. As we wrap up, remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy.

Stay well, take care, and I'll see you next time.