Raising Emotional Intelligence and Resilience for a Meaningful Life (with Susan David)

Psychologist, columnist and TED Talk superstar Susan David connects Janet to discuss how parents can encourage their children’s capacity to process difficult affections, thoughts, and knowledge. “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life, ” she says, but we can help our children develop resilience and a capability to navigate painful spirits so they’re no longer terrifying. Susan offers suggestion how mothers can instill confidence and a sense of well-being. The process begins with awareness, adoption, and empathy for ourselves.

Transcript of” Raising Emotional Intelligence and Resilience for a Meaningful Life( with Susan David )”

Hi. This is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today we have a great podcast for you. I’ll finally be speaking with someone that I’ve wanted to have on the display for a long, long time, but she’s incredibly busy, so it hasn’t been easy. Susan David is a Harvard Medical School psychologist, CEO of Evidenced Based Psychology. She’s a TED Talk superstar and writer of the honor prevailing record, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. And that’s what we’re going to hear about today. What is feeling agility and why is it so strongly important? How can we foster emotional knowledge and resilience in our children and ourselves to help us deal gracefully and successfully with all of our life’s ups and downs? I know you’re going to appreciate Susan’s penetrations and perspective.

Hi Susan.

Susan David: Hi Janet.

Janet Lansbury: I want to ask, first of all, how “are you doin “? Do you have children? Don’t you have young children?

Susan David: So I live in Boston. My husband’s a physician. And it’s very interesting as mothers. You go through the prosaic activities of day to period life, exchanging post-it mentions about who’s going to make dinner. And now my husband and I … He’s a doctor and he’s very involved, of course, in the virus and the experience from a professional perspective, and now we’re exchanging not post-it memoes about dinner, but disaster contact information. And making decisions about, if he’s disclosed, where’s he continue to stay? Is he going to be able to see the children? And then I’ve got a six-year-old at home and an 11 -year-old who are now apparently being homeschooled. Apparently.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I adore all the discussion that’s been going on about how that may be less crucial than we all imagine right now for this little bit of age. And taking the pressure off of that for mothers, as much as possible. So yeah, we do our very best, but we know that they’re learning so many other important things. Maybe more important things.

Susan David: Correct. I absolutely be suggested that, I make for small children, being able to experience what it’s like to be stood, is actually a seriously important learning experience. What do you do when you are just by yourself? And how do you get pleasant with that? I think there’s a lot of learning that happens in that way.

Janet Lansbury: I agree. Can you talk a little about emotional agility, what it is and why it matters?

Susan David: Yeah, utterly. So, most of my work, all of my work in fact, concentrating on one key question. And that is, what does it take internally, in the way we deal with our thoughts, our feelings, and even the stories that we develop over meter that help us to thrive in an increasingly complex world?

Because we know that no matter what points children have, and no matter what their outward talents are, eventually what’s going to be the litmus of whether they are well and happy and thriving human being is determined much more by what goes on inside of them — their capacity to steer difficult feelings, studies, know-hows, so that they can bring the best of themselves forward. And so my work actually focuses on that. What are these fundamental skills that are critical for children? And that likewise, as it turns out, are essential for us as parents.

Janet Lansbury: And to be able to offer this to our children, often it’s important for us to have it ourselves. And that’s one of the reasons why I cite so many beings to your TED Talk and your book, because I want to help parents be able to help their children by recognizing in themselves the importance of understanding and feeling okay with the uneasines of their feelings.

Susan David: Absolutely. A mint of what I do in my TED Talk as well as in my work in general is … I’ve very much come up against this idea that a good deal of us have in society, which is that we want to be happy all the time. We want to chase happiness. Happiness needs to be a goal. And often, we have that same crave or want with great intentions for our children. We want our children to be happy. And sometimes what happens is, that idea of joy becomes then virtually muddied with this other mind, which is, if they register unhappiness, then it means they’re not glad and that’s a bad thing.

And so what really happened I think in society in general, when it comes to our much harder passions like sadness, horror, suffering, apathy, suspicion, stress, is we have very much this narrative that these are bad excitements. That they’re negative emotions.

And paradoxically it sounds like a good thing that we have rejoice and gaiety. And that the other feelings go away because they are supposedly negative or bad. But not tolerating children to experience difficult spirits, actually undermines their resilience, their wellbeing, and their merriment over season. Because the truth is that our children are growing up in a macrocosm … To use the phrase that I be utilized in my TED Talk, in which life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility.

Our children will one day be rejected by someone that they fall in love with or they’ll lose their jobs, or they’ll flunk a school test. They’re going to have difficult feelings knowledge and so as mothers, one of our most important roles, is to help our children develop a sense of comfort and skill with these difficult sentiments, so that they’re no longer shocking, but that the child actually has the resilience and capability to actually navigate them effectively.

And these are these fundamental psychological agility talents that I’m talking about. This idea that it’s not about positivity and prosperity; it’s actually about developing faculty with a complete range of emotional know-how. So the children are able to steer the world as it is , not as we wish it to be.

Janet Lansbury: That reminds me of something my instructor, Magda Gerber used to always say, which is,” If we can learn to fight, we can learn to live .” It’s one of my favorite excerpts from her.

Susan David: Love that.

Janet Lansbury: And what you say, which is:” Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life .” It’s easy for us to feel fine when things are going well, but it’s when we can be comfortable with that sorenes, then we are free. We don’t have to feel like we’re just wander this tightrope. If I fall off, I’m not going to be able to handle it. I can treat all of it.

Susan David: I think that’s it accurately … Because what happens so much, and this is what a lot of my job has looked at, is how people, if they’re experiencing impediment, they actually then, instead of exactly knowledge certain difficulties: I’ve lost my job. Or, I’m feeling happy now. Or, Things aren’t going well in this relationship. That’s what we call a Type One experience.

But then what we start to do is we start layering Type Two impediments on the difficulties. Not simply am I unhappy in my job, but I’m unhappy about the fact that I’m sad because I should be happy. Or we become judgy with ourselves about it. We get into this internal struggle with ourselves as to what sensations we should be allowed to feel and what sentiments we shouldn’t be allowed to feel.

But our excitements, even the most difficult ones … remorse as a parent, for instance … our ardours contain signposts to the things that we care about. And so, if we move beyond this idea of trying to crush difficult sensations and we, instead, start being curious and compassionate with them: Gee, I feel guilty right now. Or, I feel borne. I feel disheartened. And instead of trying to push them aside, we’re starting to say: What is it that I value? What is it that I care about that this emotion is trying to signpost to me?

So, I might feel guilt as a parent — it doesn’t mean that that remorse is a fact. It doesn’t mean that I am a bad parent. But what it might be helpful to do is, for us to time slow down into ourselves and say: What is this guilt “re trying to tell me” about what I care about? It might be telling me that I evaluate vicinity and connectedness with their own children, and I don’t have enough of it right now.

So what that does is it’s liberating. It opens up our capacity to make small, meaningful changes to our lives.

And so yeah, when I talk about this idea that, annoyance is the price of admission to a meaningful life, it’s really this idea that we don’t get to have periods of growth without trepidation. Be a mother, develop their own families, start a new job or a brand-new business or leave the world a better place … we don’t get to time those things without stress and anxiety. And so, if we can lean in to and open ourselves up to that trepidation and learn from it, that is profoundly potent in areas of being able to move forward effectively.

Janet Lansbury: Absolutely. And I was thinking when you were talking about the remorse that another thing we can learn from that as mothers, and this happens a lot in the task that I do, is that maybe I am misreading my persona that my child needs to always be happy. Getting back to that full circle: If my child is not happy , now I’m doing something wrong. So it can be a way to learn that maybe what we’re perceiving is not the truth or not what’s most important.

Susan David: Yes. If we think about guilt as an example, often when the person is saying,” I feel guilty because my child’s not fortunate. I feel guilty because my child’s not joyou .” Even with very good aims, it’s really about the person’s experience for themselves. So it’s still about the parent.

So what can be really helpful is to recognize that our sentiments are data. Our ardours contain flashing arrows to the things that we care about. But that doesn’t mean that our affections are facts. It doesn’t mean that because I found guilty, I am guilty, and this is all of my responsibility. I can stand back and I can say: What are my ardours telling me?

When we do that, we can also bring other parts of ourselves in. We can say: What are my excitements “re trying to tell me”? What are other parts of me that are important here? Oh, as a mother , not only do I maybe demand my child to be happy( if that is your appreciation) but we can also think to ourselves: I require my child to be resilient. I demand my child to experience what life is about so that they’re more ready to deal with it.

And now , no longer are we just trying to draw my child happy in the here and now, we actually recognize that there’s very often wisdom in stepping back and in a pithy channel, allowing your child to feel what they feel because there’s learning that comes from that, and that that child, in turn, is learning how to metabolize sorenes, and see how to metabolize suspicion, and likewise learning really important aspects of psychological abilities that are essential for all of us.

We need to learn that affections are transient. And a child isn’t going to learn that ardours are transient if they aren’t able to sit with their sensations and recognise that, 10 times out, their affection has passed.

So they’re critical, critical abilities which are relevant to our mental health, our wellbeing, low levels of depression, tension and so on.

And of course we can’t control all of this or succeed all of this. But what we can do is we can start cure our children to develop the skills that are necessary to navigate the world.

Janet Lansbury: And what would you say are steps that mothers can take right now to feel differently about their excitements, or to get more of the perspective that you’re talking about? Are there concrete steps that we can take?

Susan David: So for the mothers themselves?

Janet Lansbury: Yes. I want to take this opportunity, because you are someone that works with adults. And so many mothers are asking me,” When I’m mad, what am I supposed to do ?” I think it’s going to help parents to take advantage of you two are now to help us with ourselves in our reactivity and why certain things our children do impel us enraged, and what we can do about that.

Susan David: So the first thing that I would say is from a practical strategy perspective is, a lot of occasions, we live in an environment in which it’s being almost telegraphed to us that there are good and bad affections. We are cabled this by the media that impart this idea that pleasure is the be-all and end-all. But “weve had” suffered this in our own lives. The expression that we use in psychology is” parade settles .” Display rulers are often the unspoken regulates about what is an okay emotion to experience and what isn’t.

So for instance, if you grew up in an environment where every time you were angry, you were punished for being angry,” Go to your chamber and come out when you’ve got a smile on your face .” Or if every time you were pathetic there was no space for your sadness, you might have display settles about those excitements that, mostly, suggest that sadness is bad or that anger is negative and that I shouldn’t be allowed to experience that.

And so what can often happen is we then grow up with rulings about these difficult knowledge. And if we just step back and we think about, from an evolutionary view, there is a reason that every single one of these spirits advanced. There’s a reason that these excitements exist.

And the first person who actually wrote about this was Charles Darwin. And what he described is this idea that our affections, every single emotion, even if it’s may seem like a tough sentiment, our emotions accomplish a function. The operate is that our sensations are our acces of, Number 1, communicating with the world. But likewise, critically important is that our sentiments have the operate of helping us to communicate with ourselves, telling ourselves what’s important, what feels dissonant or incongruent with our values, excitements that are playing into a fib that we might have about ourselves and our ethic and so on.

So the first thing that I’d say from a practical perspective is if you feel yourself or hear yourself as a parent going into this: I shouldn’t feel, that’s a bad feeling, that’s not a legitimate feeling, that’s not an stood feeling, just see if you can end that struggle with yourself. See if you are eligible to exactly face into that spirit instead of with struggle, with compassion.

This is what I’m feeling. Raising a child is tough. I’m doing as a mother the most wonderful I can with who I am, with the resources and the history and different contexts that I is available in life.

What you’re doing there is you’re moving away from that situation where you’ve got that Type One, which is the experience, and Type Two, where you lay on all these sentences. And, instead, you’re just moving into the space of openness to what you’re feeling and to a sense of compassion.

And what that starts to do is profound. It stops you from being hooked into the emotion.

We’ve all had that event when the excitement grabs the americans and we react to the emotion. My husband’s starting in on the finances, I’m going to leave the room. Or, My child’s make that. It’s upsetting me. I told them not to do it.

And so we blow a fuse, and that’s when the sentiment has grabbed us. And what we’re trying to do as human beings is we try to develop a skill to develop greater space between stimulus and response.

I always cherished the Victor Frankl phrase, this idea: between stimulus and response, there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose, and it’s in that choice that lies our emergence and our freedom.

So as parents or as human being, when we get hooked by an feeling, often there’s no gap between stimulus and response.

So what we’re trying to time when we’re emotionally agile is we’re trying to create opening for ourselves so that other parts of who well, our values, our purposes, the best parts of ourselves can come forward.

The first step to this is actually letting make of the struggle that you have with whether your passion is wrong or right, and accompanying if you can open your heart up with tendernes and adoption to the reality of your experience right now. That is enormously liberating.

Janet Lansbury: That’s beautiful. I can feel that right now.

Susan David: When we get hooked by our passion, we start treating the sensation as knowledge. If you imagine your emotion is a cloud … When we’re secured by the emotion, we become the mas. What we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to be the sky. We’re trying to be the sky, and that spirit is one cloud in our sky, but there are other shadows as well.

Janet Lansbury: Wow, I desire that.

Susan David: There are some very important access that we can deal with our passions that we are all familiar with from psychological science are really important. So I’ll give you some examples.

Often what beings do is we use very big black and white names to describe what it is that we’re feeling. So as parents we were able to say,” I’m stressed ,” Or” I’m sad .” And you can feel when you use this lingo, when “youre telling”,” I am accentuated .” You have become the mas. You have become the emotion. 100% of me shall be fixed by this emotion.

So we want to try to create space. And some of these things reverberate simple, but simple is potent. Simple, when you have got a child screaming in CVS, simple is really important.

A simple strategy is just notice your think or your affection or your floor. Your story about I’m not good enough or I’m not a good enough parent. Notice your reflect, your sentiment or your narrative for what it is. It’s a expect. It’s an spirit. It’s a story.

So instead of saying,” I am harrowing ,” or” I am a bad parent ,”” I’m noticing the feeling of being harrowing. I’m noticing that this is my bad mother fib. I’m noticing that I’m having the thinking now that no one ever subscribes me .” What you’re starting to do there is create a linguistic space.

So literally in the language we use, we’re starting to create room between ourselves and the affection. That’s one really useful strategy, I judge, for parents and for human beings.

Another one is this idea that when you use these very big names to describe everything …” I am emphasized” could mean” I haven’t had a chance to cook dinner” or it could symbolize,” I feel like I’m a complete failure as a person .” Or, I’m emphasized could mean,” I’m in the wrong racket .”

When we label everything as,” I am stressed ,” what it does is it, psychologically, doesn’t actually again allow us space.

So the exertion that I’ve done and that others have done as well on a very interesting topic announced ” sentiment granularity …” Emotion granularity is simply this idea that beneath these big-hearted umbrella words that we use are often highly distinguished emotions.

So if you say: exactly what we two other things that I might be feeling beyond stress? And you say to yourself: disappointed or unsupported or spent, you can see what that does, being more differentiated. What it does is it starts helping your brain, quite literally, to understand the cause of your emotions. And you’re likewise starting to move into the space of saying: Ah, what I need to do is ask for more assist. Or, pour myself a delightful hot bathtub and take a rest.

What we’re doing when we label our emotions more accurately is it actually renders a mental cavity that moves beyond,” I’ve got a problem and I don’t know what to do about it and I’m in panic state .” Into something that is more solution oriented and connected with the reality of its own experience, and it’s intensely powerful.

Janet Lansbury: That is so helpful. And I love what you told, more, about squandering communication as a method to give a little more space there by time the words that we use, because the words that we use are important to how we feel about things.

Susan David: What you’re doing there is you’re getting a little bit of length between you and the experience.

When you’re working with a parent who says,” My child’s disappointed and I am responsible for my child’s happiness and this is terrible ,” you’re so immersed in its own experience that you can’t actually returning knowledge to it.

Every single one of us has sense. And if we can just open the space to that knowledge through perspective, through not allowing your emotions to call the shots, it’s about being merciful with yourself. We open the space to wisdom. As we do that, there’s a little bit of a sense of distance that does created.

It’s almost like your child’s still experiencing what your child’s experiencing, but no longer are you sitting in the cook jackpot with the child. You are now at a distance. Not being remote, but there’s a kind of compassionate, boundaried know-how that is very important. And it’s in that opening that you can do your work as a mother, as opposed to being the victim in the opening along with your child.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. I cherish what you said also in your TED Talk about checking emotions as inherently valuable, for the above reasons, because they’re giving us so much information about ourselves and our lives.

Children seem to instinctively understand, they’re quite willing to be in their passions and that’s actually one of the reasons why I affection working with them. It’s very clear they don’t have those abilities or needs to stifle themselves, so they applied it all out there.” I’m energized, I’m scared. I’m lamentable .” And it’s in every cell of their own bodies, that exemption that children have to merely are still in it.

Do you have a possibility as to why well, as human being, so stifled generally in our sentiments? As a society we do have this view of them as negative.

Susan David: Yeah. It’s really interesting. There are different possibilities as to why that is the case. Some speculations pertain to these flaunt principles that have developed over time and often in response to needs in a particular culture, what a culture may see as being important in terms of task and logic and so on. So display governs is likely to be powers that exist within our families, but they can also exist in our culture.

Other presumptions to indicate that, actually, what has happened is if you look at the acces education developed over time, that when maths and physics and these things became very much part of formal education, what it actually did is it allowed those things to come to the surface as being primary and important. And the manifestations of ourselves that were difficult to be measured and understood were seen as being secondary.

I aim, even when I was doing my PhD in psychological skills, I noticed it incredibly difficult to find someone who was willing to supervise my job or to advise me. And this was because, even at that time, and we’re not talking that long ago, we’re talking 15 year ago, affections were seen as being these things that you could not measure. And if you can’t measure them, then they don’t exist. They can’t be scientifically understood. And so there’s been, even historically in psychology, this really interesting push away from emotions.

And more we know that the behavior we deal with our emotions drives everything. Our motivation, our leader, our relationships, how we affection, how we parent, everything.

Janet Lansbury: Right, It is the fuel behind everything.

Susan David: It’s the oil, the gasoline for literally all other aspects of ourselves: our ability to regulate, our capacity to employed our longterm goals in front of us and stay focused on them, even though you really want to go to the party tonight. So it’s all these things that our excitements and being able to navigate them effectively actually drive.

Janet Lansbury: And I would say they’re not just thought of as secondary, but even as getting in the way of productivity like, okay, gave that digression. Or if for mothers … When their child is upset: Well, okay, let’s do this over with immediately. Or, let me do what I can do to fix this so we can move on to other things.

But the child is actually in a plaza of freeing, and learning: it is okay to feel my sensations. I do survive this. It is all right. They’re learning such important things and we’re trying to haste them through and…

Susan David: Yes. Every parent out there is just doing the best they can. And it’s really important for us to have a healthful dosage of pity for ourselves.

I remember many years ago when my lad Noah was born … You’ve got this little child six weeks age-old and you’ve birthed them and you’ve looked after them and you’ve loved them, and every single thing that they need you’ve done for them, and then you, of course, take them to the doctor to get their firstly shots. So you’re basically entrust them over to a stranger to be hurt.

( And merely made very clear, especially in the current context, I am not anti-vaccine .) And I had this is something that miraculous suffer where Noah was six weeks old-fashioned and he was happy and goo-goo-ga-ga. And I made him to the doctor for his first planned of shoots, and Noah’s face turned from fortunate into absolute outrage.

He started screaming and bawling and hollering and shrieking and I, this hormonal new parent doing the most wonderful that I could, picked my son up and I slapped him and I slapped him and he was screaming and bawling and I told us to him,” It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay .”

And I’ll never forget the doctor, with a harbour in the area, so kindly and compassionately, scarcely gazing up from what he was doing. The doctor said to me,” It’s not okay, Susan. It’s not okay. Your child’s in pain .” And he “ve told me”,” One day your child will come home from institution and will be super upset about something and you cannot fathom why the child is upset about this little thing that has now turned big-hearted. You might not understand it, but that is what your child is feeling in the there and now, and it’s not okay .”

I remember going home and I was overpowering myself up about it. I was like progeny and trashing myself. I’ve got a turning PhD in this stuff and I did the very thing that mess up your child for life. I nullified my child. And I was going on and on and on.

And I remember my husband coming home from research hospitals where he works. And as he marched in the front doorway and he “ve told me”,” How’s your day been ?”

I handed Noah over to him and I said,” I’ve had the worst day. You’ll never believe what I did .” And I told him the whole story and I told us to him,” Noah was at the doctor and he was upset and he was crying. And you’ll never believes that I said. I said, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay .”

Anthony just listened to me going on and on and on about this and then he’s very dry, funny, nerdy doctor, he looked at me and with this very naughty look on his face, he said to me,” It’s okay Susan .”

No matter what … Yes, yes, we know that when your child is upset, angry, whatever name we want to use for that very strong emotion, that child is feeling … We is a well-known fact that not trying to solve the problem, literally really establishing up to the child the same way as we’ve been saying, registering up to ourselves, originating infinite for the ardour , not being judgy about it , not trying to do away with it or propagandize it under the carpet, precisely making infinite for it is incredibly strong. And we know that a child who feels construed and accepted , not evaluated for feeling a particular emotion, that that spirit immediately starts to actually dissipate.

We also know that we can, at a very young age, help children to label their sensations.” Is it that you’re sad or is it that you’re mad ?” And we know that children can do this and we know that this is a critical skill that’s associated with wellbeing.

We know that we can also help our children to understand that, just like I said earlier, our passions contain signposts to the things that we care about. So the child who comes home from clas who says:” Jack didn’t invite me to the birthday party. Now I’m not going to invite him to excavation .” That child is showing no gap between stimulus and response. The child is just: I feel something and I’m going to react. And we’re trying to help our child to develop space between stimulus and response.

Why? Because we want our child when they’re invited by medications when they’re 16 years old to recognize: “Its what” I feel like doing. But actually that’s not who I am as a person.

We want our child to be able to have space between stimulus and response.

So if we can start saying to our child,” You’re upset because Jack didn’t invite you to his birthday defendant, and that sucks. That’s a grim feeling .” Instead of trying to make it all better. “That’s tough.” If we felt accepted in that way it would be difficult. So testifying up to that sadness, helping the child to name the sadness…

But then the third part of psychological agility is this idea that we can help our children to understand their ” why ,” the signpost of what it is that their ardours are signaling is important. So we can start saying:” It’s sounds like friendship is really important to you. You’ve been rejected and it sounds like friendship is really important to you. What does being a good friend look like to you? How do you want to be a friend? How do you want to be a friend in such a situation ?”

What you are starting to do is you’re now not starting to just solve the emotion, we’ve started to do something far greater…

We are helping children to develop their sense of values, their moral compass, their attribute. This doesn’t come from us telling children what to believe or what qualities to hold. It comes from children’s starting to say: This is what’s important to me. To actually internalize that.

So, instead of that thing of like: I’ve got to solve the child’s feeling and return to happiness, we recognize that there’s so much beautiful learning that happens in those pockets of unhappiness. And the learn is the child says: You ensure me and you desire me anyway. That’s powerful.

The child says, I feel this and I recognise that what I feel is actually something else, and I’m labeling my feelings effectively.

The child says, I feel this and it’s telling me that rapport is important. I am a person who had stands up for fairness.

We are developing the child’s moral persona. And that is beyond. If we can create those little pockets of time, and it might not be when your child is lying on that floor in CVS, it might be that you’re having that exchange at night, cuddled up in bunked when everything’s calmed down.

But back to my story about medical doctors, we don’t always manage to do this. We don’t always manage to bring that part of ourselves — the nonchalance — forward. We merely ever need to remember that it’s okay, we can be compassionate with ourselves as parents. We’re doing the best we can with who we are and with the resources that we have available to us at any given time.

Janet Lansbury: I’ve been exercise this with parents for more than 20 years in classifies where they come with their children, talking mothers through it, practicing with my own children and picturing again and again that it’s the best possible thing to allow that child to have the feeling, and be seen to what extent they pass across it, and how they feel much better and they’re centered again, and they love you for giving them do that and all these positive reinforcements and still … Still, it’s the hardest thing for me.

Every time, all those feelings come up for me. I want to make it stop. I want to determine better then. I want to call that parent of “their childrens” who didn’t invite my child to the party and be said that off. All those feelings still come up. So, perfectly, the sorrow for ourselves, because it is something that I don’t believe that we can ever surmount and say: Okay, this is just no problem for me anymore. When my beloved child’s nerve is throbbing or is angry at me or anything, there’s no way that we can, I don’t think, ever feel: Oh yeah, okay, I’ve got this.

Anyway, I don’t.

Susan David: What are we really schooling our children in these spaces, what I announce” the messy cavities ,” the learning that comes from this with our children with spirits is that, Number One, emotions transfer. They are transient. And is recognized that spirits are transient is a critical piece of learning. It likewise telegraphs to “their childrens” that our feelings and that their emotions are not scary. That they are bigger than the excitement. And as we’re teach our children this, precisely as “youre telling”, we’re likewise educating ourselves, because it’s tough.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And I would say that we need to do that first before we’re able to give it to our children but, actually, I think it can also operate the other way, because that’s how it’s worked for me, that I’m learning through practicing this with my children. I’m learning through that to give it to myself. So it is possible the other way around.

Susan David: Absolutely.

One of the things that too just comes to mind … even as we think about this as we were talking about the value of different excitements earlier, one of the excitements that mothers will often describe as this thing of,” Well, I feel guilt and does that means that if my children have done something wrong that I should just be like,’ Oh, I’m just creating room for them to be whoever they want and feel whatever they want? ‘”

You can show up to your children’s sensations. You can be validating and connecting and start opening for them, but that’s not the same as saying,” Oh, because you’re incensed, you only get to act with impunity .”

The example that I is set out in my TED Talk is: I can show up to my son’s frustration with his baby sister. I can empathize with it and truly connect with it. But it doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing his idea that he gets to give her apart to the firstly stranger that he realise in a shopping mall.

We own our passions, they don’t own us. And so with this is also, of course, that “were having” beliefs of our children and that we’re trying to foster autonomy in them and we’re trying to give them option wherever possible. But it’s not hand-picked without anticipation as to what is okay and what’s not okay.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And that’s where the line has to be in that:” It’s okay to feel like getting rid of your sister, but I’m here to stop you from doing that .”

But I don’t referee you as like,” How could you think of such a thing ?”

Or I don’t say,” Well I’m not going to let you do this really fun thing that you want to do, but you can’t be disappointed about that. You have to feel okay that I said no to this .”

That’s something that I think we get caught up in as mothers, because perhaps this is the way that we have been raised, where not only do you not get what you demand, but you’re not allowed to complain about that. You’re not allowed to have a feeling about that.

Susan David: Yeah, exactly.

I spoke a little bit earlier about the accomplishments of an affection as an passion and we don’t want to conflate that feeling with all of us. And I think this is very important with children when we think about the difference between shame and guilt as well. Guilt is a extremely, very powerful and very important emotion. It’s one of what psychologists call the social spirits. If we didn’t have guilt in the world, we would all be running around exactly doing whatever we wanted, whether it hurt people.

Guilt is a very important emotion that enables society to thrive and function effectively.

But it’s really important to internalize the difference between guilt and disgrace. Guilt is when you’re saying to their own children,” This behavior is wrong. This thing that you did is unacceptable .” Guilt, it’s targeted at a very specific behavior and it’s something that the child can choose then not to do again.

Shame is when we send a message to the child that you are wrong, you are a bad person. You having done this thing says something about who you are as an individual.

There are some really interesting studies that have looked at the difference between guilt and reproach. For instance, in prisons, if you have people who’ve committed a crime and you look at when those individuals are released from prison, what is going to predict whether the person re-offends versus doesn’t? And as it turns out, people who are filled with shame are more likely to re-offend because there’s almost a sense of: I’m a bad person no matter what I do and therefore my behavior’s not in my control.

People on the other hand who feel guilt: It’s a very specific thing that I did wrong and I espouse then not are permitted to do that specific thing again are less likely to re offend.

So in communicating anticipation, it’s also really important for us as individuals, when we do something wrong as parents or as spouses or loved ones, to be careful not to conflate what we’ve done wrong with ourselves. I might have done the wrong thing and I feel guilty and therefore I can make it right. And be careful not to incarcerate ourselves where I’m now defined by this thing, which is shame. I am a bad person.

Janet Lansbury: That’s so fascinating. Regrettably, I think we have to finish and I could geek out on this all day. I’m just…

Susan David: Me too. Love it.

Janet Lansbury: I’m so fascinated by you and so grateful for your work and I know that you’re changing the world and just so happy to be able to share that with my listeners now. Thank you so much, Susan.

Susan David: Thank you for inviting me on the evidence I really loved the conversation.

Susan offerings a free Emotional Agility quiz HERE on her website. The personal report was insightful!

” The Emotional Agility Quiz gives you personalized feedback on how to be more effective with your thoughts and spirits, so you can come to your everyday hand-pickeds and their own lives with more planned and penetration. Emotional Agility helps you cultivate real thrive at work and at home. The quiz takes only 5 minutes to complete. You” ll receive a free 10 -page personalized report render specific strategies to help you become more Emotionally Agile .”

And Susan’s wonderful journal is a favorite of mine: Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

Also, both of my diaries are available in paperback at Amazon, No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting. You can get them in ebook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio at audible.com. As a matter of fact, you can get a free audio transcript of either record at Audible by following the link in the liner mentions of this podcast.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

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