Building resilience through emotional intelligence

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00:00:00 

We acknowledge the Yuggera and Kaurna nations as traditional custodians of the land on which we work, live and learn, and their continuing connection with the land waters and community. 

00:00:09 

We pay our respects to them and their elders past and present. 

00:00:12 

All content related to this program is for general informational purposes only and contains stories and discussions around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners. 

00:00:21 

If you’re concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional individual advice and support. 

00:00:26 

More details are contained. 

00:00:28 

In our show. 

00:00:30 

Halo easy to get that special package I sent you. 

00:00:32 

Ah, I got a. 

00:00:32 

Headset, that’s what you’re talking about. 

00:00:34 

Yeah, it’s a new virtual reality. 

00:00:36 

Mind meld meditation that helps us to sit more force and feelings where the teacher can actually be inside your head with you and hear what’s going on. 

00:00:44 

We give it a try, it’s. 

00:00:44 

It sounds very futuristic. 

00:00:46 

OK headsets on I’m ready. 

00:00:54 

Hello and welcome to this mind meld meditation. 

00:00:59 

Steal your mind and get ready to sit with those thoughts. 

00:01:04 

Really sit with those thoughts that ’cause you distress there won’t be any respite here. 

00:01:11 

You know you’ve got work to do and this is the space where you’ll think about. 

00:01:15 

Everything you should be doing should be paying attention to and as we prepare now, taking a deep breath. 

00:01:24 

Taking in all the. 

00:01:26 

Bad energies so you can truly sit with it. 

00:01:29 

Make a space in your mind where things can’t wander too far. 

00:01:34 

A nice tight cave, low ceiling lift just how you like it from above with stark white lights. 

00:01:46 

Now and fill that space with all the niggling thoughts you just breathed in. 

00:01:54 

Anyone else would be good enough to achieve that. 

00:01:56 

Is that a parent? 

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You see, maybe a sibling or your best friend from school. 

00:02:01 

Just having a joke sit with it. 

00:02:04 

Don’t let it go too quickly that. 

00:02:06 

Will be just another. 

00:02:07 

Example to prove you can’t follow through on anything. 

00:02:11 

Only too late. 

00:02:13 

You should have. 

00:02:14 

Held on to that force but failed. 

00:02:16 

Now who’s this? 

00:02:18 

Would it help? 

00:02:18 

To pick up the phone once in a while. 

00:02:20 

That’s right, release it with this one. 

00:02:24 

After everything we’ve done for you. 

00:02:26 

So thanks to get. 

00:02:27 

Good one. 

00:02:27 

You’re so bloody. 

00:02:28 

Why so yeah? 

00:02:28 

Selfish you would come. 

00:02:30 

Name that air con is loud today. 

00:02:32 

Come back, stay with it. 

00:02:34 

You never think of anyone else. 

00:02:35 

Anyone else ’cause? 

00:02:36 

It’s all about. 

00:02:36 

Have you thought about losing weight? 

00:02:38 

How many minutes you meant to? 

00:02:40 

Sit with these thoughts and really feel. 

00:02:43 

And you keep telling me you’ve got arthritic pain, but the tests don’t support that. 

00:02:47 

OK, let’s sit with this one. 

00:02:49 

How did you go with the dietitian? 

00:02:51 

Soft bloody Water Works. 

00:02:51 

Such as blood. 

00:02:53 

And just give him with something, anything. 

00:02:53 

Still, there’s. 

00:02:55 

You really need to sit with these thoughts longer. 

00:02:59 

Yeah, listen to the mind meld coach. 

00:03:01 

You can’t even focus on a single thought for more than five seconds. 

00:03:05 

Your goldfish is more focused than. 

00:03:07 

You are speaking with goldfish. 

00:03:09 

Keep breathing, stay focused on all of that bad energy. 

00:03:14 

You’ll never process it unless you let it all loose in that stark tight cave in your mind. 

00:03:19 

I see. 

00:03:19 

As if I can already feel another bloody thought taking over how much longer does this should go? 

00:03:26 

Now you’re getting there. 

00:03:27 

I hope he didn’t pay too much for this. 

00:03:29 

You do realize I can hear you? 

00:03:32 

Sheep stop wasting your time with exploring. 

00:03:35 

And get off your lazy **** 

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Ah, that’s better. 

00:03:38 

Hold on to. 

00:03:38 

That you’ve got a million better things to do right now up then you’ve. 

00:03:42 

Already heard all this before. 

00:03:43 

Keep an open mind. 

00:03:45 

Hi Brandy, can’t hear this but. 

00:03:47 

This coach is full. 

00:03:48 

Of **** my mind is open. 

00:03:50 

Do a better job. 

00:03:51 

I can hear you thinking breathing. 

00:03:54 

It’s creepy and talk faster. 

00:03:56 

Ever heard of boundaries? 

00:03:57 

Armor, one coaching you I’ll 

00:03:59 

Call the shots. 

00:04:01 

Look as much as. 

00:04:02 

You keep saying you have a breakthrough. 

00:04:03 

I’ve heard it all before, just kept rolling through the same old ships. 

00:04:08 

Stay with it. 

00:04:12 

What’s that’s just little soul? 

00:04:14 

It runs through my. 

00:04:15 

Head, don’t worry about it. 

00:04:17 

Well, he crawled up in here already. 

00:04:19 

Knock it off, focus look. 

00:04:22 

Haven’t heard that before he. 

00:04:23 

Just wasting your time. 

00:04:25 

Come on. 

00:04:26 

So amazing. 

00:04:29 

Do or you doing with justifying the laziness with another ******** approach? 

00:04:35 

You only get out what you put in, and it’s pretty clear you’re not putting in any effort here. 

00:04:42 

Second one doing this, Meditations never worked for me. 

00:04:47 

Well, **** you too you’re on your own. 

00:04:51 

And you might need to return the mind. 

00:04:53 

Meld hatch, it doesn’t. 

00:04:55 

Work very well broken. 

00:04:56 

Back to the drawing board. 

00:04:59 

Although it is very. 

00:05:01 

Good at uncovering some pretty big emotions. 

00:05:04 

Absolutely, and this is re friend of mine. 

00:05:09 

Where we deep dive into discussions about mental health. 

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Joined by some of. 

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Australia’s leading lines to expand our understanding. 

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Of the world and ourselves. 

00:05:16 

Because we don’t exist in a vacuum, and the way we talk about mental health. 

00:05:19 

Should win either. 

00:05:20 

Way your hosts Louise Bull. 

00:05:22 

And Andy Leroy so. 

00:05:23 

You’ve realized that. 

00:05:24 

Toxic positivity just isn’t going to cuddle anymore. 

00:05:27 

Well, we did kind of take the hatchet to it in the last episode. 

00:05:30 

I think it’s been a pretty big hatchet job. 

00:05:32 

Whole series through it, actually. 

00:05:35 

Sounds like when you wrote that sketch at the top here, you took a hatchet to my inner monologue. 

00:05:40 

I think there’s a bit of both. 

00:05:41 

Of them going in there to be. 

00:05:43 

Honest but sure. 

00:05:46 

It was always going to happen. 

00:05:47 

I think the most consistent advice that we’ve received throughout this series is that you’re better off sitting with your feelings and working through them instead of covering them up with toxic positivity. 

00:05:57 

That, though, is still. 

00:05:59 

Easier said than done because we’re at the right supports in place. 

00:06:02 

It’s not long before you. 

00:06:02 

Start ruminating or. 

00:06:04 

We’re still start to feel. 

00:06:06 

Kind of explosives. 

00:06:07 

So it was your mind meld got angry, not me. 

00:06:11 

So let’s talk about big emotions. 

00:06:12 

This episode, then ending and exactly. 

00:06:14 

How we do deal with them? 

00:06:16 

Yeah, so this episode we’re speaking to director for Positive Minds Australia Marvina Wanna Parker? She is a behavioral consultant who works in schools and allied health care settings and specializes in building cultures of well-being, resilience, social, emotional intelligence and confidence. 

00:06:32 

So I think you know she’s the kind of person that you want to have around. 

00:06:34 

If you’re in the middle of a tank. 

00:06:36 

When you had a tantrum as a 10 year old 15 year old 20 year old, whenever it was Louise you. 

00:06:41 

Were meant to. 

00:06:42 

I mean, that’s a normal web meant to have emotional reactions and as a species we kind of suck it. 

00:06:50 

You know, listening to our gut by the time we reach a certain age, we’ve been so controlled. 

00:06:56 

And so manicured around our feelings and just all be a good girl, baby boy, you know we’re around people now put on a brave face, be friendly remember this so please and thank you smile and everything is is designed. 

00:07:12 

You know this comes from the parent ego. 

00:07:15 

As much as we all want a quick fix to life problems, I think we know all too well by now that pretending something isn’t there doesn’t actually make. 

00:07:22 

It go away. 

00:07:23 

And cognitive neuropsychologist at the brain and wine center at the University of Sydney. 

00:07:27 

Mirren Irish gave us some insights into the brain function around accessing painful memories. 

00:07:33 

My brain kind of redacts information. 

00:07:36 

If a memory associated around it has been really painful or traumatic. 

00:07:40 

Like I mean, grief in particular is. 

00:07:43 

A great one. 

00:07:43 

And my example is always at things like, you know, dead cats or broken relationships, it’s. 

00:07:48 

But it’s it’s like sometimes I forget that those experiences existed because everything connected with that grief kind of goes back in to activate it. 

00:07:59 

So is that? 

00:08:00 

I mean I I don’t think I have dementia, but that sounds similar to what people experience going through that, So what? 

00:08:08 

What’s kind of going on with us there? 

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I assume other people have this. 

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Experience and it’s. 

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More what you normally. 

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No, I think this scenario of grief and its relationship to memory is very complex, and I think we don’t have enough. 

00:08:24 

You know there’s not enough and study actually being. 

00:08:26 

Directed towards that, but. 

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We do know. 

00:08:29 

Is that obviously negative events are very much retrieved in more detailed. 

00:08:35 

But I think the caveat is that. 

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There can come a point where you’ve retrieved something so many times that you actually start to. 

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The the detail and the specificity of the memory and it becomes much more abstracted, almost like a fact or very over general sort of a schematic of the event. 

00:08:55 

And also we factor in them that very heavy burden of emotion that comes with inner bereavement and. 

00:09:03 

There is almost a protective sort of function. 

00:09:05 

I think that comes into play that we don’t fully understand yet where it’s almost as though you reach a certain tipping point of emotion, and the brain will be able to recall the gist of leaving but will not be able to focus as squarely on the emotions and it may just be a way of protecting. 

00:09:23 

Against painful reliving of an event over. 

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And over again. 

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Have you ever had to spray at someone? 

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Out of the blue, yeah. 

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Maybe well, that’s a big emotion. 

00:09:33 

Yeah, I’m grief. 

00:09:35 

Another bigger motion. 

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Worry, anxiety, fear, frustration, excitement. 

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They’re all big invasions. 

00:09:40 

Big emotions. 

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Yeah, and. 

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We develop our strategies around these emotions from an early age. 

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Sometimes we do end up in a place as adults where we’ve literally outgrown our strategies though, and we want to do something different. 

00:09:52 

Yeah, and Marvy helped us to understand what this is all about, as well as some other ways we can approach it. 

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This is what I hear every day and you know, I work with parents you know don’t just work with the child. 

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I work with parents. 

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I work. 

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With their team at school. 

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Cool and they’ll tell me I risked onion is Irish my parents. 

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Maybe I wish my teachers near this because we have to Unlearn as a generation. 

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Really, that withholding of emotion is so common right like I think back and it was you know, even around. 

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Children were and there’s so many string. 

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To every generation, so don’t get me wrong. 

00:10:32 

You know there are so many wonderful things that every generation did really, really well. 

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It was that we didn’t know about emotional intelligence and that this is what we need to get along in life. 

00:10:46 

I mean life, you know when we look at the number one. 

00:10:49 

Indicator for happiness and resilience. 

00:10:51 

It’s relationships it’s. 

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Connection with other. 

00:10:54 

People and the quality of that and how? 

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Do we have good? 

00:10:57 

Relationships it’s it’s by using the. 

00:11:00 

It feels so. 

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It’s by tuning into our own feelings and knowing what to do with them and knowing how to tune into other peoples feelings and know what to do with those. 

00:11:11 

So I hear it every day what you’re saying, Louise, which is. 

00:11:15 

I wish I knew and I wish I had that information and now. 

00:11:20 

Sometimes when people come to me and their children are teenagers, I see people who come to me wanting to rebuild relationships. 

00:11:26 

With their adult. 

00:11:26 

Children and we had this conversation about. 

00:11:30 

How there’s so much to unlearn from how they grew up and what they knew, and it is a daily conscious practice to get really comfortable with using these new approaches to responding to a really frazzled kid. 

00:11:47 

I mean for me at work and as a mother of three young children myself. 

00:11:51 

You know you spend your day with underdeveloped brains, which means centrally 25 Louise. You just operate off. 

00:11:58 

A lot of impulsive. 

00:12:00 

Martian right so. 

00:12:02 

We know that when we’re around a young person or any person who’s dysregulated, we absorb that. 

00:12:11 

So you know the contagion of emotion is a fairly well known things, so we don’t get dysregulated. 

00:12:17 

We then get really worked up and upset, and we have to learn the skill. 

00:12:22 

That as adults, which is so much harder. 

00:12:24 

To be able to. 

00:12:25 

Stay calm while someone else in front of us isn’t so calm, so. 

00:12:29 

Yeah, I wish I knew that from childhood it would have made everything easier of course, but thank goodness we can teach it to this generation. 

00:12:37 

That’s now very much, you know, part of. 

00:12:40 

The Australian curriculum. 

00:12:41 

And with the people with whom I work overseas. 

00:12:43 

You know people are starting to see this is so important. 

00:12:47 

If we don’t teach this at school and focus. 

00:12:49 

Just on numeracy and literacy. 

00:12:52 

You know how. 

00:12:52 

Young people going. 

00:12:54 

Turning to people that can get along well and and understand all of these things we need for the workplace and our life. 

00:13:01 

Effects and marriages and partnerships. 

00:13:03 

You do a lot of work with some with families and kids and talk about big emotions and and how to actually, I suppose responds thoughtfully when when they start to look, period. 

00:13:14 

Is that something that’s difficult? 

00:13:16 

I see. 

00:13:16 

It is incredibly difficult to teach, and the great thing Andy is. 

00:13:22 

We have so. 

00:13:23 

Much more information now that how to teach that, and we’re teaching it to children while their brains are still very underdeveloped. 

00:13:32 

You know when we look at a a child when we look at a baby, the baby is born and the brain. 

00:13:36 

Is completely undeveloped, it’s just waiting for information and experiences and it was from all of that. 

00:13:44 

So now that we’re able to understand the importance of social emotional literacy and and we know now that that is something that is teachable and learnable. 

00:13:56 

You know our few tends to stay at a pretty steady point throughout our lifetime, but when we look at EQ. 

00:14:04 

It can be developed and it just takes a lot of practice and the interesting you know part of what I’m teaching it is. 

00:14:14 

Are always remind whether I’m working with adults and teaching them how to be comma or whether I’m working with children. 

00:14:22 

I remind them the best time to practice being farm is when you’re calm. 

00:14:30 

What I mean by that is the reality. 

00:14:34 

Is is, you know? 

00:14:35 

We teach children to take deep breaths. 

00:14:37 

We teach adults. 

00:14:38 

We teach ourselves, you know, big com. 

00:14:40 

Think through these, you know, bringing another thought but we’re doing it in a state where we’re really dysregulated. 

00:14:46 

So when you’re upset, you’re gonna think well, I want to use that strategy. 

00:14:50 

Why would I want to use that strategy so instantly? 

00:14:53 

Your state of mind will often reject what you know is good for managing your YOUR levels of emotions. 

00:15:01 

So in order to really teach this well, and for the loaner. 

00:15:06 

To be able to take it on quick. 

00:15:08 

There is practicing it every day, so engaging in palm states every day throughout the day. 

00:15:15 

Whenever you remember, whenever someone reminds you and and and it’s those micro moments that really start to change our brains and exercise that part of the brain and wire that. 

00:15:28 

Part of the brain to be comma. 

00:15:30 

So yes, it’s hard to teach Andy and it takes, I think. 

00:15:35 

A real genuine interest and care in peoples emotional well-being to stick with it because you don’t see kind in some children and some adults who have really difficult lives or for many of the young people with whom I’ve worked. 

00:15:54 

You know, then your diversity. 

00:15:55 

Their learning differences mean that that part of the brain needs a lot more exercise in order for it to really start to see some change. 

00:16:05 

You mentioned that the the brain is still growing. 

00:16:08 

Still, I I I think I think I don’t know if the word was plastic that you used, but I know we’ve heard that from you or scientist. 

00:16:14 

Four up until 25. So what goes on in the brain between 0 and 25? And are we just think we growing still after 25? Is it just. 

00:16:26 

A lot harder. 

00:16:27 

Ah yeah, it’s it’s, uh, we absolutely can. 

00:16:30 

But those first look we all we know those first three to four years. 

00:16:35 

And you know, with neuroplasticity, you know we can change our brains, and we can change right until our last breath, Louise, those. 

00:16:46 

Always a capacity to change, but as you mentioned. 

00:16:50 

And it is harder if you’ve gone through a lot of stuff in that first 25 years, right? So if we look at all the stages and and again, we could just talk about the brain for a long time, but we can sort, you know, we look at a baby. 

00:17:11 

And this beautiful body comes in with this blank slide. 

00:17:17 

And they are looking to people first and foremost, and our first experience is really matter right? 

00:17:26 

And and what we’re exposed to, you know, we develop associations and that’s why we get funny feelings. 

00:17:34 

And sometimes they’re good, funny feelings about. 

00:17:37 

People and our guts telling us give that 1A wide berth, but sometimes they’re just based on those early experiences where we might have encountered. 

00:17:48 

Someone that wasn’t kind enough. 

00:17:51 

Someone who perhaps might have even been cruel, or I had a short fuse, and we then can associate, you know, right from babyhood. 

00:18:04 

Oh, people that look that way feel really uncomfortable. 

00:18:09 

To make that people with post traumatic stress or people who’ve never been exposed to it, you know disabilities or different colored people loving you. 

00:18:19 

Know there’s always those stories are being really proud people come to. 

00:18:22 

That’s my and because the you know, in a in a country, in a developing country and the children have never seen a person other than uh, abroad versus zombies, a brown person talking about brown. 

00:18:33 

People say you know, if that’s all you see, there might be terrified until they say Oh no, this person is is helping me and they hear that careful, more tiring. 

00:18:44 

They develop a new experience and realize our case is why we are always encouraging parents make failures. 

00:18:51 

You know, make a broad range of people and and mix with children with disabilities. 

00:18:56 

And what’s the Special Olympics I’m getting done, but I know, I’m digressing. 

00:18:59 

I will go back to the brain, but. 

00:19:01 

If this is. 

00:19:01 

How influence we are right? 

00:19:03 

If we just sit my little bubbles then everything will. 

00:19:07 

Feel like a. 

00:19:08 

Threat so, but when we look at. 

00:19:11 

Brain development in those early years that first eight years we are just running off a motion. 

00:19:17 

And that is the part of the brain. 

00:19:20 

It’s all about how everything feels and we process primarily through that emotion. 

00:19:26 

So if you’re sitting in a classroom or sitting in a family where everything feels, you know mostly really good, right and warm and fuzzy, then you will learn you access that prefrontal cortex. 

00:19:37 

Which is the thinking part of the brain and you’ll have a really good chance of thinking rationally. Now, if you’re under 8 and then we’ll get to 25. But if you’re under 8 and you’re often exposed to a really difficult emotional environment. 

00:19:54 

Then you’re not even. 

00:19:55 

Going to go to your prefrontal cortex and think rationally about how to be calm and what might be taught me last week about managing my emotions. 

00:20:03 

You’re not gonna go there because you’re just gonna be in this emotional state of fight, flight freeze and and that’s how the brain is when it’s young, which is why nourishing. 

00:20:14 

And loving and kindness and responding to our children’s emotions as much as we can. And if we’re working with children as much as we can with empathy and compassion in our own comma, our own regulated state. 

00:20:29 

Children in those first few years made a sticker radiate and they look to us as the com mature person to be kind enough to bring them back to calm. 

00:20:42 

And that’s what the brain is looking for in those first eight years in particular at particularly you. 

00:20:48 

Know really goes through the. 

00:20:49 

Or use that. 

00:20:50 

Then make those first eight years you know you really can make a fantastic impression on a young person frame by using your own emotional intelligence on them. 

00:21:00 

By being an empathetic person, being a calm person as much as possible, and then apologizing when you’re not and making it better and repair. 

00:21:08 

Burner, because we’re all human, but then it continues always. You know, up until you’re 25 and that’s. 

00:21:14 

More at that point. 

00:21:15 

You know the prefrontal cortex steps in, but it’s. 

00:21:17 

Still, really impulsive. 

00:21:19 

And quite emotional, so you know, there’s a reason my insurance costs more for a motor vehicle, while the grounding wire, right? 

00:21:27 

You know, you try to rent a car, they said. 

00:21:30 

You know who’s driving this? So for me at 47 they recounted it’s like, oh she’s got a 47 year old brave. 

00:21:36 

She’s been around for a very long time and the brain has had lots of fun just doing this. 

00:21:42 

It’s fine, we’re happy to, you know, take the car. 

00:21:44 

Take whatever one you want. 

00:21:46 

It’s not a problem, you know so. 

00:21:48 

That’s the challenge. 

00:21:49 

More so is just. 

00:21:51 

Everything is still wiring up and you still mess up a lot in his first robotics and why we need our parents to forgive us and hear us out and say those beautiful words. 

00:22:03 

If you’re not the first person to make this mistake, and I’m here with you to. 

00:22:08 

So there will be some will figure it out and that is how we grow emotional intelligence. 

00:22:12 

Roses words like that. 

00:22:14 

That’s what teenagers need to hear. 

00:22:16 

That’s what adults need to hear they need to know we messed up when we were kids 2. 

00:22:21 

And and that grows their emotional intelligence and develops the brain to its optimal mental health and well-being. But we can keep working on. 

00:22:30 

Other ways absolutely. 

00:22:31 

We definitely over 25 now but good thing. Marva tells us that there’s still time for us. Our brain can still be learned or Outbrain can still learn. Apparently I can’t learn how to do sentences. 

00:22:43 

Do you get extra credits for being 50 like you said, like twice the power now? 

00:22:48 

You double double the capacity. 

00:22:50 

Yeah yeah, I’m like firing on 2 cylinders now. 

00:22:54 

Isn’t it a 4 cylinder engine? 

00:22:54 

I don’t know. 

00:22:57 

Look, I think it might be an 8 cylinder. 

00:22:58 

To be honest so. 

00:23:00 

I’ve got a little ways to. 

00:23:01 

Go I think, but episode 31. 

00:23:04 

Right, and you know, we’ve recapped throughout the series of we’ve been up to in our journey. 

00:23:09 

And of course, this is our story as well as all the stories of the people that we’ve been talking to. 

00:23:13 

So you know where it started out on my personal journey with this podcast was not long after I lost. 

00:23:18 

My dad, I was in a pretty rural point. 

00:23:20 

Of grief had some really big emotions and. 

00:23:23 

Gracious grief is a big, big emotion, huge emotion. 

00:23:26 

Yeah it is. 

00:23:27 

It’s a massive emotion and your favorite word of mind. 

00:23:31 

Flashpoint happens. 

00:23:32 

If you say no. 

00:23:33 

After I said that to you at like around Episode 5 that you are heavily reliant on Flashpoint, you did ease up on Flashpoint. 

00:23:40 

I did, I’m going to use it now though. 

00:23:41 

Now you can have one. 

00:23:43 

Thank you, I’ll have one flash point, but it’s just recollecting the flashpoint and this was around the time of the funeral and I had a really quite a big out of character outburst with one of my brothers and it caused some fishing with us for quite a while. 

00:23:57 

Yeah, obviously he was going through the same grief as me, having lost his parents. 

00:24:00 

Yeah yeah do it and sometimes it feels like that friction never really kind of went away. 

00:24:06 

Yeah, I don’t know where that comes from. 

00:24:08 

Michael O like in my formative years, he was kind of reinforced that emotions aren’t OK. 

00:24:13 

Boys don’t cry. 

00:24:14 

You know, if I was having a tantrum or I was crying, I was called a baby. 

00:24:18 

That kind of stuff. 

00:24:19 

If you kind of learn that. 

00:24:20 

You only get cold or winter if you’re upset. 

00:24:23 

Then kind of start bottling it up, don’t you? 

00:24:25 

And let me tell you on that day. 

00:24:26 

The explosion. 

00:24:28 

The Cork came out of the game. 

00:24:31 

Bottled unpopped 

00:24:32 

Spraying everywhere. 

00:24:34 

Is it like when you shake up a bottle of champagne and then you go to take the cork off? 

00:24:38 

It explodes and hits the ceiling and leaves big dent in it? 

00:24:40 

I think it’s when you put a Mentos into a bottle of Coca-Cola and shake it and. 

00:24:44 

Then take the cap off. 

00:24:46 

It was kinda like that and. 

00:24:48 

I felt awful lonely. 

00:24:49 

You know? 

00:24:50 

I didn’t want to speak to my. 

00:24:51 

Brother like that but it. 

00:24:52 

Was a lot of pent. 

00:24:53 

Up stuff that just for some reason it just came out all then and there and. 

00:24:59 

Then we had. 

00:25:00 

It it was there and it couldn’t go back in so TA. 

00:25:00 

Breaks them. 

00:25:04 

It reached a flashpoint. 

00:25:05 

Yeah, did it. 

00:25:06 

It reached a. 

00:25:07 

Huge flash point, you know I I guess through the conversations that we’ve had with Murphy. 

00:25:12 

These things happen sometimes, and the embarrassment we feel as adults in having that kind of outburst, I don’t know. 

00:25:18 

It kind of feels to me like it’s a result of not really teaching ourselves along the way, not learning along the way how to actually process those emotions, and to actually have the conversations we need to have before it gets to that flashpoint. 

00:25:32 

Learn more. 

00:25:32 

You’ve had enough flashpoints, that’s it. 

00:25:34 

He’s used your. 

00:25:35 

I type. 

00:25:35 

Quarter of flash points. 

00:25:36 

Flash flood quota achieved. 

00:25:39 

I I did say last episode that one of the the turning points for me in this journey of the last 18 months has been actually getting in touch with my negative emotions and allowing myself to feel them instead of suppressing them or dissociating from them, and condemning anything that I felt that. 

00:25:56 

Wasn’t positive as bad, so it wasn’t enough to feel bad in the feeling bad. 

00:26:02 

I would then also had to feel bad about feeling bad. 

00:26:05 

Another realization that kind of has. 

00:26:06 

Come out of that is especially in working. 

00:26:08 

With a therapist, where has that come from? 

00:26:12 

Because I don’t think that we are born that way, I think we pick up a lot of these things as we grow up through life through experiences and look, I love to make that joke in therapy. 

00:26:23 

When my psychologist says, and where do you think that idea came from? 

00:26:27 

We’re like, oh. 

00:26:28 

It comes and blame the parents again. 

00:26:30 

Because that’s what you do. 

00:26:32 

I suppose, but you know a lot of that. 

00:26:34 

Negative voice that I’ve. 

00:26:35 

Heard for a long time. 

00:26:37 

It probably was the influence of people in my life like my father and he never expressed much in terms of emotion. 

00:26:44 

He was the suck it up. 

00:26:45 

Princess guy. 

00:26:46 

Worse than that though, is sometimes he was intentionally mean. 

00:26:50 

It’s hard to say these things without sounding like a horrible daughter. 

00:26:53 

To be honest. 

00:26:54 

You know he died a few years ago, so it’s not like I can bring these things up with him. 

00:27:00 

To him, it’s not like he ever gets the chance to refute anything that I’ve said on a podcast about him. 

00:27:07 

I I can only speak from my own experiences and the way. 

00:27:10 

That I felt. 

00:27:11 

Because as I said before, I feel like he wasn’t given a great role model for him to get in touch with his emotions and I do feel like he probably did the best that he could. 

00:27:21 

And it was an improvement on what he had, but in here it wasn’t enough for a. 

00:27:25 

Sensitive soul like me. 

00:27:26 

And I think you know, like in a similar way to me, you’re actually breaking a really long family cycle of behavior and attitudes. 

00:27:33 

Yeah, I I would agree with. 

00:27:35 

That too, you know, and because he was so closed off emotionally he he he he was mean. 

00:27:42 

Sometimes I felt like he actually derived pleasure out of getting a negative reaction from me that would give him joy. 

00:27:51 

It’s the Skyhooks story basically which is. 

00:27:54 

I remember when I was really quite young at maybe five or six or something like that. 

00:27:59 

He was down in his shed. 

00:28:00 

He had some mates over and I think he was stitching me up is like. 

00:28:04 

That old trades joke about or, you know, go get checkered paint from the shop and go get sky hooks or whatever else. 

00:28:11 

My mom used to tell a story about her dad turning head of the shed for some post holes. 

00:28:15 

Yeah, yeah, and so you know he’s having a laugh and he’s like oh won’t you go get the Skyhawks or something? 

00:28:21 

Help us out with the Skyhooks. 

00:28:23 

I’m like yeah well I can go do that. 

00:28:25 

I I I can show you where it is and and he’s having a laugh and you know I don’t know maybe to. 

00:28:30 

An apprentice trading it’s funny, but. 

00:28:32 

To a sensitive 6 year old girl, it’s not yeah, and so I run up to the kitchen. 

00:28:37 

I get the I think it. 

00:28:38 

It might have been like the TV Guide Magazine where it had the, you know the CD club. 

00:28:44 

And you could order. 

00:28:45 

That or it might have been cassette club. 

00:28:46 

Or record club or something like that. 

00:28:47 

I always. 

00:28:48 

Have my fantasy picks for those and have my big list of CDs. 

00:28:51 

Wanted to get done with it. 

00:28:52 

I just to tick off like how many on this list could I have, and then on the toy catalog page, did you play this game where you like sleep aid and you’re like OK, Now if I could. 

00:28:59 

Only have one thing on. 

00:29:00 

This page what would it be? 

00:29:01 

No, I didn’t do. 

00:29:01 

Oh, I did that with every page of the toy catalog. 

00:29:03 

I didn’t do that. 

00:29:07 

Anyhow, so I get the magazine. 

00:29:09 

Or run back down and like here. 

00:29:11 

Here’s the sky hooks and. 

00:29:12 

He’s like, remember saying, I’m an. 

00:29:14 

Idiot, but I’m like. 

00:29:15 

No, no no look, it’s Skyhawks and it was it was Skyhooks the band I’m like. 

00:29:19 

Here’s where you can get the Skyhawks. 

00:29:21 

Hahahaha and they’ve got women in uniform. 

00:29:25 

It’s a horror movie. 

00:29:29 

Anyway, those kind of things taunting and then obviously I got in trouble for that because that’s not what he moved. 

00:29:35 

So in that kind of situation he was taking pleasure out of taunting me and then wanting to prove me wrong and make me feel like an idiot was going to. 

00:29:44 

Bring in joy. 

00:29:45 

And that’s a it’s a very mild example of that, because a lot of those things kind of happened all the time. 

00:29:49 

So sometimes I felt like he would just disagree with me for the sake of disagreeing, because it would be better. 

00:29:55 

To get that. 

00:29:56 

Reaction, something that I can reflect on and say, well clearly learn that. 

00:30:01 

Is to hide my emotions because if I hide my emotions and I don’t engage in those conversations, then they can’t be used against me. 

00:30:08 

You know, if I don’t show joy, it can’t be taken away if I don’t show sadness, it can’t be used. 

00:30:15 

To taunt me with. 

00:30:16 

And as I got older, I completely realized I think I was 17 when I left the house. 

00:30:21 

I moved away to Uni and it wasn’t until after that that I was able to achieve some kind of, I suppose, peace in being able to communicate with him, because when I was there with him everyday, if I engaged was. 

00:30:33 

A battleground, and when I came back to visit for shorter amounts of time, I was kind of able to steel myself against that and and bite my tongue and hold it in for as long as I could, because you can’t argue with a narcissist, you can’t reason with them, because even if you have all the data and all of the facts to back you up. 

00:30:53 

You’re gonna be wrong. 

00:30:54 

You’re still going to be wrong. 

00:30:55 

Yeah, exactly. 

00:30:55 

You’re always gonna be wrong, so I was able to stop trying and so the rest of our relationship I will say for the rest of his life I stopped trying to argue. 

00:31:06 

I just let him say whatever he had to say. 

00:31:08 

Because it was easier for me. 

00:31:08 

Here is then yeah, we get into those positions where we just kind. 

00:31:13 

Of start to. 

00:31:14 

Not bother, we just kind of know where it’s going to. 

00:31:16 

Hit so we just take. 

00:31:17 

The shortcut and don’t actually go there. 

00:31:19 

Where that leads to. 

00:31:20 

Though is the hindsight of me saying this is, you know, I realized I stopped actually sharing any kinds of emotions or even stories with my parents. 

00:31:30 

Like if I told them that I was struggling with anything, I feel like it would be used again as a weapon or brought back up. 

00:31:36 

It’s just. 

00:31:36 

Miss you. 

00:31:38 

To that. 

00:31:39 

I feel like I probably shut them out of a lot of my life. 

00:31:43 

You know, I started telling them an edited version of my life and of how I felt. 

00:31:47 

Yeah, it’s like we from early age start installing all these little things and they build up and they build up and as much as we love a quick fix for it. 

00:31:57 

As Nice as that would be to make it all go away, probably a better step we could take is in the direction of strengthening our emotional intelligence. 

00:32:04 

It’s also known as EQ and. 

00:32:06 

Marvy helped us to explore. 

00:32:08 

It seems that. 

00:32:09 

The world is getting, you know it’s faster and faster. 

00:32:12 

Every day. 

00:32:12 

I was reading some stats recently which said that composer about 30 years ago was speaking at dumb. 

00:32:17 

I think about. 

00:32:18 

20 or 30 words faster per minute for, you know their language speakers and the more people I talked to, more people say their attention span is getting shorter and shorter so. 

00:32:28 

One of the challenges that you’re facing with someone who might be just looking for a quick fix for something like this. 

00:32:33 

Others or that? 

00:32:34 

Is the challenge, isn’t it? 

00:32:35 

And I think as a space is we can take him so much information. 

00:32:40 

But we are under so much pressure because of this information overload that you’ve just mentioned. 

00:32:46 

So I think the challenge always for me and and that hasn’t changed you. 

00:32:51 

Know even back 20 years ago when I began this work, we all want a quick fix. 

00:32:58 

I think Andy. 

00:33:00 

If you’re struggling, if you’re having a difficult time, people come to people like me to fix it and the. 

00:33:06 

Sooner I can fix it. 

00:33:08 

The data and what we’re talking about. 

00:33:11 

Emotional intelligence and social confidence and resilience and well-being. And these are all attached to, you know, their lifelong process. 

00:33:20 

They’re on a continuum there, not a fixed thing, and resilience can change from one day to the next hour. 

00:33:26 

Social confidence can change from one day to the next, depending on what’s happening. 

00:33:32 

Or where we are in our lives and and so it it is an ongoing challenge. 

00:33:37 

And I and I don’t. 

00:33:38 

Know that people are wanting. 

00:33:42 

It’s really interesting. 

00:33:43 

You know it’s such a good point, because definitely the quick fix has been a challenge. 

00:33:50 

I think for people in in my area of work, because naturally we feel desperate when our children trouble when we’re struggling. 

00:33:58 

We want it. 

00:33:59 

You get that yucky feeling out of me. 

00:34:02 

And out of. 

00:34:02 

Lucky we. 

00:34:03 

All want to feel good again. 

00:34:05 

Uh, but yes, I think perhaps the patients. 

00:34:09 

Uh, for the ability to really stick with it. 

00:34:14 

If you look at multitasking, for example, you know it’s we just go from one thing to another and and I’ll do it myself and I try really, really hard to give myself, you know, conscious message to give everything. 

00:34:30 

Focused attention, but moments later we are. 

00:34:34 

We’re just moving at a pace that’s so quick and so we can’t almost do anything properly. 

00:34:40 

If we’re doing too much so. 

00:34:42 

Yeah, this quick fix is is a challenge and that shorter, shorter attention span Arsene schools every day and they even with children being used to communicating via text. 

00:34:54 

You know you don’t have to sit there and wait for. 

00:34:56 

Someone to think anymore you can. 

00:34:58 

Just walk away, go and do. 

00:34:59 

Something else and come. 

00:34:59 

Back and hope they reply. 

00:35:01 

You know you know what I mean. 

00:35:02 

So it’s interesting. 

00:35:04 

Yeah, it’s really interesting. 

00:35:05 

I imagine to some extent you really need to work on. 

00:35:08 

Some of the. 

00:35:10 

That’s an additional things before you start to get to the sweet spot on all the all the good parts, and some people might describe it I I’m thinking specifically about maybe people aren’t on the same page as to what they want out of a relationship or or their interactions. 

00:35:26 

Who thinks an example where I’ve been? 

00:35:29 

Dealing with a family member and we’re very much on different pages, but for me at the moment it’s more about me trying to look at myself and see what I want out of this and and what’s going to work for me. 

00:35:42 

So if I’m. 

00:35:43 

Doing that but that. 

00:35:44 

Other party isn’t then I can imagine this sort of thing still has its challenges, yeah? 

00:35:50 

Yeah, absolutely, and that’s extraordinary that they are able to have that level of self-awareness because most of us will lose any difference in opinion. The usual practice is we go into our own heads and our own. 

00:36:06 

Perspective and as I explained to anyone in conflict during. 

00:36:10 

A difference of. 

00:36:11 

Opinion or, you know, even just a a small one. 

00:36:15 

Everyone thinks they’re right, right? 

00:36:17 

I mean. 

00:36:17 

Yeah, absolutely. 

00:36:19 

I’m sorry my head is like, well, I have this thought and this feels very right for me. 

00:36:24 

So it must be right. 

00:36:25 

So I think that’s where compassion. 

00:36:27 

Training is also very useful, because, you know, we can’t make it, you know. 

00:36:32 

So yes, everything starts with that self-awareness. We have to look within. We have to go well. What is my part? 

00:36:38 

Then they can’t be, there’s always. 

00:36:40 

Is 2 parts to to everything and so absolutely we begin with self-awareness. That’s where any good change happens in them. 

00:36:48 

From self-awareness, the next important thing is compassion and understanding and empathy for the other person, which is another crucial emotional intelligence skill, isn’t it? Is that ability? 

00:37:00 

God, will this really mean something to this other person? 

00:37:05 

Their perspective is their perspective on these meaningful to them, so that always helps me and it certainly helps. 

00:37:13 

A lot of people. 

00:37:14 

That I’m working with to cope with the emotions that will also come when you look at yourself. You see where you need to adjust and change, but then the other person might stay in this fixed state because we’re all at a different point, aren’t we? With our own self-awareness and our willingness to resolve things you know for. 

00:37:34 

Some people there’s. 

00:37:35 

Meaning in that conflict or in that challenge, so they need to hold on to it. 

00:37:40 

And it may not at a point they’re ready to let go of that challenge. 

00:37:45 

So I think compassion has, probably, you know, for 20 years for me with children, adults, executives, whoever on working with that focus on compassion and empathy. 

00:38:00 

On the ability to just try and see it from that other person perspective and then accept their perspective. 

00:38:06 

Even if you don’t agree and and it’s not about agreeing to disagree. 

00:38:11 

So I think it’s always good to work, continue to work and strive to reach a mutual understand. 

00:38:16 

B, But sometimes that can be a really helpful way to soften the emotion within us to, uh, because sometimes we don’t get the outcome that we’re looking for. 

00:38:26 

Either, you know, no matter how. 

00:38:29 

Hard we try. 

00:38:31 

Yeah, look. 

00:38:31 

Grief is a process. 

00:38:33 

Is it ever? 

00:38:34 

Everyone does it differently, and if you’re part of the grieving family or a wider circle, it’s going to be possible that you’ll come into conflict with someone else who’s processing their grief differently. 

00:38:42 

And different situations, different people affect differently. 

00:38:46 

I’ve said before that the grief I felt over my father dying from cancer was no in here. 

00:38:51 

The grief I felt over my dead cats and that’s. 

00:38:55 

Grief is different, isn’t it? 

00:38:56 

You know it’s. 

00:38:58 

Yeah it is. It strikes. 

00:39:00 

Everybody differently. 

00:39:01 

You were actually, yeah, you got the honor for having been here at the. 

00:39:04 

Loss of both of my parents. 

00:39:06 

Because my mom passed away after I moved to Darwin when we first met. 

00:39:10 

The honor I love how you say that the corner. 

00:39:11 

The order vivo little Side Story caught up with an old school friend recently said to her arm garment spoken to such and such on her birthday recently because awkward, like Dad actually died on her birthday and she said, Oh my God, that’s so weird because your mom died on my birthday. 

00:39:28 

I was like. 

00:39:29 

What and it’s? 

00:39:31 

Truly like I’ve forgotten, but yeah, so. 

00:39:34 

I thought 

00:39:34 

I’ve got two friends who fly the date. 

00:39:36 

Of death of my parents. 

00:39:38 

I thought your side note was going to be something like that. 

00:39:40 

Remember when I said to you couple of months ago I said oh there’s that guy I know who runs that thing. 

00:39:45 

I’m just saying thing to not give anything away. 

00:39:48 

I don’t know who runs that thing. 

00:39:49 

Hey, maybe he’d be a great person to reach out to and they jumped on his. 

00:39:52 

Facebook and he died five years before. 

00:39:54 

Ah, maybe I should have reached out before then. 

00:39:57 

Might have been a bit more effective. 

00:40:01 

You know we can, we can. 

00:40:03 

Blast, now we can joke about. 

00:40:05 

We can talk about death and it sounds really weird. 

00:40:07 

Morbid to be thinking that, but. 

00:40:09 

I do think it sounds weird and it might not only sound weird and morbid to people who haven’t been in that. 

00:40:13 

Situation ’cause yeah. 

00:40:14 

But also. 

00:40:15 

I, I think a lot of times with. 

00:40:17 

Grief though, and particularly death, it’s kind of. 

00:40:20 

Sometimes funny and inappropriately funny. 

00:40:23 

I I didn’t have that experience myself, like when I was when I was grieving, I felt really don’t feel good. 

00:40:30 

Let’s just put it that way. 

00:40:32 

I completely went into myself and. 

00:40:34 

And I. 

00:40:35 

Found it really. 

00:40:35 

Hard both times to make sense of the. 

00:40:37 

World at all? 

00:40:38 

This time around, well last dad. 

00:40:40 

I had the support of some really. 

00:40:44 

Prince to help me get through it. 

00:40:46 

And, you know, sometimes the family you make outside of your family of origin are the ones that really understand you. 

00:40:53 

You know, like I know that siblings and cousins and and whoever they royal by blood and this. 

00:41:00 

Seems to be this. 

00:41:00 

Common belief that blood’s thicker than water, and they’re the ones who really understand you will be there for you, but. 

00:41:05 

You know you’ve really got to kind of understand that sometimes we don’t have the capacity to be there for each other, even if it’s blood family and I call in my three sisters. 

00:41:15 

They were there for me the whole time and their their help and support was invaluable. 

00:41:20 

And even when I came back to Adelaide from Sydney, ’cause that whole period was just ******* weird. 

00:41:27 

You know, like it was when Kovid had just struck. 

00:41:30 

‘s so my. 

00:41:31 

Partner couldn’t come to the. 

00:41:32 

Oral was Interstate, so I was up there by myself, but with my family of origin, obviously, but we’re drawing into myself and not being able to make sense of the world. 

00:41:43 

Suddenly I felt very isolated because they’ve started their own families and now that my dad was gone, it kind of felt like. 

00:41:52 

That I’d been kind of flipped off that roundabout to some extent. 

00:41:57 

Probably a silly thought, but I think you know those dynamics do change and we have changed and things are different and it was a really good friend of mine who has also since past when Mom died. 

00:42:08 

Actually reached out to me, gave me a call and she. 

00:42:12 

Had such a lovely way about her and she said, you know how you do it and I told him what was going on and she understood obviously because she knew what had happened, but she said to me at the time she gave me an analogy. 

00:42:20 

This is it. 

00:42:23 

You know on the analogy, Queens. 

00:42:24 

I love God, Allah. 

00:42:25 

She and she said to me that that grief is like a series of waves when something happens like a death of somebody close or something, some other trauma that causes grief to activate. 

00:42:38 

Its like a dump initial dump of a wave. 

00:42:42 

One of those massive dumpers at the beach and you just. 

00:42:45 

Keep getting swept away by these waves of emotion, but overtime you learn how to negotiate them. 

00:42:51 

Overtime they become less intense as well. 

00:42:53 

They never stop, and there’s no cut off points when you start to manage life better. 

00:42:58 

Again, like there’s no OK, I’m at month three now. 

00:43:01 

I am in this phase. 

00:43:02 

It’s not like that at all, but overtime those waves do become lesser and lesser and it it becomes an ongoing adjustment process of negotiating life. 

00:43:11 

Without that person from that point on to this day, whenever Mother Day comes around, I can either be quite OK, or I can be a ******* mess. 

00:43:21 

Yeah, ’cause I still really miss. 

00:43:22 

My mum yeah. 

00:43:23 

And it really caught me by surprise that first year after losing her because. 

00:43:29 

I walked up the street up Smith St in Darwin and without even realizing what time of year it was, I started to see all these banners on light posts saying Mother’s Day, you know, get this for mum and all the advertising that goes on and it’s simply right back through that that dark tall. So we talk. 

00:43:48 

A lot about triggers and traumas and that sort of thing. 

00:43:51 

Over this series and grief is a really good example of that. 

00:43:56 

In a micro focused way. 

00:43:57 

Because when you are in that state of grief and you’re starting to to manage things, then there’s something else that will come from from the side to do it, and you often hear people say, oh, you know the first, he’s the worst, you know. 

00:44:11 

You find once you get through, you’ve talked to see positivity, you’ll be fine once you get past that first year. 

00:44:16 

Well, yes but no. Yeah, because you know it was 2009 when my mom died and. 

00:44:16 

No, sometimes maybe. 

00:44:23 

And sometimes it doesn’t take much more than seeing a photograph of a pop up in the seat of my Facebook to bring it here to. 

00:44:30 

My I. 

00:44:31 

I mean, I’m the same with my cats and I know that it’s set. 

00:44:34 

It probably sounds flippant comparing the two, but it’s. 

00:44:37 

Let’s look, though like it’s like. 

00:44:39 

You loved your cats, though, you know. 

00:44:41 

Like I said, I I went to a party on the weekend and when I was talking to her her dog died a couple of months ago. 

00:44:49 

And what, what, uh? 

00:44:50 

Happy birthday party. 

00:44:52 

We were at where we were like. 

00:44:54 

We she’s telling me that and I was telling her about. 

00:44:57 

My old man cat Bailey, who died he died. 

00:45:00 

Now about two months ago and I said, you know, there is no subject in the world that will bring me to my knees to sadness, to grief faster than thinking of all my dead cats. 

00:45:01 

I think yeah. 

00:45:17 

And it doesn’t matter how much time passes. 

00:45:20 

Now it doesn’t. 

00:45:21 

And I can sit here and talk with you about my dead father and. 

00:45:24 

Not have this same reaction. 

00:45:25 

Yeah, leave. 

00:45:26 

And and that’s great. 

00:45:29 

It is and grief acts in different ways with different things. 

00:45:33 

You know grief can be not just about losing a person. 

00:45:36 

There can be about for somebody. 

00:45:38 

Losing a limb. 

00:45:40 

Or it can be for somebody losing your career it. 

00:45:44 

Yeah, grief can strike us in lots of different ways. 

00:45:48 

Ever tell you about there was one relationship I had and it wouldn’t even go for very long. 

00:45:53 

Guy I dated them for about 8 months or so and afterwards I had so much grief over the. 

00:46:00 

Loss of that. 

00:46:00 

Relationship that two years after I was still feeling that grief. 

00:46:05 

And you know it probably was 18 months or so before I even considered going out on a date with somebody else. 

00:46:11 

And I and I met this person. 

00:46:13 

On I was Tinder or something like that and I went out on a. 

00:46:16 

Date with them and then they’re like. 

00:46:18 

I kiss you. 

00:46:20 

I’m guessing this. 

00:46:21 

Person was English as a second language, yeah. 

00:46:27 

Can I kiss you? 

00:46:30 

You know what? 

00:46:31 

Thumbs up ’cause you. 

00:46:32 

Got consent mate. Thumbs up. 

00:46:33 

But I I said yeah, OK and then literally he I start to kiss him and I just ******* burst into tears. 

00:46:42 

Is yeah and so there I am crying in this dude ******* mouth and I’m like I mean I obviously never saw him again. 

00:46:50 

You didn’t message a few more times after that, but I was embarrassed and I I wasn’t really interested, but. 

00:46:56 

Grief, so a relationship that didn’t go very long. 

00:46:59 

’cause that reaction recently broke up with someone I was with for five years. 

00:47:03 

Didn’t ******* cry, right? 

00:47:05 

So grace so. 

00:47:07 

Chronic illness mine said coach teacher owes. 

00:47:10 

We’ve spoken to her a few times throughout this series and she knows. 

00:47:13 

A lot about grief. 

00:47:15 

She was diagnosed with Ms at the age of 22. She has more recently been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and is currently managing that she managed to capture a snapshot though. 

00:47:27 

When she was initially diagnosed with Ms of what helped her move through grief? 

00:47:31 

Is there a tendency to get stuck sometimes in a period of grief or around that grief response when entering a period of darkness with chronic illness or something of that nature? 

00:47:44 

Yeah, totally, I think you actually sometimes can’t see past what’s in front of you and it can be really difficult and. 

00:47:53 

And that’s OK sometimes as well, like I talk about if you are in a place where, like, for example, lying in hospital bed, unable to move. 

00:48:02 

Sometimes you can’t see past that. 

00:48:04 

And that’s OK and. 

00:48:05 

You need to do all types of things to protect your emotional well-being during those. 

00:48:09 

Times by, for example, staying in the moment, not letting your mind wander too far ahead because you go into such dark places and you just don’t know how to get out of there. 

00:48:21 

And I also think that sometimes people almost feel more comfort in that grief. 

00:48:28 

But it is just really hard. 

00:48:30 

To pull yourself out of it, and sometimes you don’t want to, you just want to sit with those emotions, and I think that’s OK sometimes until you’re in the place where you can move forward. 

00:48:42 

And whether that’s when you’re starting to feel a little bit better, whether it’s when you become more actively involved. 

00:48:50 

In getting better. 

00:48:51 

When I was in hospital, I really struggled when I was just lying passively on a hospital bed being pumped with drugs unable to move, but as soon as. 

00:49:02 

I started getting. 

00:49:03 

Involved in my recovery. 

00:49:05 

Then I felt like I was moving, forwarding some of that grief because I couldn’t see a way through it. 

00:49:12 

So we generally think of grief in negative terms. 

00:49:15 

I mean understandably, because it doesn’t feel. 

00:49:18 

Very good and. 

00:49:19 

It’s not my favorite emotion of all the emotions. 

00:49:22 

Now we’ll probably choose something else for possibly good thanks. 

00:49:27 

Yeah, also quite life changing. 

00:49:29 

Normally grief is accompanied by something that you know rips it all up and. 

00:49:34 

Some kind of life changing event of some sort. 

00:49:36 

Yeah, interestingly, though when we spoke to CEO and founder of Liegeois skin Daphne capitis, she said that it’s exactly because of the life changing effects of grief that she respects it. 

00:49:49 

And The thing is, with growth I’ve got to say ’cause I’ve had a few. 

00:49:51 

People say to. 

00:49:51 

Me actually few people I’ve had my kids said. 

00:49:54 

To me like don’t you ever get over this mum? 

00:49:56 

No, these are young kids like it. 

00:49:57 

Did when I was. 

00:49:58 

8 and I said to them, you don’t get over grief you. 

00:50:01 

It’s part of you. 

00:50:03 

Yeah, I am who. 

00:50:03 

I am because of the grief. 

00:50:06 

That’s so true. 

00:50:07 

As an attendee, those moments of trauma, those moments of grief. 

00:50:10 

They really shape who we are. 

00:50:12 

Yeah they do, and you know, for me it’s been quite the journey of actually changing my behaviors and getting a lot more self-awareness about myself. And, you know, I think typically. 

00:50:21 

The sometimes we are in a confrontational kind of setting. 

00:50:25 

People will say you something to the effect of, you know, have a good look at yourself and. 

00:50:30 

Take a good look into S. 

00:50:31 

And what that generally means is you’re ****** and you need to just change what you do so. 

00:50:35 

That you cannot make. 

00:50:36 

Me feel yeah you change everything about you so that I can feel better and I. 

00:50:37 

This way. 

00:50:41 

Have had a good look at myself. 

00:50:42 

And I’ve picked up one of things through self-awareness of, you know things that I say and do that maybe. 

00:50:49 

I could change. 

00:50:50 

But also things that I say and do that also put me in the line of fire and also disempower me so it cuts both ways, buddy, you know you’ve got to be able to have that self-awareness. 

00:51:02 

About you to kind of say. 

00:51:04 

OK, well I don’t like this situation that I’m in, but how have I contributed to it? 

00:51:08 

That’s not to say go around blaming victims, because that’s certainly not the case. 

00:51:12 

But out of all those things, the the common thread suddenly realize speaking earlier about that friend that talking about the waves and you know the dumping waves and the waves of grief. 

00:51:20 

Well, she had this great saying as well with things in her life. 

00:51:24 

And she would say. 

00:51:25 

I the only thing that was common to all of those events that I didn’t like was that. 

00:51:30 

I was there. 

00:51:32 

How does that then reflects on how I actually interacted in those moments to create whatever I created for myself in that system? 

00:51:41 

I think it’s similar to that idea where you know if you have the same same people keep saying the same things about you. 

00:51:47 

Eventually you’ve got to. 

00:51:48 

Go, maybe it’s not. 

00:51:49 

Then maybe it’s me maybe? 

00:51:52 

Maybe this you know. 

00:51:52 

Maybe it is me. 

00:51:53 

The grief has acted as a catalyst for change, where there was that moment that that moment where you acted out of grief that caused the the spiral. 

00:52:02 

The Domino’s, I suppose, and and further down the Domino’s is not just the disconnection from those relationships, but also looking at. 

00:52:11 

Whether there’s any chance to repair them? 

00:52:13 

Yeah, well look. 

00:52:14 

You know we’re not relative. 

00:52:15 

Looked into me and told me that you know my parents were ashamed with me and all that kind of ******** 

00:52:20 

Essentially, the older version of me would have actually just not actually said anything or would have actually brushed it off. 

00:52:28 

Not actually stood up for myself, full of and sucked. 

00:52:32 

Sucked it down, Princess. 

00:52:33 

Yeah, not believing it. 

00:52:36 

But also, you know this hurt that comes with. 

00:52:37 

Not wanting to rock the boat. 

00:52:39 

Well, yeah, this. 

00:52:39 

Hurt that comes with. 

00:52:40 

Not responding to it and actually saying I know for a fact that’s not true. 

00:52:45 

Now I know that I’m not prepared to take that kind of stuff and also having that distance allowed me to really evaluate that relationship overall and consider whether I actually want to have that person returned to my life, because as much as they’ve told me to go and. 

00:53:01 

Have a good look at myself. 

00:53:02 

I wonder if they’ve done the same for themselves and. 

00:53:05 

Think a proper conversation around any of that really needs for both parties to have actually had some time for self-awareness and self evaluation. 

00:53:14 

But you know if I’m going to continue to get told that I’m selfish or that you thought about me and I don’t care about anybody else, well, clearly that’s untrue, and I’m not prepared to enter into that. 

00:53:25 

Kind of discussion or relationship. 

00:53:27 

There’s a lot of people in in my. 

00:53:29 

I’ve noticed in my experience that will say words like you’re being selfish, but what they fail to acknowledge is that by needing you to behave in a certain way for them, that they’re actually the one being selfish. 

00:53:39 

Asking you to do that, I think selfish is a word and a feeling that’s used without any self-awareness. 

00:53:40 

Yeah, so I have to try it. 

00:53:45 

I think if you’re the nail on the head there whenever that word is thrown about, it’s usually thrown about by someone who has, I suppose. 

00:53:53 

You know, last or perceived they’ve lost something from the actions or the words of the. 

00:53:57 

Person they’re calling selfish. 

00:53:59 

I I don’t really kind of hold much weight in that world anymore. 

00:54:04 

Servants leveled against me because I know myself and I know that I act better than. 

00:54:10 

That so breaking away from a family dynamic, which is essentially what you’ve done. 

00:54:14 

In the last 18 months or so, that really goes against that grain of that nuclear family, that stereotype that we get sold. 

00:54:22 

You know blood is thicker than water. 

00:54:24 

You stick with your family no matter what. 

00:54:26 

So when we spoke to Marty V, She actually had some really comforting reflections around those outdated stereotypes of society. 

00:54:34 

I can. 

00:54:34 

Kind of sense that phrases like boys don’t cry and stop being such a Bennington seeker and those sorts of things will be starting to loosely grouping in society, hopefully so it’s starting to get a. 

00:54:44 

Lot more context. 

00:54:45 

Sort of, the effects of those sorts. 

00:54:47 

Of things on. 

00:54:48 

Kids and other people in. 

00:54:49 

General so I like to use to talk about normalizing feelings as well, but it’s OK. 

00:54:54 

Do you have feelings whatever they are? 

00:54:56 

But how do you better educating others on what? 

00:54:58 

We need we are definitely getting beyond the boys. 

00:55:02 

Don’t cry and all of that, so we’re seeing so much more about the importance of acknowledging our children emotions and. 

00:55:10 

I think they’ll. 

00:55:10 

Be much better at a general as a generation at expressing their emotions. 

00:55:14 

Because we’re teaching this in schools for us, we just need to do that work on ourselves. 

00:55:21 

We need to to say look, we’re here once. 

00:55:25 

As far as we know, right? 

00:55:27 

And we it it. 

00:55:30 

Takes so much hired to say what we want and need when we’re not sure that that other person is going to understand. 

00:55:40 

And particularly, in those less healthy relationships where we don’t know what the reaction is going to. 

00:55:47 

Be from that. 

00:55:48 

Other person, when we express our wants and needs. 

00:55:52 

So that is also the other challenge. 

00:55:54 

I think we have as a generation is perhaps it’s harder because we’re all still learning. 

00:56:00 

To become more emotionally involved and capable of expressing our needs and hearing other people needs without taking insult to it. 

00:56:09 

Because you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago abuse. 

00:56:12 

Said, I just need a hug, but your parents didn’t know how to handle emotions. 

00:56:18 

They might have got mad. 

00:56:19 

At you know well. 

00:56:19 

I want to hug you ’cause you just do the wrong. 

00:56:21 

Thing you should have done that you naughty whatever you know it’s good. 

00:56:24 

It’s a real process, Andy to be able to ask, but I think if we start with the easiest people, the people that understand us best and Sally and we know the formula formula, there’s something along the lines of, you know, start with how you’re feeling. 

00:56:44 

Rather than the problem. 

00:56:45 

With the behavior, so I feel really upset when. 

00:56:50 

You know XYZ happens and. 

00:56:52 

I’m really hoping we can. 

00:56:54 

Talk through this. 

00:56:55 

You know, I think we’re all not so rehearsed. 

00:56:58 

You know, in that level of emotional intelligence, often people go straight into attack mode and rather than expressing what they actually need, they just say what they’re mad about. 

00:57:07 

Does that make sense? 

00:57:08 

Did I explain that? 

00:57:08 

Yeah, it better be the decency to the woods almost. 

00:57:12 

Yeah, that’s that’s it so. 

00:57:14 

I think when we’re more human. 

00:57:16 

About it, and we can just say I’m feeling really upset and I don’t know if this is in my head and I really want to talk through this because I really care about our relationship. 

00:57:26 

I really care about our work together. 

00:57:28 

It doesn’t matter what the relationship is that we’re expressing it within. 

00:57:31 

But if we go in. 

00:57:33 

With compassion, I think if we express our names not just from our own hedge. 

00:57:39 

But from the. 

00:57:39 

Head of the listener. 

00:57:41 

And they think. 

00:57:42 

Well, how would I want to hear this? 

00:57:45 

How would I wanna hear his person expressed their? 

00:57:49 

Needs I think. 

00:57:50 

We just suffer and instantly you know, and I I know I do is if I see it and it’s in my. 

00:57:56 

Work and leadership. 

00:57:57 

All of it in my work, in a team or as a speaker or as a mother, or as a wife you know. 

00:58:03 

And all those things. 

00:58:04 

I try really hard. 

00:58:06 

To express my emotions and my needs in a way that isn’t gonna feel like an insult to the other person. 

00:58:14 

And if I get it wrong, I will always own it and make do my best to make it better, you know, and I think that’s all we can do is our best right? 

00:58:24 

And you try to. 

00:58:26 

Find our way of. 

00:58:27 

Expressing as it’s such a personal thing, how we do this? 

00:58:31 

But there is a way for all of us to do it. 

00:58:35 

Maybe do a little circuit breaker hand, say thanks for listening to us. 

00:58:38 

If you love the show, let us know. 

00:58:39 

Hit the subscribe button on your podcast app and show us those five star. 

00:58:43 

Ratings remember to tell your friends about us and check out Patreon page for access to even more content like extended interviews at patreon.com/re frame of mind. The more people we get talking about mental health, the more supported will all be. 

00:58:59 

So we’ve been talking about my grief journey after my dad went, but you had a bit of an altercation yourself. 

00:59:06 

After your dad died, didn’t she? 

00:59:08 

I’m glad you said dad and not cats ’cause. 

00:59:10 

I don’t know which. 

00:59:11 

Cat, I would have thought with one of my cats over my other cat. 

00:59:13 

You never love me, your ashamed of me. 

00:59:17 

Any wanna? 

00:59:17 

Be for the food. 

00:59:20 

Actually well, I mean, almost though after Bailey died not that long ago. 

00:59:24 

I mean all the other the other cats realized that the saucy morsels have now dried up, so it’s a. 

00:59:31 

There have been some confrontations around saucy muscle time. 

00:59:34 

What do you mean that we’re not no longer getting dollar thirty tins of dying and we’ve just gotta eat whatever that is? 

00:59:40 

Or the harsh realities? 

00:59:41 

The harsh reality. 

00:59:42 

That the saucy morsels were only for. 

00:59:43 

The 20 year old man. 

00:59:45 

And everybody else just got the Lycans. 

00:59:48 

Different situation of grief though. 

00:59:50 

Yeah, when my father died so I think grief, it really does bring, especially in that acuteness of when someone is in that position, when they, when they’re dying. 

00:59:59 

When there’s like you know with him, we were waiting at the hospital for close to a week. 

01:00:03 

We knew it was coming. 

01:00:04 

That’s when I I went around to my parents house and. 

01:00:07 

And we had the inverted commas, last words conversation which didn’t end up being his last words to me. 

01:00:12 

But they were. 

01:00:13 

You know the meaning of that conversation is here. 

01:00:15 

He’s my last chance to tell you these things a few days later, he deteriorated rapidly and ended up in the path. 

01:00:23 

Of care ward at the hospital on. 

01:00:25 

I know we’ve talked about the association with Dolly Parton and my Cat Eve dying well and my father went to the hospital on Bruce Springsteen night so. 

01:00:37 

Forever tide to. 

01:00:39 

Bruce Springsteen will now be the memory of him being admitted to the hospital for palliative care. 

01:00:44 

Me finding out halfway through the concert, wait until the end going to the hospital to try and see him that night and not being allowed in by the emergency staff and. 

01:00:53 

Then having to come back the next. 

01:00:55 

Morning Fukyou Logan Hospital also also seeing I’m naming and shaming and they do deserve to be named and. 

01:01:01 

Shame for this. 

01:01:02 

Someone tried to take him to the morgue before he was ******* dead. 

01:01:07 

I remember you telling me that yes. 

01:01:09 

He wasn’t dead yet. 

01:01:10 

Logan Hospital and someone tried to take him to the ******* morgue. 

01:01:14 

They came up with the trolley and then they said I’m here for Mr Poole. 

01:01:18 

Well Mr Pools not ready for you. 

01:01:20 

Yet yeah, sorry, the grim. 

01:01:21 

Reapers first, yeah. 

01:01:23 

Oh my God, that’s. 

01:01:25 

Traumatic, you know? 

01:01:25 

Sucky Logan hospital. 

01:01:28 

I’m I’m very happy to say. 

01:01:29 

That I ******* hate. 

01:01:30 

Logan hospital. 

01:01:31 

Well, I don’t understand. 

01:01:31 

Anyway, I’m not editing that out either. 

01:01:33 

’cause ***** Logan hospital. 

01:01:37 

Yeah, so he was. 

01:01:38 

In there for a few days beforehand, you know he was. 

01:01:41 

He died on the Friday night. 

01:01:42 

He was admitted on Bruce Springsteen Tuesday, and it was probably Wednesday afternoon that he actually was really conscious for the last time. 

01:01:49 

So he saw some friends I think on Tuesday night on Wednesday night and I think there might have been the last people to actually speak. 

01:01:56 

To him in person, the rest of the time was in his morphine state. 

01:02:00 

It was, I mean, besides the fact that he tried to hit on me when he thought I was, uh. 

01:02:08 

Hello the other thing that was really interesting and I don’t know it’s an aside from the grief of it but in that. 

01:02:14 

State he if they give you. 

01:02:15 

This little box a button. 

01:02:17 

Where you push for your own morphine. 

01:02:18 

I don’t know if you’ve have you seen. 

01:02:20 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:02:20 

These things and. 

01:02:20 

It’s like there like a rectangle, maybe the size of an iPad slightly longer. 

01:02:24 

It’s funny because when he was in that. 

01:02:26 

State he was kind of muttering. 

01:02:28 

Things around ’cause he he he loved his tools you know he loved making things his place. 

01:02:33 

That he spent time. 

01:02:35 

Was in the shed when he was creating stuff and so in those morphine induced states he was treating his little morphine box like it was a hammer or assault and he was reaching for things and asking for. 

01:02:48 

Things like can you hand me this? 

01:02:50 

Can you pass me that? 

01:02:51 

Yeah I’m I’m just going to go down to the shed and. 

01:02:53 

Get some skyhooks. 

01:02:55 

I suppose one of those end of life experiences it’s it’s comforting to think. 

01:02:59 

But the place that he ended up before the end was in his mind, in the place that bought him the most joy, that that’s actually where he went to. 

01:03:05 

Yeah, it’s like when you hear stories of people who see people from their past when they’re about to crossover. 

01:03:13 

You know Dad was. 

01:03:14 

I was talking to mom at one point. 

01:03:15 

He could see mum on the bed opposite him. 

01:03:17 

You know he would say that he could see his own mother, that sort of thing. 

01:03:21 

That’s so yeah, I guess that’s the whole. 

01:03:24 

Other episode isn’t merely about end of life experiences and and things like that. 

01:03:25 

So all of the series, I think yeah. 

01:03:29 

The point that I was making with that is that that happened around Wednesday, so by the time he died on as actually Saturday morning, it was like 1:00 AM. 

01:03:38 

But Friday night Saturday morning you know there’d been three days with no contact. 

01:03:42 

There were three days with us all at the hospital in the same room. 

01:03:46 

Heightened tensions, there’s his mother around which and this is how this is, how little she’s ever had to do with my life when I saw her I forgot her name and I had to ask my mom what her name was. 

01:03:59 

My grandmother, grandma wasn’t grandma. 

01:04:10 

But you know, I I. 

01:04:12 

I’m gonna tell this story because I I I think it really speaks to something else that we’ve spoken about in this episode. 

01:04:17 

Which is patterns. 

01:04:18 

Because what you know, while I say there are a lot of things that happened with my father and the way that I felt like he couldn’t express emotion and couldn’t talk to me and that. 

01:04:25 

He treated. 

01:04:25 

Me when I was growing up that are damaging. 

01:04:29 

It’s things like this story which make me have empathy for him because of him being part of that generational cycle as well. 

01:04:36 

So my grandmother, when he was in the in the last couple of days, completely out. 

01:04:41 

Of it as. 

01:04:41 

She’s standing next to him and you know, brushing. 

01:04:44 

His head or. 

01:04:44 

Whatever she was. 

01:04:45 

Doing she turns to me and she says. 

01:04:47 

Yeah, I’ve got a diamond necklace for you. 

01:04:49 

I said oh OK, well that’s nice. 

01:04:52 

I guess she said yeah no no she said so you know if you want it come up and get it from me you’re going to have to come and get it from me actually it’s a it’s a diamond that your father gave to the first woman he was going to marry but then left at the altar. 

01:04:53 

Simple to bring it. 

01:05:07 

And married your mother instead. 

01:05:09 

So I took that diamond and I kept it all these years. 

01:05:11 

The one that he was getting used to marry a woman who’s not your mother who. 

01:05:14 

He was married. 

01:05:15 

To for 35 or so years. 

01:05:18 

And if you’d like fat. 

01:05:20 

You have to come and see me. 

01:05:21 

Wow, I don’t think we’ve got enough time in the world that impact. 

01:05:24 

Right? 

01:05:30 

Anyway, so might give you a bit of an insight about generational trauma. 

01:05:35 

Yeah, it’s it’s such a manipulative act on its own, let alone a vindictive act for literally taking a a piece of jewelry and then three years going on about it when it’s not even. 

01:05:48 

Who he married? 

01:05:49 

I had ashamed up with the diamond after. 

01:05:51 

He left the other one with the altar, but. 

01:05:53 

Don’t wow. 

01:05:54 

You ******* knows. 

01:05:55 

I don’t know. 

01:05:56 

I don’t want to go and find out I never have. 

01:05:57 

I mean, you could get this story. 

01:05:59 

I I thought you know what? 

01:06:00 

I’ve said before the. 

01:06:01 

Mum, I’ve said, oh maybe I should. 

01:06:02 

Go and get. 

01:06:03 

My diamond and then sell it. 

01:06:04 

I don’t care about the bloody diamond. 

01:06:06 

I’m not going to be a part of that manipulation. 

01:06:08 

I think she bringing little Red Hood. 

01:06:15 

No, it’ll have a string attached to it. 

01:06:17 

It’ll be like OK, well, I’m going to give you part of the diamond now, and if you come back next week, I’ll. 

01:06:22 

Give you the. 

01:06:23 

Next part or it will be like you can have a look at it today. 

01:06:26 

I’m going to go. 

01:06:26 

And get it. 

01:06:27 

Cleaned for you. 

01:06:27 

Come back next time and I’ll give it to you. 

01:06:29 

Or how about? 

01:06:31 

I don’t know. 

01:06:31 

Just a thought. 

01:06:33 

Pursuing a relationship with people. 

01:06:34 

Instead of trying to manipulate them. 

01:06:36 

Right, yeah, I don’t know. 

01:06:38 

I just got. 

01:06:38 

Kind of echoes of cutlery in the. 

01:06:41 

Middle, yeah, but she’d be too cheap to post it though, honestly. 

01:06:44 

Well, yeah. 

01:06:45 

I think she used to. 

01:06:46 

Reuse sandwich bags for the. 

01:06:47 

20 years. 

01:06:48 

Ha ha ha. 

01:06:50 

I don’t think she’s spent a cent on anything. 

01:06:52 

Oh well, yeah, it’s good to recycle word. 

01:06:54 

Why not? 

01:06:58 

Really, I mean we do have to think of the planet. 

01:07:01 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:07:01 

Think of the grandchildren that she never had. 

01:07:03 

Yeah, well, no she did. 

01:07:05 

She had two of us. 

01:07:05 

Vigeans ah Todd. 

01:07:06 

Yeah she did. 

01:07:07 

Yeah she had two of. 

01:07:09 

Us, none of them are in. 

01:07:10 

Laugh anyway. 

01:07:10 

Yeah, like grandchildren. 

01:07:12 

Anyway, we digress. 

01:07:14 

So I think I set the scene of tension, right? 

01:07:16 

So grief and tension. 

01:07:17 

That’s what’s going on in those last three days. 

01:07:19 

Grief, intention and the the diamond smuggler. 

01:07:22 

At some point, what happened in there is that we’re. 

01:07:25 

In the corridor. 

01:07:26 

Outside having a conversation, he’s slipped into the stage where he’s not even pretending to play with tools. 

01:07:32 

Anymore and then I felt like almost out of nowhere, my mum starts yelling at me and she’s screaming at me in the the hospital corridor about how I used to have tantrums when I. 

01:07:41 

Was a kid. 

01:07:42 

About the things that I said to her when. 

01:07:45 

I was like 7 years. 

01:07:46 

Gold I can’t even I I I can. 

01:07:49 

I just I can’t remember the specifics of everything that she said, but I can just remember feeling so schitt being screamed at in the corridor. 

01:07:59 

I didn’t you were in that point. 

01:08:01 

I did my dissociative thing and I I slip into what I think. 

01:08:06 

His crisis control. 

01:08:08 

It’s the similar ways that’s able to be completely calm in a cyclone and managed staff. 

01:08:13 

It’s the same Louise that could be at the scene of an accident with a pregnant woman screaming ’cause she’s been in a head on wreck and have the calm wash over and be the one that calls the ambulance and. 

01:08:23 

Gets around the car like. 

01:08:24 

It’s that for me. 

01:08:26 

That’s what happens in those kind of. 

01:08:28 

Romans, and so when she started screaming at me instead of retaliating, I slipped into, calmed associated Louise and tried to calm her down and tried to reason with her in my actions so I didn’t escalate it, but. 

01:08:41 

Fact me, I wanted to escalate it. 

01:08:43 

I wanted to yell back because it’s not fair ’cause. 

01:08:46 

It’s it’s it’s. 

01:08:47 

It’s literally not fair to yell at somebody for something they said to you when they were. 

01:08:51 

10 years old. 

01:08:52 

With 33 year old ammunition. 

01:08:56 

Against a child, essentially. 

01:08:58 

Because, you know, if I said something when I was a child, I was a child and I was, I think 37 or 36 when he died. 

01:09:06 

That’s a it’s a long time from 10, yeah? 

01:09:08 

Yeah, there’s a. 

01:09:09 

Bit of a walk. 

01:09:09 

I think he probably learned. 

01:09:10 

A few things emotionally since do you think? 

01:09:13 

You know and but. 

01:09:14 

To be fair, I did used to have tantrums. 

01:09:16 

As a child I I would feel so overwhelmed sometimes by emotion that I would just go into a room and scream and tear things up and throw things around and what my child would look like at some of those times is what we live with this other woman. 

01:09:33 

And she had raised mum because. 

01:09:36 

8,000,000. 

01:09:36 

Had been in terrible situations as well. 

01:09:38 

Through, you know, generational trauma and this woman that had looked after her ended up living with us and she was abusive. 

01:09:46 

You know she was abusive towards Mum. 

01:09:48 

She was abusive towards my father. 

01:09:50 

She wasn’t necessarily abusive towards me when I was a child, but there was so much of that manipulation. 

01:09:56 

And I hated watching her abuse mum, you know, like she was emotionally abusive, but she was also physically abusive. 

01:10:04 

She used to grab a walking stick and beat her with it and I remember feeling so overwhelmed at all those things and just why don’t you? 

01:10:13 

Check her out. 

01:10:14 

Why don’t you leave this and those things used to overwhelm me? 

01:10:18 

And yeah, of course I would have a tantrum. 

01:10:20 

Would hide under my bed I would get so angry I’d slam doors or I think one time I like kicked my foot through one of. 

01:10:26 

Them, you know, like. 

01:10:28 

So these things are kind of being. 

01:10:31 

Brought back up at me. 

01:10:32 

Oh, and I think tantrums to be fair are actually pretty common with young kids, and parents don’t generally come back 30 years later until then. 

01:10:42 

All their shortcomings is a 7 year old. 

01:10:45 

And I just I just, I know, I know she’s not listening to the podcast less. 

01:10:48 

I don’t think she is, but this is not a. 

01:10:50 

It’s not an indictment on her, I’m I’m trying to get to that point that it was a really high tension place. 

01:10:57 

With that the the grief that’s going on in those moments. 

01:11:01 

I can find forgiveness. 

01:11:03 

Like that really hurt and also really helped as well, because as I was able to reflect on that because those are things that were coming up for her. 

01:11:13 

At that time, there obviously things that still bothered her because you wouldn’t bring it up 33 years later if it didn’t still bother you. 

01:11:20 

No, well, you know, I think you know what your mum displayed is similar to what I displayed. 

01:11:24 

To my brother. 

01:11:25 

Because the stuff that I exploded over was years and years and years prior, I suppose. 

01:11:31 

Feeling excluded by action that they were trying to help me feel included by. 

01:11:36 

Which sounds paradoxical, but I never met my grandfather. 

01:11:40 

Because he died a year before. 

01:11:41 

I was born. 

01:11:42 

But there was. 

01:11:42 

A lot of conversation about him, which you know. 

01:11:45 

When I was younger, it felt comforting to think that maybe he was around and that maybe I got a chance to kind of know him through other people, but. 

01:11:52 

But as I got older and people were reminiscing, it started to take on a little bit of a different feeling because I didn’t have those memories that I could actually access. 

01:12:01 

And the stories that were being told won’t. 

01:12:04 

Stories that I could actually relate to other than having heard them before. 

01:12:07 

So that built up over many years. 

01:12:10 

And when he started reminiscing. 

01:12:12 

Iran father that treated me in a. 

01:12:15 

Way that I. 

01:12:16 

Didn’t actually even expect, and you know that was very upsetting for him and you know, I apologized and I. 

01:12:23 

I’m not definitely not proud of that moment, and I’m not. 

01:12:26 

It’s not something that I actually feel is actually. 

01:12:30 

I don’t know. 

01:12:31 

Like I, I think you know, in those moments of extreme acute grief, we say the things that I’ve been bottling up for so long and clearly there’s a need to get those things out, but under different circumstances. 

01:12:38 

Yeah we do. 

01:12:43 

Would probably be able to say it. 

01:12:45 

In a much better way. 

01:12:47 

Look, I did my dissociation at that time and slipped into that. 

01:12:51 

Com then because that’s my coping mechanism. 

01:12:54 

That’s how I deal with it. 

01:12:55 

That’s how I always learn to deal with it. 

01:12:57 

’cause like I, I had those tantrums when I was a kid because I was overwhelmed and frustrated and I can actually now even apply from the last six or eight months of my. 

01:13:07 

Life, I’ll learn. 

01:13:08 

Thing that actually maybe it was because of neurodivergence and it was actually a burnout and a meltdown and not a tantrum at all that. 

01:13:16 

But even without that, as a lens, those are the kind of moments that I now see in hindsight led to me bottling up my emotions lead to that that come the disassociating me. 

01:13:28 

That I developed because in those moments where the anger was and the frustration was so overwhelming that I might act out, I was condemned for that. 

01:13:37 

You know, I was it wasn’t OK, I I was in trouble for that so. 

01:13:42 

I learned to shut it off like. 

01:13:44 

I think about when I was at school when I was at primary school and even a little bit when I was at high school like I was bullied horribly. 

01:13:52 

I was fat girl fat girl trauma. 

01:13:54 

Remember the kids at school would bully me for things. 

01:13:58 

And I felt like I couldn’t actually go home and tell anybody about it, because then I felt like my father would bully me as well because he used to say horrible things about my weight in my body, you know? 

01:14:10 

So I remember one day getting bullied really badly at school. 

01:14:14 

I don’t know if I ever told. 

01:14:15 

Under the not the dinosaur story. 

01:14:17 

He did. 

01:14:18 

Where it was like a school carnival and I had had to run or something and then they were screaming out like not the dinosaur ’cause it was from that show. 

01:14:25 

Dinosaurs at the time? 

01:14:25 

Yeah yeah dinosaurs model Mama. 

01:14:26 

Yeah yeah, not the mark. 

01:14:28 

That’s it. 

01:14:29 

Not the Mama there goes not the Mama anyway. 

01:14:31 

I remember that day being so upset about that I came home and I think my mother said was something wrong and I didn’t say anything. 

01:14:38 

’cause I can’t say anything ’cause. 

01:14:40 

I felt like I would be bullied and instead I just she bought some cream buns. 

01:14:44 

I think that day and I’m like do you know what that’s what I need right now? 

01:14:47 

I think I just need a nice sugary cream bun and I had. 

01:14:49 

Like 2 cream buns and then I think he came in and called me. 

01:14:52 

King so. 

01:14:55 

Or better all better. 

01:14:57 

See, you see my point anyway, learning too. 

01:14:59 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:15:03 

Learning to holding those emotions that the bad ones. 

01:15:08 

The the ones that eventually cause the damn, Walt burst. 

01:15:12 

The dam wall didn’t. 

01:15:13 

Burst for me on that day. 

01:15:14 

In the hospital when she yelled. 

01:15:15 

At me, the dam will burst for. 

01:15:16 

Day 2 Christmases later, when I went up to visit her with my partner at the time, and it devolved into a you exclude me conversation, and that’s when that’s when I exploded back. 

01:15:31 

Honestly, that’s when it happened and if to be fair to you know my partner at the time as she does. 

01:15:36 

He wasn’t many things. 

01:15:38 

If he wasn’t there, I might never have spoke to her again. 

01:15:41 

If if he wasn’t there to mediate some kind of peace, I might never spoke to her again, because for two years I carried around. 

01:15:50 

I I’ve I. 

01:15:50 

That’s just. 

01:15:50 

The thing I I put on the com facade for as much as I could. 

01:15:56 

But in two years. 

01:15:58 

She didn’t once acknowledge that I lost a father. 

01:16:04 

It was all about how it had affected her. 

01:16:06 

Yeah, and you know when we don’t actually address these things at the time and it’s not just grief, it can be anything. 

01:16:13 

It can be any any disagreement we have with with people over the years. 

01:16:17 

The longer we hold onto it and don’t. 

01:16:19 

Deal with it then. 

01:16:20 

Your gets boom. 

01:16:22 

******* boom, so yeah, I think you know him dying that grief that yelling the tantrum I had the tantrum she had. 

01:16:30 

It would start the chain reaction that led to the damn war bursting. 

01:16:34 

But do you know what happened when the dam will burst? 

01:16:37 

When I finally actually let rip all those things that I was feeling. 

01:16:41 

That day before Christmas, the two years after the fact. 

01:16:46 

It’s been better since and as I’ve worked towards being able to actually. 

01:16:51 

Express how I feel. 

01:16:53 

It’s gotten better. 

01:16:54 

The relationship has gotten better. 

01:16:56 

It’s I don’t feel like I have to hide as much anymore, and I’m sure part of that has to do with the fact that my father is dead and so he hasn’t got any words to hurt me with. 

01:17:09 

And part of it has. 

01:17:10 

Come from actually looking at it and going well. 

01:17:14 

You know he had a pretty ****** model to work with, but yeah, I I do want to say like I mean even though she she doesn’t listen, I don’t want anyone to walk away from this feeling like she’s a blame. 

01:17:26 

She did the best that she could do, given what she had to work with. 

01:17:30 

Given her history of trauma and abuse going back. 

01:17:34 

Again generations. 

01:17:36 

From that, yeah, it’s getting better. 

01:17:38 

In any story we tell in this series, we’re not setting out to blame. 

01:17:42 

Anybody know you know, we it’s. 

01:17:44 

It’s really about getting that self-awareness and trying to move ourselves on from situations that we don’t. 

01:17:48 

Like you know. 

01:17:48 

Oh yeah, I’m just as much to blame for any of that. I’m the one that, again, yeah, I wouldn’t blame what I did when I was ten years old, but I did have 33 years in between to start working on self reflecting and. 

01:18:01 

Work on my own feelings and and maybe find a way to bring it up and. 

01:18:04 

Didn’t so yeah. 

01:18:06 

Yeah, so you know I mean in hospital your mum calling you out on your tantrums? 

01:18:10 

Yeah, it’s kind of like she was having a tantrum in that moment caused by acute grief. 

01:18:13 

Varsity yes yes. 

01:18:16 

Kind of highlights the fact that we all kind. 

01:18:18 

Of can have tantrums. 

01:18:20 

We all need a good tantrum occasionally. 

01:18:20 

This week 

01:18:21 

Yeah we do and and her best friend Marvy comes to emotional rescue again because she tells us what we’ve probably never heard after having a tantrum. 

01:18:30 

I was never listened to. 

01:18:32 

I was never allowed to be sad. 

01:18:34 

And then you had a tantrum as a 10 year old, 15 year old, 20 year old whenever it was Louise, you were meant to. 

01:18:40 

I mean, that’s a normal web meant to have emotional reactions and as a species we kind of suck it. 

01:18:47 

You know, we listen to our gut by the time. 

01:18:51 

We reached a certain age. 

01:18:52 

We’ve been so control. 

01:18:54 

And so manicured around our feelings and just all be a good girl, baby boy, you know we’re around people now we gotta play feisty, friendly, remember to say please and thank you smile and everything is is designed. 

01:19:10 

You know this comes from the parent ego, you know we we associate. 

01:19:15 

Have children behavior. 

01:19:17 

How will they regulate their emotions? 

01:19:19 

How successful they are at school and beyond as a reflection of ourselves, right until we learn to do better. 

01:19:26 

Until we learn to go. 

01:19:27 

You know what? 

01:19:28 

This actually isn’t. 

01:19:28 

About me. 

01:19:30 

I’ve got these. 

01:19:30 

Little people that have come across and come come out into this world and it’s now for us to allow them to be. 

01:19:40 

Who they are. 

01:19:41 

And so you were meant to get upset you. 

01:19:43 

Were meant to. 

01:19:44 

Have that. 

01:19:44 

In an ideal world, someone would have said Louise, I can say this is really. 

01:19:50 

Really hard for you. 

01:19:52 

Let’s just take a moment with a hug help or I understand or thank you for coming and telling me you felt that way. 

01:20:01 

But the reality is, is most people didn’t hear that in our generation Louise is. 

01:20:08 

That was not what happened then, and even now it’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to do right because it’s so much easier to say that when our buildings could, when our serious is good. 

01:20:21 

Well, I’m children are. 

01:20:22 

Behaving well, you know that it’s really easy, but in that moment, like I said earlier, you know if you’re if you’ve. 

01:20:29 

Gotten emotionally dysregulated? 

01:20:31 

Keep having a tantrum in front of you. 

01:20:33 

Well, the mirror neurons in your brain far away and they feel what you’re seeing is why Australians funniest home video is so funny. 

01:20:41 

I mean, you’re watching funny stuff through the television and it feels like it’s happening. 

01:20:45 

To you, right? 

01:20:46 

Like it seems like that far when you see it, you’re not there. 

01:20:49 

You’re looking at. 

01:20:50 

It, but it’s. 

01:20:51 

Funny and he. 

01:20:51 

Felt it because we feel what’s happening. 

01:20:54 

In front of. 

01:20:55 

US and so. 

01:20:56 

So for parents today we have to 1st forgive if if we went through that global everyone is doing the best with the skills and knowledge they have at the time. 

01:21:06 

At the end of the day, we can only do what we can do, so that’s the first step, and then the next step is to really start practicing. 

01:21:16 

Well-being, I mean well-being is asked at you know how I started. My mind gets better. It’s by doing something many things every day that put us into a. 

01:21:29 

Positive emotional state and and feel good and joyful and to rebuild our brains so that our emotions are much better tamed. 

01:21:42 

And then when we are meeting our children in those moments, we’re going to be in the best state of mind. 

01:21:49 

They can be and. 

01:21:50 

Every family has conflict. 

01:21:52 

Louisa always say to parents there is no point going over their Gutierrez. 

01:21:56 

Is my voice everybody does and you get that tiki and kids love us so much there’s so much more forgiving than my life and we go up to him, he said. 

01:22:06 

I really lost my call. 

01:22:09 

I hope you can forgive me. 

01:22:11 

It really wasn’t my intention to upset you and then we bought our time. 

01:22:17 

And don’t say. 

01:22:18 

It’s because I asked him if they found. 

01:22:26 

Right ’cause they were already frustrated. 

01:22:29 

They never was. 

01:22:30 

It mainly meant to put their stuff away from never meant to do they. 

01:22:34 

No, they did turn off the idea when you. 

01:22:36 

Awesome cheap, but in that moment because their children and they have very underdeveloped brains, they have momentary lapses in their self-control. 

01:22:46 

Full Effect impulse control in their regulation and we just keep repairing. 

01:22:52 

You know, it’s rupture and repair in all relationships, right? 

01:22:57 

Until we all get Tom, and then there’s less rapture and a lot more connection. 

01:23:04 

Ah, that’s a very long answer to your question. 

01:23:08 

What made you say anymore about that? 

01:23:11 

If I just going off on a complete challenges? 

01:23:13 

You know, well, you’re good, I mean, it makes me want to go off on tangents. 

01:23:17 

But then we’ll be sitting here for an hour debating the patriarchy and all of those learned behaviors of being a good girl. 

01:23:24 

That we’re. 

01:23:25 

Still trying to undo. 

01:23:27 

Yeah, and we have to undo. 

01:23:29 

Them we have to we have to. 

01:23:31 

Focus back on our own strengths and look back at everything. 

01:23:35 

You know this is the challenge I’ve seen. 

01:23:37 

All of us is we’re so good at seeing what’s wrong with us and what we need to fix and what we need to change and what we still need to accomplish and. 

01:23:47 

We suggest to look back and celebrate on all the things that are working and I think. 

01:23:55 

You know that’s all part of this puzzle of healing. 

01:23:58 

All of those challenges. 

01:24:00 

All of those unmet needs is, well, we can do something. 

01:24:04 

Now we’re fully grown humans. 

01:24:06 

We’ve developed brains and developing brains, you know, rewire what we file as everybody says and it’s true. 

01:24:14 

So let’s start. 

01:24:15 

Firing thoughts in our heads around what is going well and what we can do and you know we. 

01:24:21 

All get there. 

01:24:24 

But I thought. 

01:24:29 

All the things that struck me as you will reset in your work and the work we’re doing with still in adults is the concept of re signing some of these highly emotionally charged incidents and taking them into learning opportunities but. 

01:24:44 

Being able to revisit the minimum triggering right after it happens, so there can be a source of growth. 

01:24:50 

Can you walk us through speed up? 

01:24:53 

And again, you know, back to that first question, is is hard to teach. 

01:24:58 

That’s a hard thing to do, isn’t it? 

01:25:00 

Because our thoughts come with such automatically that when we go back to anything before we know when we go back to any memory. 

01:25:11 

Before we know it, we’ve already had 50 thoughts about it, haven’t we? 

01:25:16 

You know, the wind is is funny like that, so that takes a lot of work and it is different for every single person, because the way we help anybody has to be personalized. 

01:25:31 

And ardent medicine, I’ve seen two similar situations, 50 similar situations that I’ve had to deal with them all very differently, because everyone is receptive to learning it at a different pace and in a different way. 

01:25:49 

And so it is really through the engagement of daily practices that put us into a state of cancer that improves our ability to regulate our feelings. 

01:26:01 

Because of course you go. 

01:26:02 

Back to a. 

01:26:02 

Memory if you’re not good at coping with emotion yet if you’re not far enough yet. 

01:26:08 

Well, the quality of those thoughts are going to be pretty bad, so you’re going to be thinking based on emotion. 

01:26:17 

So to get to that point Andy it’s about daily micro steps of being on thinking. 

01:26:26 

Hopeful, constructive thoughts, optimistic thoughts so that our brain starts getting really really good at then, looking back and naturally going well, they did the best they could with what they knew at the time. 

01:26:42 

Or, you know, I coped with that and looking. 

01:26:46 

At the fact that we are all still here, which means. 

01:26:51 

To a degree at least, we coped with everything we’ve been through. 

01:26:56 

And and we can keep learning to cope better, and so by daily practices of optimism are looking for the best in every person. 

01:27:08 

Focusing on this all links up right so if. 

01:27:12 

We look at people. 

01:27:14 

That we struggle with, but then look for something. 

01:27:16 

Let’s likable in them, right? 

01:27:18 

And just keep. 

01:27:20 

You know getting. 

01:27:20 

Into the habit of doing that, what we’re doing is next time we look back on a difficult situation. 

01:27:26 

We’ve wider part of our brain that’s used to looking for the good. 

01:27:30 

Looking for what good came out of that? 

01:27:34 

What did I learn from that at daily gratitude practice is very well researched to. 

01:27:40 

Focus our attention on what we do have in our life rather than what we don’t have. 

01:27:45 

What is going well rather than what isn’t. 

01:27:48 

So if we do this every day. 

01:27:50 

And we have to write a note to remind us there’s a lot of the time to do it. 

01:27:55 

We start to strengthen optimism, constructive thinking, healthy mindset, so that when we do look back on all the difficulty, we’ve all had it right at various degrees. 

01:28:10 

We’re more likely for those automatic full. 

01:28:13 

Lots to maybe not go into 50 automatic negative thoughts, maybe going to 10 before we go ahead and set. 

01:28:20 

This feels lucky I’d like. 

01:28:21 

To give justified in what? 

01:28:24 

I’ve done with the old way, I’m just moving on. 

01:28:28 

Just does that make sense? 

01:28:29 

So it’s like a daily grooming, awesome. 

01:28:31 

So strictly muscle. 

01:28:33 

It is yes, like when I was at the gym this morning. 

01:28:37 

Andy, you know there was not a lot of fun going on. 

01:28:39 

Let me tell you. 

01:28:41 

So I haven’t been to tease. 

01:28:43 

Yeah, but I’ve come out stronger, right? 

01:28:46 

So when I leave? 

01:28:48 

It is through the discomfort of pushing that muscle. 

01:28:53 

If it felt easy, uh, I would. 

01:28:57 

I mean, it’s still be good. 

01:28:58 

’cause I’m still doing something you know that that works for me personally, fine, but it was through pushing myself to that next point where I just wanted to just. 

01:29:08 

More power. 

01:29:11 

That that’s it. 

01:29:12 

That’s your, you know. 

01:29:13 

There’s a truth in this adversity and it is like a muscle, you know. 

01:29:18 

We we grow. 

01:29:19 

Oh, if everything was easy, there’d be very little to learn and every horrible thing we’ve gone through. 

01:29:27 

If we look at it through that state, that frame of mind of what did I learn from that? 

01:29:33 

What was the benefit? 

01:29:34 

And that’s the last. 

01:29:35 

Thing you want to do in. 

01:29:36 

The middle of it, and then look at. 

01:29:37 

That you, just like I cannot believe this is. 

01:29:39 

At me, I’m really annoyed this and that’s normal. 

01:29:42 

It be weird if you. 

01:29:43 

Weren’t thinking like that right? 

01:29:45 

But then you look back and you go well. 

01:29:48 

What did I learn? 

01:29:50 

And we must do this, you know, we must do this for our challenges and some of us can do it on our own. 

01:29:56 

And some of us need to do it with a counselor or psychologist or a psychiatrist or therapist or friend or whatever it is. 

01:30:04 

But we’ve got to go back over adversity and find something. 

01:30:10 

In it, where’s the gold nugget? 

01:30:12 

Where’s the thing that has made me stronger, better, smarter, more capable, more skill? 

01:30:19 

How did it? 

01:30:20 

Put me on. 

01:30:21 

A course that maybe I wasn’t anticipating but here and thank goodness I’m here so that really such that now the 10 years is people started saying it doesn’t matter when you figure it out, as long as we make meaning somewhere right? 

01:30:38 

And and some things are much. 

01:30:40 

Harder to get. 

01:30:41 

There’s some things are easier, but that’s probably do it every single day. 

01:30:45 

Just keep flexing the muscles, the resilience muscles, the well-being, muscles and it just makes the past so much easier to face. 

01:30:54 

And just to enjoy this precious present and. 

01:30:58 

Really look ahead. 

01:30:59 

At our future with optimism and that’s so crucial for our. 

01:31:04 

Well-being and. 

01:31:05 

Our emotional well-being in our admin state of mind and I thought the state of mind. 

01:31:11 

It’s really clear that we can’t actually help anybody else until we help ourselves first. 

01:31:17 

Is there anything in that moment of? 

01:31:20 

When things seem to be going off the rails that. 

01:31:23 

You can do to break that. 

01:31:25 

Ice break that circuit when you realize that. 

01:31:27 

That’s not the time to. 

01:31:28 

Try and educate your kids or yourself or anything like that. 

01:31:32 

The the momentum is too great. 

01:31:33 

Do you have any suggestions then of what you could do to kind of stop the train before it heads into the station? 

01:31:38 

Yeah, such a great question. 

01:31:41 

Always the most important thing is that we. 

01:31:46 

First and foremost, spent a lot of time every single day deliberately doing kind things right so that that is an I have mentioned it already, but I’m bringing it up again because nothing will work. 

01:32:01 

When the train is left the station. 

01:32:05 

That part of the brain isn’t strong yet, right? 

01:32:08 

So we have to strike them. 

01:32:10 

The common app, right? 

01:32:11 

We have to strengthen Norway. 

01:32:13 

We have to commit every single day. 

01:32:16 

This is how it truly works, right? 

01:32:17 

People don’t talk about this often enough, but until we’re doing this stuff. 

01:32:22 

Choosing no one is gonna do well-being for us no one is gonna do healthy thinking for us. No one is gonna do optimism and gratitude for us. 

01:32:31 

We have to say. 

01:32:32 

You know what? 

01:32:33 

I’m doing this for myself. 

01:32:34 

I love myself enough and the people in my life a mouth to to spend time every day to to just. 

01:32:43 

Be in a state of clients so that that part of the brain actually works because. 

01:32:48 

Once you’re with that, your child or a colleague or a friend or a moment or a supermarket cube or whatever it is, or tech glitch, yeah, whatever it is. 

01:32:58 

Once you’re in that moment, right you’ve. 

01:33:01 

Got to have. 

01:33:02 

A strong part of the brain to cope, but once you’re there, Louise what I always suggest to parents is to feature. 

01:33:08 

I’ve got a slide. 

01:33:09 

My PowerPoint presentations of a little baby with like it’s I’ve got. 

01:33:14 

I can’t even describe it without it sounded strange, so I’m. 

01:33:17 

Not involved yet. 

01:33:18 

But what I I’m not going there, but. 

01:33:20 

What I what? 

01:33:21 

I remind parents is just to imagine. 

01:33:23 

That they can’t speak and that you know, I think, what what was that famous saying of gambis? 

01:33:30 

You know only uh, only speak if it improves the silence, right? 

01:33:36 

And so I try and do that. 

01:33:38 

I really do. 

01:33:39 

I think to myself. 

01:33:41 

All right? 

01:33:41 

When I. 

01:33:43 

As start with that intention is. 

01:33:46 

I will hear things today. I worked hard, all these things and they’re gonna trigger me and frustrate me and I will be an adult and I will be responsible for my emotions and I will pause and turn on. And that starts with self-awareness. 

01:34:06 

That starts with going, you know, there’s so much isn’t their work. 

01:34:10 

We need to do is always you enter this point, but you you go. 

01:34:14 

You know what I’m gonna actually from now on. 

01:34:16 

Every time I’m annoyed, I’m going to tune back into my head and go name the emotion, right? 

01:34:21 

I’m feeling annoyed. 

01:34:22 

I’m feeling annoyed because. 

01:34:24 

At XYZ just happened. 

01:34:26 

And so when we start talking to ourselves that way when we start talking to ourselves to our motions, what happens is we start getting to know them rather than trying to move them through and humans are very good at dumping our emotions and other people right? 

01:34:41 

Instead of dealing with ourselves which. 

01:34:44 

And so if you grew up with that happening to you where every time you lost it, someone else lost it and then you lost it some more than they lost. 

01:34:51 

Listen more that has to be undone, and it’s undone by becoming self aware and going. 

01:34:56 

Oh, I’m feeling really. 

01:34:57 

Angry, and so I’m angry right now, so I’m going to take deep, slow breaths until my brain switches back on. 

01:35:05 

’cause as long as you’re feeling you’re not thinking right. 

01:35:08 

Big feelings, small thoughts, so it’s so crucial in that moment that we had a plan ahead of time. 

01:35:17 

Louise, where we sit down and be big people and they go. 

01:35:22 

I’m a grown up so I’m going to get triggered by it. 

01:35:26 

And this is a 20-30 years younger than me and my brain at 47 is gonna see things differently, right? 

01:35:33 

To my 7 year olds and I think you know it’s just going to. 

01:35:35 

It’s that’s how it is. 

01:35:36 

So I’m going to be the grown up because that’s my responsibility. 

01:35:40 

I chose to be a parent. 

01:35:42 

I place to work with children and it’s my responsibility. 

01:35:45 

So how did as well? 

01:35:47 

So I have a plan now next time. 

01:35:49 

A child gets upset. 

01:35:50 

In front of me I’m gonna say. 

01:35:52 

Nothing until I am calm. 

01:35:56 

And I’m going to explain it climb, but I’m going to say, you know, if you see me walking away and moving away, it’s like it’s nothing personal. 

01:36:02 

I’m learning to calm myself down so that I can speak to you in a way that I feel really great about afterwards and when we have that authenticity with our. 

01:36:12 

Families with our partners with our friends. 

01:36:15 

Will we say you know what? 

01:36:16 

I’m so not perfect. 

01:36:18 

I’m so trying to. 

01:36:19 

Figure all of this. 

01:36:20 

Wow, gosh, how good is that for a relationship with your kids or your partner or your friends when you’re able to say I’m learning to be kind, what I’ve not come. 

01:36:30 

So that’s 

01:36:31 

How we do it? 

01:36:32 

You know we we do it and then we stuff it up. 

01:36:35 

There we go. 

01:36:35 

Well I didn’t. 

01:36:36 

My comp plan didn’t work that. 

01:36:38 

Time and I’m. 

01:36:38 

Really sorry, I hope you can. 

01:36:40 

Give me, but then they’re facing it, aren’t we? 

01:36:43 

That’s how we grow. 

01:36:44 

We’re not been dumping more anger or you just picked up yourselves and you know, it’s just it keeps us start. 

01:36:53 

So let’s. 

01:36:54 

Stick and let’s just keep trying. 

01:36:57 

I think in. 

01:36:58 

That moment silence is golden, breathing slowly and deeply balances the carbon dioxide and oxygen in our brain. 

01:37:06 

So we. 

01:37:06 

Can get out of. 

01:37:07 

Fight flight freeze. 

01:37:08 

Enter the prefrontal cortex state so that part of our. 

01:37:12 

Brain is thinking clearly and. 

01:37:14 

We just do so much better when we’re using our Braves. 

01:37:17 

Profitable, every activity in our emotions. 

01:37:20 

The thing about grief, it does help you gain that new perspective on how things have been with family patterns and relationships. 

01:37:27 

I mean, what are you doing for Christmas? 

01:37:30 

Apparently causes a rift for me and for you. 

01:37:34 

Well, you know. 

01:37:35 

For quite a long time it was quite triggering for me. 

01:37:38 

You know, even from the perspective where the people would ask that knew that it would get a rise out of me and the reasons why it would get. 

01:37:46 

A rise out of me. 

01:37:47 

And doesn’t have to be. 

01:37:48 

Like that anymore and it’s not. 

01:37:50 

Which is great, so why? 

01:37:51 

Why did what are you doing for Christmas? 

01:37:53 

Get a rise out of you. 

01:37:54 

What was the in the hindsight? 

01:37:56 

What did that trigger? 

01:37:57 

This is about family dynamics and competition. 

01:38:00 

And me not actually being. 

01:38:03 

Allowed to host Christmas sense. 

01:38:06 

Kind of weird I suppose. 

01:38:08 

But there’s no normal. 

01:38:10 

When it comes to anything particularly Christmas. 

01:38:13 

Annoying families act around Christmas, but in my family. 

01:38:16 

We would all. 

01:38:17 

Congregate around mum and dad’s place. 

01:38:20 

When I was younger and my grandmother would come up and apparently before I was born, when my grandfather was still alive, the tradition was to go down to their place, ’cause he had said whenever I’m alive. 

01:38:30 

Christmas is here. 

01:38:31 

So put a bookmark in that. 

01:38:33 

And come forward a good 30 years or so and my brothers are starting to have their own families and so the concept of Christmas at my mom and dads place is starting to get a little bit more flexible and we’re going to one brother place one Christmas and coming back to mom and dads the next Christmas and another brother says, look, you always go to his place and not mine come to mind. 

01:38:53 

For Christmas, so we go to their place for Christmas and. 

01:38:56 

It wasn’t a regular thing really, in the. 

01:38:58 

Beginning because it. 

01:38:58 

Was like, oh, you got any house? 

01:39:00 

Let’s have your first Christmas in the house, which was lovely. 

01:39:03 

Then I moved out of home and my first Christmas in my house. 

01:39:07 

US came up and I got well, no, you’re only renting so we’ll. 

01:39:13 

Have it here. 

01:39:14 

OK, point taken this isn’t this isn’t my permanent home. 

01:39:15 

And then how many years? 

01:39:18 

So when I buy a house Yep. 

01:39:21 

Can expect Christmas at my place. 

01:39:23 

Bought a house first Christmas. 

01:39:26 

Everyone come to my place since Christmas. 

01:39:28 

Ah no look. 

01:39:30 

Your place isn’t really big enough for everybody, and it’s a bit too far. 

01:39:34 

I haven’t driven my parents from Sydney to Canberra. 

01:39:37 

Yeah, I had driven with them. 

01:39:37 

All over Sydney for Christmas. 

01:39:41 

And not once did my family ever, ever. 

01:39:46 

Come to my place. 

01:39:47 

For Christmas, the first time I ever hosted Christmas was. 

01:39:52 

After moving here to Adelaide and my partner and I hosted Christmas here and his family came. 

01:39:57 

My family still have not ever ever deemed it satisfactory to come to my place for Christmas. 

01:40:04 

I’ve always had to go to their places and in fact, when mom and dad was still alive. 

01:40:09 

It was starting to get shared around like one you would go to this brother this you would go to that brother and then it would alternate. 

01:40:15 

Never came to my place. 

01:40:17 

I’d always take Mom and Dad to wherever Christmas was being hosted. 

01:40:21 

Yeah, I. 

01:40:21 

I kind of build up a little bit of. 

01:40:23 

A funk you attitude towards the Christmas lights. 

01:40:24 

51st lunch. 

01:40:26 

Come to the point where you know when when Mom went and dug was still in Sydney for the last couple of years I kept that pattern going. 

01:40:34 

We would go to one brother place, then go to the other. 

01:40:36 

Brothers place the next year and then one year one. 

01:40:39 

Of my brothers said that. 

01:40:40 

They want to come. 

01:40:41 

To Adelaide, great, but I knew the patterns and I knew how was going to transpire and slow the short of it is they didn’t come and so at that point I broke my first family pattern and. 

01:40:53 

And I said from that year on look OK. 

01:40:56 

It’s too late for me to organize to come up there for Christmas. 

01:40:58 

I’m going to stay in Adelaide and so from that year onwards I stayed in Adelaide one year and then I went to Sydney the next year, but on top of that I didn’t actually go to either of their places for Christmas anymore. 

01:41:09 

Every year they would say what are you doing for Christmas? 

01:41:11 

Come to our place at Christmas. 

01:41:12 

Won’t come to our place for Christmas. 

01:41:14 

And I’d say no. 

01:41:15 

I’m in Sydney to see Dad for Christmas and we’re going here for Christmas. 

01:41:20 

You welcome to come come and join us, we’d love to have you. 

01:41:23 

Yeah, they never did until the very last Christmas one. 

01:41:26 

Of them did, but other than that not. 

01:41:28 

I understand how what are you doing for Christmas was triggering before your dad died then. 

01:41:33 

How did it become triggering after? 

01:41:35 

Yeah, I guess you know. 

01:41:36 

I came to the realization that I really needed to start supporting my own happiness. 

01:41:40 

The old patterns that I’ve been kind of just in autopilot with over so long they had to stop ’cause they weren’t serving me. 

01:41:46 

These autopilot isn’t it, it really is. 

01:41:49 

It is and you know, as we fall into those patterns, we already start to devalue ourselves. 

01:41:55 

They start to kind of just do things out. 

01:41:57 

Of habit and. 

01:41:58 

The only way to really kind of get what you want or get what you need is to interrupt those patterns and. 

01:42:04 

Fool when you throw a spanner in those works, yeah springs fly, you know, like. 

01:42:10 

The COGS fly out so. 

01:42:11 

The club fly out the. 

01:42:13 

The rules for loss. 

01:42:13 

Spanner in the spiky Dokes. 

01:42:14 

Yep Yep Yep. 

01:42:14 

Yet that’s right, but you’ve got to make something new for yourself. 

01:42:17 

Otherwise it’s just going to keep going. 

01:42:19 

You do. 

01:42:20 

I’ve seen people go to their death beds, never having kind of feeling confident enough to do what they need to do to get what they need or what what they value, or to value themselves. 

01:42:31 

And I made a promise to myself. 

01:42:33 

And I wouldn’t be. 

01:42:33 

A person. 

01:42:35 

Because I think if I got to the end of my life and looked backwards over all of those years and saw that I had only ever lived my life according to other peoples expectations, then I don’t feel like that would be a very satisfactory life for me. 

01:42:54 

I’ve got my own dreams in my envisions, like anybody has. 

01:42:59 

I don’t think anybody should give up themselves for another person, traditions or another person directions or expectations. 

01:43:12 

I would love to have my family around for Christmas, but they don’t want to and so I need to make peace with that and not pretend that they want to share. 

01:43:20 

Christmas with me because of anything more than they. 

01:43:24 

Just don’t know. 

01:43:25 

Do it anywhere other than near. 

01:43:27 

Home, you know it’s there’s not given taking that scenario to me and it it doesn’t feel respectful. 

01:43:33 

Yeah, amongst all of that kind of round Robin stuff of one of their places one year, then the other place the other year they never went. 

01:43:40 

To each other. 

01:43:41 

Place either, so that’s where I say it was all about competition. 

01:43:44 

As well, because it was kind of falling into this pattern of all who. 

01:43:48 

Do you love more? 

01:43:49 

You know? 

01:43:49 

Make it more time with these people or you know you can see them more and it becomes like a ******* accounting process. 

01:43:57 

And I was ******* over it. 

01:43:58 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:43:59 

I don’t want to be a ******* accountant when it comes to being with my family. 

01:44:03 

I want to be with my family and to feel loved and to love them in return. 

01:44:07 

I don’t want to feel like it’s a competition. 

01:44:09 

Love shouldn’t be a formula on a spreadsheet, correct? 

01:44:13 

Get it on Natasha. 

01:44:13 

And you know. 

01:44:14 

It and you know. 

01:44:15 

That I love spring, I know. 

01:44:16 

That’s why I mentioned it. 

01:44:19 

If we telling up. 

01:44:21 

Column A with column B and we get the whole sum it equals love. 

01:44:25 

Look, look, you know everyone going to have their own formula to apply, and it’s always going to. 

01:44:30 

Look like they’ve been shortchanged, so just. 

01:44:33 

Do your own thing. 

01:44:34 

I say you’ve got to be happy and so that question doesn’t trigger me now. 

01:44:38 

Not no. 

01:44:39 

Sometimes I still see it coming my way and I know what it is or know what I perceive. 

01:44:44 

It is ’cause it might not even be that that might have just been me in my state at the time, thinking that that’s how it was being used. 

01:44:51 

But by the same token, it doesn’t affect me anymore. 

01:44:53 

The thing you said there about a few minutes ago about if you got to the end of your life and you realize that you’ve lived your whole life for someone elses expectations. 

01:45:02 

You know to make somebody else happy and never word true yourself or valued yourself that is. 

01:45:08 

I think that’s why we work so well together. 

01:45:10 

I think that’s why our projects like this work well together. 

01:45:14 

You’ve been on that journey of understanding that, and your path has come through a family story and my path to that understanding probably comes from suppressing everything and then having it all explode in my face. 

01:45:27 

I’m just, I suppose. 

01:45:28 

I’m just really proud of us now that we’re at a space where we can recognize that truth and we can work. 

01:45:34 

We can work towards and. 

01:45:36 

BB ourselves, our true selves. Now we’re not going to get to 7080 ninety and have that regret we might not have done so well before, but we can change now and we are changing. 

01:45:49 

Yeah we are and I think for me it was actually severing some of those relationships to be honest or severely changing them in a lot of ways so that I could figure out exactly what I wanted. 

01:46:01 

Because while I was in that pattern of just doing it out of roads out of habit, I’d kind of lost sense of what I. 

01:46:08 

Actually wanted and. 

01:46:09 

How I wanted things to be and. 

01:46:10 

As some of those relationships are still severed. 

01:46:13 

You know and. 

01:46:14 

That used to hurt me as well. 

01:46:16 

But I don’t know it’s kind of turn around now it’s become more of it’s become more a a source of personal power for me because I don’t know if I’ve said this in a previous episode, but I’ll say it again now if I haven’t standing up for yourself doesn’t mean lashing back and taking blows. 

01:46:30 

It’s sort of physical act. 

01:46:32 

It’s actually giving yourself voice. 

01:46:34 

And I think. 

01:46:36 

You know when people have kind of said to me, you know it’s one of those you’ve said to me in this whole interaction around downstate. 

01:46:40 

Stand up for your body yourself. 

01:46:42 

You never. 

01:46:42 

Stand up for yourself. 

01:46:43 

To me that sounds like fighting words. 

01:46:44 

It’s like, you know, I’m letting you go. 

01:46:47 

You know you have to go back at me and. 

01:46:49 

That, to me is it’s not what standing up for yourself is for me. 

01:46:53 

Standing up for myself is drawing a line and saying look, I’m not going to take this anymore. 

01:46:57 

And where would I say it in those words and then walk away? 

01:47:01 

Or whether I just walk away and disengage it has the same impact in that I’m no longer exposing myself to that? 

01:47:09 

And that’s a good thing. 

01:47:10 

Sometimes it’s as simple as knowing that you’ve had enough walking away from a bad situation, knowing that we deserve better. 

01:47:16 

Yeah sometimes as our friend Martin V says, sometimes we just need some space and time. 

01:47:22 

Just sort this stuff. 

01:47:23 

If we’ve got stuff we’ve got to sort it out, we’ve gotta. 

01:47:27 

Sort it out. 

01:47:28 

Because it will pass on and I think that’s the best thing we can all do is go. 

01:47:34 

You know what I’ve? 

01:47:35 

Got some stuff to work out and I’m gonna get some. 

01:47:37 

Help for that and it’s totally. 

01:47:39 

OK to ask for help. 

01:47:40 

In fact, it’s crucial and important and normal to ask. 

01:47:44 

The help and I’m going to be brave and I’m going to do that. 

01:47:47 

I’m I’m I’m gonna stop it here this is where it ends. 

01:47:51 

We’ve gained so much from our TV in this episode, I think. 

01:47:52 

Yeah, I think our conversation with my TV has been life altering. 

01:47:58 

Some of those realizations there’s confronting of those big emotions, amazing. 

01:48:03 

Yeah, look yeah I spoke. 

01:48:04 

A little while back when. 

01:48:05 

We were talking to Lucy Bloom about fantasizing about what could go right. 

01:48:09 

And I was saying at the time commencing from a serious perspective, or you know, uh, season perspective for a friend of mine, that that was a bit. 

01:48:15 

Of a turning point in. 

01:48:17 

In the direction of how we were exploring things, and I think you know this conversation with my TV was definitely a turning point for me in my personal story. 

01:48:27 

I’m really kind of starting to feel confident sitting with those big emotions not actually lashing out and serving those big emotions to people, but understanding that. 

01:48:38 

Yeah, I’m I’m feeling something big here and what I can sit with it and I can do something productive with. 

01:48:41 

You know? 

01:48:45 

And it’s OK to feel something big. 

01:48:47 

There’s nothing going wrong by feeling something big. 

01:48:51 

Big emotions are normal and we all experience them and they don’t need to be judged and they don’t need to be condemned. 

01:48:57 

They’re perfectly OK. 

01:48:59 

Yeah, so model B has really helped us to kind of understand all of this, and I mean she’s got so much experience. 

01:49:06 

Sharon workshops with schools and new organization. 

01:49:09 

She’s got an amazing range of resources water, but some links up in the show notes. 

01:49:13 

Around all of that because she really has got some amazing stuff for your access. 

01:49:18 

Randall of this. 

01:49:19 

Oh yeah, I was looking at our website yesterday to see what was up there. She’s written so many kids books, she’s written courses for adults on how to parent and actually talk to kids and she’s got heaps of free resources online as well too. So positivemindsaustralia.com dot AU is her website. She’s based in South Australia too. 

01:49:39 

She’s a Adelaide Ian like und. 

01:49:41 

She is she’s not a lady left. 

01:49:43 

Add a lady. 

01:49:46 

So so yeah, definitely someone to support, especially if you need help with dealing with big emotions. 

01:49:46 

Oh yeah. 

01:49:52 

Definitely, I think I’m going to have to buy. 

01:49:54 

Marvia big coffee for all this. 

01:49:56 

So now we’re in touch with our big emotions and. 

01:49:59 

We’re ready to deal with them. 

01:50:01 

Do you know what helps with that? 

01:50:03 

Muscular tell me. 

01:50:04 

Having people around to help you to support you. 

01:50:07 

People who align with you who get you and can walk the journey with you. 

01:50:13 

Yeah, it’s that strong support network that can put around ourselves to actually. 

01:50:18 

Bring us through the tough times, but also then support to each other because we have shared values and we actually support each other. 

01:50:24 

So next time on re frame of mind who better to talk to about this then former diamonds coach Lisa Alexander and will explore teamwork, community and building that healthy Support network. 

01:50:30 

Second, you know, net balls being such an important part of all of our country towns and. 

01:50:40 

All of our. 

01:50:40 

Local communities and the things that we’ve been taught looking after the bigger picture we before me, the teamwork. 

01:50:48 

Aspect of netball. 

01:50:49 

It’s got so many great lessons for people. 

01:50:53 

That’s what I’ve got faith in. 

01:50:55 

We’ve been hearing our story and. 

01:50:57 

Now we really want to hear yours correct? 

01:50:59 

Connect with battery frame of mind on Instagram Facebook. 

01:51:02 

Tik T.O.K and Twitter? 

01:51:03 

All connect with at welcome Change Media on LinkedIn. 

01:51:07 

You can also contact us via refrain earthwind.com dot AU with your stories or suggestions for future topics. 

01:51:13 

We’d like to thank today’s guests for sharing their personal stories and insights. For more information on any of the subjects, guests or references used in this episode, please see our show notes or re frame of mind.com dot AU. 

01:51:25 

Read frame of mind is a. 

01:51:26 

Welcome Change Media production. 

01:51:32 

Ladies or maladies maladie? 

01:51:34 

Malady Sama ladies missed missed that. 

01:51:37 

I’m going to say problems if that’s all right. 

01:51:37 

The late fees. 

01:51:39 

If you like. 

01:51:40 

Thank you you. 

01:51:41 

You would say, my ladies. 

01:51:43 

Unsigned melodies, yes. 

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