Eps 670: Knowing Better Isn’t Enough

Joyful courage means being willing to find joy in life and relationships even when things are hard. I am finding myself understanding this more and more at ever deeper levels.

Resources mentioned

• Episode 668, the Back-to-School Reset and the intentional ecosystem — everything in 670 sits on top of it
• Episode 252, her daughter on the podcast telling this stretch from her own side
• Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain — brain stem, limbic system, prefrontal cortex, flipping your lid
• The four F’s: fight, flight, freeze, fawn (fawn got its own solo show in July)
• Casey’s interview with Dr. Shefali for The Great Parenting Wake Up summit — parents as the host nervous system
• Podcast show on control versus influence
• The three practices: extended exhale (in for 4, out for 8), feet on the floor plus three real things in the room, open posture with a simple mantra
• Immersion Week, September 21–25, five days live, $69 — besproutable.com/immersion
• Early bird by September 7: the Self-Regulation Toolkit plus Casey’s chapter from Raising Teens Who Talk to You, “Shifting From Control to Creation: The Inner Work of Parenting Adolescents.” First 20 to claim a spot get a private one-on-one
• Email Casey directly: [email protected]

Transcription

[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescence. This season of parenting is no joke, and while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth, and man, the opportunities abound, right? My name is Casey O'Rourty. I am a parent coach, positive discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sproutable. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years and continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media. Rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:24] So I remember very clearly being in a hotel room in Atlanta at a podcasting conference when my phone buzzed, and I went to look at the text. It was from my daughter It was 2019, and the text said she was done. She was dropping out of school. I know some of you have listened to this podcast long enough to remember this story, but I wanted to bring it back 'cause I want you to know something about me in that moment.
[00:01:58] I had already been doing this parenting work for years. I had a master's degree in education. I was a positive discipline trainer. I had stood in front of tons of rooms full of parents and taught them about the nervous system, about co-regulation, about how you can't reach a kid that you're currently at war with.
[00:02:17] I knew all of it. And I laid in that bed with my stomach in a knot and my thoughts going 100 miles an hour with absolutely nothing in my head that I could use. So if you're listening to this because you've lost it with your kid this week, and you feel like you should know better by now, you and me both, friend.
[00:02:41] You and me both. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Welcome back to the podcast. This week's a solo show, and I'm so glad that you're here. I wanna name what's happening in the world right now because it matters for what we're doing today. School is starting. Either your kids are just starting this week, or maybe it's been a couple weeks.
[00:03:02] There's this specific flavor of stress that comes with it. Everybody's schedule has changed. Everybody's sleep has changed. There's this dramatic shift in the day-to-day reality. And perhaps you noticed that your teen, your tween, came home different than they left in June, and now they're walking into a building full of other kids who also came home different, right?
[00:03:32] The friction in your house probably is going up, right? That's just true. And what I hear from parents this time of year over and over is some version of, "I keep losing it, and I don't wanna be this person," right? Or something that I heard just today on a call with a couple talking about their daughter, which was, "She's getting snarky, and I'm finding myself snarking back."
[00:03:59] So remember a couple weeks ago, I did the back-to-school reset episode, and I walked you through the intentional ecosystem, the four layers, worked from the outside in. If you missed it, go back and listen to 668 because everything today sits on top of that. And just to remind you, the intentional ecosystem starts in the outer layer with our self-regulation, our willingness to grow and evolve and question our beliefs, our lived or not lived values, right?
[00:04:34] That's the outermost layer. Inside of that is the relationship that we have with our kiddos and how we are nurturing it, if we are nurturing it. Where is it? Inside of that, the systems and routines that we co-create, that we are intentional about, right? 'Cause there are systems and routines. Some of them are default, and some of them have been developed, right, intentionally.
[00:04:59] And then inside of that are all of those in-the-moment tools like problem-solving, communication, validating, curiosity, encouragement, right? So the ecosystem is the framework from now until forever that we're gonna be talking about here in this space. And the question I was answering in that episode is the one that I get more than any other, and it's some version of, "I know what I'm supposed to do, so why isn't it working?"
[00:05:26] And I gave you part of the answer in that episode, episode 668. Today, I wanna give you the rest of it, because there's a piece that I only touched on, and it's the piece that really takes everybody down You know what to do. You've read the books. Outside of those hot moments, you have a vision of the way you could be responding, and then your child says the thing, right?
[00:05:49] The thing that sets you off, and every single tool that you thought was in that toolbox evaporates. It's not a knowledge problem. It's a nervous system problem, and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So this is the first of three episodes, and they're gonna build on each other. Today we're starting where I think you actually have to start, which is with you, right?
[00:06:14] That outer layer of the intentional ecosystem. Not with your kid's behavior, not with the phone or the screen time or the grades or the attitude, but with your nervous system, with the parent's nervous system. Next week we're gonna talk about what's actually going on developmentally for them. We're gonna revisit that question of is this normal?
[00:06:35] And the week after that I'm gonna tell you the whole story of our hardest years and really what got us through. But today, maybe you flipped your lid. What it is, why it happens, why knowing better doesn't protect you from it, and three things you can do tonight when you feel it coming. All right? So let's go.
[00:06:56] Let's go back to that hotel room. Right? At that point my daughter was 16 years old, and she's actually been on the podcast and talked about this, episode 252. She was 16 years old. We had already been through a whole lot, right? It was clear that her mental health was massively challenged. There was some substance misuse.
[00:07:21] There were months where I didn't know who was gonna be walking through the door, right? I'm gonna tell you again that whole story in a couple weeks, but for today I just wanna stay in this one moment, because this one moment taught me the thing that I needed to learn. I was traveling for work, right? I was, and I want you to hear the irony in this.
[00:07:42] On my way home from this podcasting training, it was kind of a conference where I spoke. I spoke about the podcast. I spoke about how it held this parenting community, right? I was talking about the work that I do, right? And I pick up my phone and there it is. "I'm done. I'm not going back." Right? And to me it was...
[00:08:05] It wasn't the first time I had heard that, but there was something about it that felt really final, and my chest got really tight. My breath got shallow. My belly felt nauseous. Right? I was laying in that bed, and there was still another two days of this conference. I wasn't supposed to leave, and I knew I have to go.
[00:08:29] I have to go home. It just, like, super tunnel vision. I gotta get out of here. And the thoughts that were happening, my brain was producing a relentless stream of catastrophe. She's throwing her life away. This is it. She can't come back from this. What did I do wrong? What are people gonna say? How can I continue to be a parent educator, a parent coach, when this is what's happening at my house?
[00:08:59] How will she have any worth? Just, like, I couldn't stop it, right? And then, 'cause I'm a human, I started to compose a text back, one that was gonna fix it, talk her out of it, pause her, right? Six different versions probably of that text, and every single one of them was written by a mom whose thinking brain had actually left the building, right?
[00:09:25] It was full survival mode, the full four Fs happening. And maybe you remember me talking about the four Fs a while back: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I spent a bunch of time in fawn back in July. Well, I was in all the places, and I wanna tell you that on that flight home, I... I mean, it was like a menu, right?
[00:09:47] I was angry. I was scared. I was paralyzed. And, you know, it was really in the question of connection. You know, what can I do for her to get her to do what I think she should do, right? Fight was first. Fight was the text that I almost sent, the one with the consequence, right? Like, "You can't do that. If you do that, then...
[00:10:09] If, then." Then I realized, like, there really isn't a consequence that I can impose here that's gonna get her to do what I want. And then flight. Flight was me thinking, "Okay, I'm not gonna go back. Where can I go? I gotta-- I wanna just put my head in the sand. I don't wanna go home. I don't wanna deal with this," right?
[00:10:31] This was about me not wanting to face this problem. It was too scary. It was too big. It was just too much. And then freeze. Freeze was the 45 minutes somewhere over, you know, Nebraska, where I just sat there paralyzed, let it wash over me, numb, right? And like I said, then there was some fawning, right? Fawn was me deciding, "Okay, I'm gonna walk in the door.
[00:10:54] I'm gonna be really cool about it. I'm gonna be really chill because I'm so peaced out- I was scared that if I brought any heat, she'd close the door and I'd lose access to her completely. So in that moment, fawning felt like connection, but really it was fear wearing connection's clothes. So here's what I want you to take from this story, and it isn't a tidy one.
[00:11:22] I knew everything, right? I could have taught a class on exactly what was happening inside of me in real time while it was happening, and I still spent five hours in that metal tube completely dysregulating Right? Knowing what to do does not mean that your nervous system, when facing a threat, can be shut off, right?
[00:11:53] So let me put it in some language that I think really makes sense of what was happening to me, because when you can name it, it really loses some of its grip. So if you've been around the pod or my work, been around positive discipline, read any Dan Siegel, you've seen or heard about the hand model of the brain.
[00:12:14] And I know this is audio, so bear with me, but do it with me anyways if your hands are free. If you're driving, just imagine. So holding up your hand, all your fingers are extended. Fold your thumb into your palm. Now fold your fingers down over your thumb, like you're making a fist with your thumb tucked inside.
[00:12:33] This is your brain. Right? Your wrist and your forearm, that's the brain stem. That's the oldest part of the brain, breathing, heart rate, the stuff that basically keeps you alive without asking you if it should do it, right? It's the automatic systems. Your thumb tucked in the middle is your limbic system.
[00:12:53] That's the emotional center. That's where the amygdala lives, and the amygdala has one job, which is to scan for danger and sound the alarm, and your fingers folded over the top, that's your prefrontal cortex. That's the thinking brain, perspective, empathy, impulse control, long-term planning, the ability to hold two things at once.
[00:13:14] Everything you need to parent well lives right there under your fingers. Now, lift your fingers up and only expose your thumb. That's flipping your lid. When your amygdala decides that you're in danger, it doesn't ask permission. It goes off, and the prefrontal cortex, those fingers that have all those higher executive functioning skills, they go offline.
[00:13:39] Not partially, totally. The blood flow literally changes in our brains. And here's what I need you to understand about the amygdala, because this is the whole thing. It cannot tell the difference between a wild animal and a text message from your teenage daughter. It can't tell the difference between a physical threat to your body and a threat to your identity as a parent To your hopes for your kids, to the future you had pictured.
[00:14:11] It reads the danger, it hits the alarm, and your body prepares to fight, or run, or freeze, or fawn. And that's what happened to me in Atlanta. There wasn't a bear. There was a 16-year-old across the country with a phone, and my body responded like something was coming to get me. And I wanna add one layer, because this is a piece that gets missed.
[00:14:35] The younger your kiddo is, the more control you have, right? And even then, control is pretty much an illusion. But you could pick them up. You could physically move them. You could decide what time bedtime was, and it was the end of the discussion with most of our kids, right? Adolescence, it takes that away.
[00:14:57] That's the design. Their whole job right now is to separate from you, figure out who they are apart from you, and they can't do that if you're still running the show. So the fear you feel is not irrational. You genuinely have less control, hardly any, than you used to. I've spent a lot of time on this podcast teasing apart control versus influence.
[00:15:19] Go through the library. Find some good shows around that. Your amygdala is picking up something that is really real. It's just responding to it with a strategy that is wrong for the situation, right? You can't grab a 16-year-old. I couldn't. Like, you know, listen, I thought about it. Like, how can I... I remember I had some advice from one of, a family member who I had to just kind of cut off for a while, saying, "Well, you can't let her do that.
[00:15:46] You can't let her drop out." And I remember thinking to myself, so what exactly does it look like for me to force her to go to school? Like, how do I do that? Honestly, how do I do that? Because in the beginning, I was like, "Tell me how, 'cause I will." You can't grab them and carry them out, right? So your body does the only other thing it knows how to do, which is get loud, right?
[00:16:09] Get loud. The other thing that's happening, and this is, you know, a whole episode of its own, so I'll keep it short, your child's prefrontal cortex is under construction. It's not finished until their mid-20s. So they come offline, and their lid flips even faster than yours, and takes longer to come out.
[00:16:27] Which means me showing up at home, blazing, ready to roll, ready to rumble, lid flipped, I'm gonna activate their lid flipping, and then we've got two people with zero thinking brains available trying to have a conversation about something that is really important, right? The conversation cannot go well.
[00:16:49] It's not possible for it to go well. Somebody has to have their lid on, and it's gonna have to be us
[00:17:04] I recently was interviewed by Dr. Shefali. It was so awesome. It was actually last night for her upcoming summit, The Great Parenting Wake Up, and one of the things she talked about was how we really are the host. The adults in the room are the host nervous systems. Our kids, our teens, have a limited supply of capacity to manage stress and crisis, and so when they reach their capacity, they've gotta be able to lean on our nervous system.
[00:17:41] And when we are meeting them where they're at in stress level, there's nothing for us to give them. So it's really important as adults, as parents, for us to get ever better at tending to managing our nervous system. And I want to clear something up, 'cause I think the word regulation has become one of those words that's everywhere, and now it doesn't really mean much.
[00:18:09] So when I say regulation, a lot of parents hear be calm. Be the serene parent who never raises their voice, who receives the eye roll with, you know, a zen-like smile, who has done enough yoga that nothing touches them, right? I don't know that person. I've never met that person, and chasing that way of being will make you feel like a failure roughly four times a day, okay?
[00:18:35] So here's what I mean when I say regulation. Regulation is how fast you notice that your lid is flipped, that your nervous system is activated, and how well you come back to a baseline That's it. That's the whole skill. You're gonna flip. You're gonna have emotions. You're gonna feel angry, and scared, and sad, and grief, and delight, and excitement.
[00:18:59] You're gonna feel all the things, and I really flipped out in Atlanta when I saw that text, and I've been doing this for, you know, over 20 years. You're gonna flip because somebody left a wet towel on the floor, and it's the fourth time you've noticed, and you've got nothing left to give. That's gonna happen.
[00:19:16] So this isn't about you being perfect. This is about you growing your ability to notice and shift, and the work is that over time, the noticing gets faster. You go from realizing it three days later to realizing it that night, to realizing it 20 minutes after, to catching yourself ready to rage, and noticing and stopping, and saying, "Nope, I'm not...
[00:19:41] This is not gonna be helpful." Another conversation that I had with a parent today, we talked about, you know, especially in the context of back to school season, the stress, the anxiety that many of our kids have coming into a new school year. Perhaps it's a new school. Perhaps it, you know, it's a new grade.
[00:20:00] Maybe they are in a new friend group. Regardless, there is so much stress, and they only have so much capacity. So what if instead of their attitude that shows up during this time is met with, "How dare you? Don't disrespect me like that," what if instead we think they're at their capacity for stress, and we respond with something like, "Sounds like things are really hard seeing you in this.
[00:20:24] Let's just take a break. Let's take a pause." Right? We can catch ourselves when that activation begins, when we feel it in our body, and we can decide, "Hold up. Nope, I'm gonna do something different." The coming back gets easier. The repair happens quicker. You get back to connection sooner, and that's the growth, right?
[00:20:46] That's the growth. It's not the absence of the flip. It's not that you never freak out again. Because, my friend, you are a human being navigating all these other human beings. We all have however many tools in our toolbox. It's... It happens. We freak out, we flip, our nervous system gets the better of us. It's not about the absence of that.
[00:21:10] It's about shrinking the distance between feeling that dysregulation and coming back to deciding to show up differently, right? Earlier this year, I asked you the question of what do you wanna create, right? So I'm noticing I'm getting activated. What do I wanna create in this moment? What do I wanna create in this challenge?
[00:21:32] What does my kid need? And you know, sometimes it's like as a parent, we can feel like, "What about me? What about what I need?" You can take care of you. Ask yourself, what do you need, and do it. But in those moments, you are the adult in the room, you are the adult in the relationship, so it is not about you.
[00:21:52] It is about that kiddo. And I'm... Please don't hear me say to cater or, you know, bend over backwards or be permissive. That's not what this is about. This is about understanding the nervous system, and that we all have certain capacities for being with stress and crisis, and our kids should and do have less of a capacity than we do, so it's up to us to figure it out for ourselves so that we can show up in a way that helps them grow and develop their capacity.
[00:22:24] All right? Great. So let's bring it back to the ecosystem. Now you can see it from the inside. So there's those four layers, right? And I already kind of blew through these. I'm gonna do it again. So that outermost layer is you, your growth, your regulation, your mindset, your values, the private logic that you've developed over time through the conditioning that happened for you, that you brought into your current household from the household you grew up in, right?
[00:22:55] Inside that is the relationship, the quality of your connection, how full the relational tank is. Inside of that, systems and routines, the agreements, the rhythms, the expectations that are enforced, the agreements that you return to, right? We wanna build trellises. It's not about creating a cage. It's about creating something that they can grow with, like scaffolding, right?
[00:23:19] And then at the very center, there's those in-the-moment tools: communication, problem-solving, encouragement, validation. What you reach for at 9:00 at night when everything's on fire. Now, episode 668, I gave you a sentence that this whole model hangs on, and I'm gonna say it again, because today what we're talking about is the proof of it.
[00:23:37] Every layer grows in the conditions created by the layers outside of it. Okay? Intentional ecosystem, close your eyes, picture it. A big ring, a smaller ring on the inside of that, a smaller ring on the inside of that, and then a small circle in the center. Each layer of the intentional ecosystem grows in the conditions created by the layers outside of it.
[00:24:05] That's it. So if you feel like, "Ugh, I'm trying to be curious, I'm trying to validate, I'm trying to do all these things, and it's not helpful It could be that really what you need is to work on relationship, or really what you need is to establish some kind of rhythm or routine, or really what you need is to take care of you.
[00:24:24] Most of us come shopping for the center. We want the script. We want the words for when they slam the door, when they're being assholes. And I get it, because the center is where the pain is, and we wanna make it stop. But the center of the ecosystem is downstream of everything else. A perfect script delivered by a flipped-lid parent isn't a script.
[00:24:47] It's a weapon with nice wording. Your kid's nervous system reads yours before their brain processes your sentence. So when clients tell me that the tools aren't working, I believe them, right? The tools are fine, right? The conditions they're supposed to grow in are where-- are problematic, right? This is what happened to me in Atlanta.
[00:25:11] My center layer was fully stocked. I know what to do. I had every communication tool a person can have, and not one of them was available to me because the outermost layer, me, my personal growth, my nervous system, was in a full-body threat response. And you can't validate from a flipped lid. You can't problem solve.
[00:25:33] You can't even have really good perspective when your brain is so focused on survival, right? The outer layer is the ground that the whole ecosystem stands on. That's why anymore, with parents, I really wanna start there
[00:25:58] And I'm not gonna leave you with theory. Here's three things you can use, right, that's gonna help you. And before I give them to you, I wanna repeat something from episode 668, because it applies to this more than anything else I teach. Insight and integration are two different animals. Insight is what's happening right now.
[00:26:18] You're nodding along. It makes sense. You're with me. You're feeling kinda lit up. All right, I got this. Insight is lovely, and it feels really good, right? We're in this place of, like, anything is possible. And insight will not save you when the door slams, when you've got a kid that's flipping you off or, you know, telling you they're done.
[00:26:42] Integration is when you've practiced that thing enough times through enough discomfort that your body starts to reach for it without being asked. That takes a lot of reps, a lot of repetition. It's awkward, they're unglamorous, and, you know, they're practiced even when nothing's wrong. So I'm gonna give you these three ideas, and I want you to hear them, but really what I want you to do is do them, practice them.
[00:27:15] Tonight, while the house is calm, so your body has the move already loaded when the house isn't calm, right? Low-hanging fruit here. So the first tool, when you're feeling dysregulated, right, make your exhale longer than your inhale. This is the one that is, like, top of the list, right? Breathing so that your exhale is longer than your inhale.
[00:27:42] So breathing in for the count of four and breathing out for the count of six or eight. Longer out than in. And do that continuously until you start to feel more of a sense of calm. And this is not woo-woo. Your exhale is wired to your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the system that brings you back down, right?
[00:28:07] So when you extend the exhale, you're sending a message to your brain that says, "Whatever's happening, we aren't being chased. We're gonna be okay. We are okay." And your brain believes your body. That's the part that so many people miss. You're not talking yourself out of the panic. You're going underneath the talking, right?
[00:28:31] So try it right now if you can. In for four. Out for eight
[00:28:45] The likelihood that you'll regret what you say after you do this kind of breathing is low, and that's what we're going for, right? The second tool, feel your feet on the floor. Keep your eyes on the room. So when you flip, when your brain flips, and you're in that fight or flight, freeze, fawn, you leave the present moment.
[00:29:07] You're in the future, and every catastrophe that could come from this, or you're in the past. You're running the highlight reel of everything you've ever done wrong. So bring yourself back through your body. Put both feet flat on the floor, feel the ground actually pushing up on your feet, and then look around wherever you are and find three real things.
[00:29:32] There's a lamp. There's a can of Spindrift. There's my AirPod case, right? Say them in your head if you need to. Say them out loud. You're telling your nervous system, "I am here. I'm in this room. This room is safe." When I got home and got off the plane, I did these things in the Seattle Airport, right?
[00:29:55] Eventually. I could feel, you know, even getting off the plane, everything was really activated, and just before I went outside to catch my ride, I stopped and I felt my feet on the floor. And I looked around, and it didn't fix what was going on, but it brought me back to the room, right? I added the breath, and that gave me some respite from the activation.
[00:30:20] And then the third tool that I wanna offer you, this one is one of my favorites, and it might be the one that sounds the strangest, so stay with me. Notice what your body does when you're scared. Like, usually it closes down. Your shoulders come forward, your arms cross, your jaw sets. Your hands might ball up.
[00:30:42] You make yourself small and hard, right? So I want you to do the opposite on purpose. We're gonna roll our shoulders back, opening the chest. Turn your palms up, right? If you've got privacy or if you're cool with it, right, actually open up your arms. The body leads the brain more often than we'd like to admit.
[00:31:05] When we open up physically, your emotional state will follow, and it's not instant, it's not magic, but you'll feel something loosen. And while you're here in this open-hearted stance, feeling your feet on the floor- Breathing. Give yourself some words. Give yourself a mantra, some affirmations. Keep it simple.
[00:31:29] You're okay. You're enough, and that's it. That's what I say to myself. Not, "You've got this," because sometimes, honestly, that's hard to believe. Not a strategy, just those two words, those two phrases on repeat until my hands unclench and I remember, yeah, in this moment, I am okay. I am enough. Because under every flipped lid that I've ever had is the same question: Am I failing my kid?
[00:32:00] Am I failing my kid? And that question is gonna keep hijacking you until you answer it loudly, right? One more thing, and this isn't a technique, it's permission. You do not owe your teenager an immediate response, ever. "I need a minute before I answer that" is a complete sentence. It's not weakness. It's not dodging.
[00:32:24] It doesn't undermine your authority. It teaches them something that you can't teach with a lecture, which is what it looks like when a grown adult notices that they're activated and takes the time to take care of it, and that's also co-regulation. Not you fixing their feelings or changing their mind, you managing your feelings in front of them so that their body has something steady to draw from, to sync to.
[00:32:56] Right? Isn't it good? Yeah. So everything I just gave you, that's the front porch. When my daughter and I were in our darkest stretch, I built myself a set of practices to survive it, right? Things like meditation and journal prompts, things I could reach for when I needed them, when I couldn't sleep at night, when my brain just wouldn't stop spinning.
[00:33:19] I didn't make it to sell. I made it because I needed it. That's a self-regulation toolkit, and I have created a self-regulation toolkit for you, and I'm giving it away, along with my chapter from the book, Raising Teens Who Talk To You, to anyone who registers for my upcoming program, Immersion Week, Living Joyful Courage Immersion Week, by September 7th.
[00:33:46] So you got a week. I'm telling you now in this episode because this is the only one of the three shows you're gonna hear in the next few weeks that airs before that deadline. Okay? So again, I'm pitching you right now. I've got an offer coming up, the Living Joyful Courage Immersion Week. You've heard the ads for it.
[00:34:04] You've seen me talk about it on social media. I'm not gonna get super into it. But I have bonuses for those of you that register early, and it's the self-regulation toolkit for handling those hard moments, right? Helping yourself prepare and train up your nervous system for what is the rough terrain of the teen years, and my chapter from the book, Raising Teens Who Talk To You.
[00:34:28] September 7th is the deadline for that, so go check it out. Go to besproutable.com/immersion and sign up. The program itself is gonna be amazing. Amazing If this landed for you, here's what I want you to remember. You don't have to do this all by yourself. I mean that structu- I mean that structurally, not as a nice sentiment.
[00:34:50] I said it in episode 668, I keep talking about this episode, and I'll keep saying it. Humans change in relationship. Insight happens alone on a walk with your earbuds in. Integration happens when somebody else knows what you're working on and is in it with you. That's the actual mechanism that we wanna move towards.
[00:35:14] So again, what we touched on today is a lot of that outermost layer of the intentional ecosystem. During immersion week, September 21st through the 25th, we're gonna build the whole ecosystem together with people who are in the same season of parenting that you're in. Five days with me live, right? Monday, we're building the ecosystem from the outside in.
[00:35:35] Tuesday is an office hour call with real questions from you, just free-floating, free flow. Free floating, that's kind of funny. Wednesday, we're gonna have some hot seat coaching. Thursday is a full soul care session where we're gonna practice the things from the ecosystem or from the self-regulation toolkit.
[00:35:56] And then Friday, we're gonna build a plan, so you walk out of the week with something to do instead of something to think about, right? Five days to stop swinging between coming down hard and throwing your hands up, and find the grounded middle instead. The program's $69. The first 20 people who register get a private one-on-one with me.
[00:36:16] If you register by September 7th, again, you get that chapter and the self-regulation toolkit for free. So beesproutable.com/immersion. That's beesproutable.com/immersion. Reminding you, next week we're talking about the question underneath almost every message I get, which is, is this normal? What's actually happening in your kid's brain and body right now, and why so much of it feels so personal, but it isn't.
[00:36:44] Before you go, one thing from today. Tonight, before anything goes wrong, I just want you to practice that breath. Even if you don't feel like you need it, practice that longer exhale than inhale. Four beats in, eight beats out. Do it four times, five times. Notice how it shifts your body, right? If you do nothing else, practice that tonight.
[00:37:04] You think you are. And I am so glad that I get to spend time with you like this. Have a beautiful week. I'll see you next week. Bye.
[00:37:17] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my Sproutable partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you, Danielle, for supporting with the show notes, as well as Chris Mann and the team at Podshaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. As I mentioned, sharing is caring.
[00:37:34] If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content. Be sure to check out what we have going on for parents of kids of all ages, and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected at besproutable.com.
[00:37:55] I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.