Eps 651: Rebuilding trust with our teens

Today joyful courage is all about leaning into the content shared during this show… being willing to recognize my trauma responses, move through them, and lean into connection.

Resources mentioned:

• Free Explore Call with Casey → besproutable.com/explore
• Living Joyful Courage Inner Circle (membership community)
• Joyful Courage: Calming the Drama and Taking Control of YOUR Parenting Journey by Casey O’Roarty
• Positive Discipline framework (referenced via the shopping cart metaphor)
• Attachment theory (rupture and repair as foundation of secure attachment)

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 adolescents 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 Ody. I am a parent coach, positive discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sprout Bowl. 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.
[00:01:23] Hey everybody. Hi. Yay. Yeah. Yay. Welcome back to the podcast and welcome back to a solo show. You and me. I really like it when it's just you and me. I'm not gonna lie, and you all seem to appreciate it as well. I hear from you about how you appreciate solo shows, so. Here I am solo showing it with you, and here to say life keeps lifeing as I'm sure it does for you.
[00:01:58] So this is a really nice space for me to drop into and show up and be seen. As well as seeing you. And before I get too far into today's show, I wanna welcome the new listeners that are showing up to check things out. Hi. I am really grateful that you're here and trusting. That the content I create for you will be helpful.
[00:02:28] That's certainly what I strive for. It's my goal. Helpful, real content that moves you to a place of hope and encouragement. Helpful. Helpful because I am in touch with so many parents through my one-on-one work and my membership community and other ways that I hold space for people. I know that one of the hardest things.
[00:02:51] To move through. Is rebuilding trust after moving through a particularly hard time with someone that we love, and maybe you have found out that your teen has been hurting themselves or someone else, maybe it's scary behavior that gets revealed, or choices that they are making or have made that feel like a slap in the face to your values.
[00:03:20] And perhaps leave you wondering, do I even know this person at all? Anyone out there having that experience, knowing that experience, familiar with that experience? Broken Trust can really do a number on us. I know this. It can leave us feeling like we're in a free fall, questioning all of our beliefs, our intuition.
[00:03:44] We may feel deep sadness or hopelessness, loss, grief. Broken trust can happen during adolescence and it is up to us to trust again. But damn, it's hard to get there. Even if we know in our head it's part of the process, we often can pull our hearts and bodies along to get to the other side. We have to drag them, and this is what I'm gonna focus on today, our relationship with trust and the power.
[00:04:13] Repair when we're wanting to trust again that our bodies won't let us. And you know, I just am here to say that's not a weakness. It's wiring and we're gonna get into it. So first let's take a look at what Broken Trust actually does to us. So there is A-P-T-S-D piece here. When trust is broken, especially repeatedly, your nervous system learns the threat.
[00:04:44] It doesn't care that things are better. Now it's doing its job of protecting you from being blindsided again. And if you've been blindsided more than once, that safety radar. That nervous system is really, really working for you. And listen, I get this big time, it's a real experience for me and it makes sense while also shows up as discouraging for the people that we love, right?
[00:05:11] When we can't quite get there fast enough for them, it can feel, you know, irritating, discouraging to them and just continues to create. Havoc in our relationship, but it's biology. This is real life, and you've been burned and you've been heard or maybe blindsided. Like I said, this leaves a mark on our energetic body and it makes sense.
[00:05:37] That your nervous system kicks into high gear, right? This shows up as this hyper vigilance scanning for evidence, reading into everything, bracing for the next rupture, and parents, and people feel ashamed of this sometimes, like, why can't I just move on? They're clearly doing so well. Why can't I believe them?
[00:05:59] Anybody relating to this, that feeling of not quite being able to relax, you've relaxed before, and look what happened. You believed in them in the past, and they continue to break your trust. The hyper vigilance is serving you in one way. It's giving you a false sense that you're doing something to keep things smooth.
[00:06:17] And this reminds me of a metaphor that one of my mentors taught me years ago when we talk about positive discipline versus the more behaviorist ways of parenting. So the behaviorist sees the kids, the people as wonky shopping carts, right, with bad wheels, and the only way to keep them going straight. Is to narrow up the aisle that we're pushing the cart down, right?
[00:06:45] One side we bring in the consequences for getting off course. The other side, we're pulling in rewards for that cart to stay on course, and we're just narrowing the path so that there isn't room to make mistakes, right? So the aisle itself stays narrow. In positive discipline, we see the shopping cart as fully capable of learning.
[00:07:09] We see humans, as, you know, fully capable of learning new skills and ways of being right, and rather than creating a narrower path, we teach, practice and model the skills needed to be with the bumps in the road, to be with the challenges, to move through the learning, the growth edges, the disappointments.
[00:07:34] The emotional experience that we're having because we're human beings in relationship with each other when we're in hypervigilant vigilance, which, let me say again, I totally understand the allure of we are in that mindset of keeping things narrow to keep our people on the path. That is the path that we want them to be on, and we fool ourselves into thinking that we can stay on top of things enough to keep the hurt from happening to us again, hyper vigilance is a survival mechanism, right?
[00:08:12] And even as we may recognize that ultimately what we want is for them to want to make healthy relationship forwarding choices. There is this little hit of security that comes when we monitor or track or stay on top, even as we know that it's not sustainable, right? I don't want my people to do the right thing because they don't want me to catch them not doing the right thing.
[00:08:39] I want them to do the right thing because it's what feels good to them. It's what's in integrity for them. We're gonna name this hypervigilance. It is a trauma response. It is not a character flaw. The body is holding the history of the relationship, even as the mind wants to release that history and move into something new.
[00:08:58] And when we name it, it could sound like oof. Okay? There's that fear again. I notice that. I wanna dig around, find out if my kiddo's getting into mischief, find out. If my loved one is making bad choices, I'm gonna notice it. I'm gonna breathe this moment out for a moment. I'm gonna calm my nervous system.
[00:09:22] A key reframe here is that your triggered response is simply information. It is not telling you what to do. It's not instruction. Right. You don't have to act on every alarm that your nervous system fires off. Man, that is good advice for me too. Oh man. So again, you can pause and you can name it. I'm having a trauma response right now.
[00:09:46] My past experience is speaking not the present moment, and when we do this, we create this tiny gap between that stimulus moment and the response that we make. And really. When we respond from the present moment, this is really where we grow,
[00:10:14] and let's consider the difference between earned trust and naive trust. Hope doesn't mean pretending, having hope that things can be different, having hope that things are moving in the right direction. It's not about pretending. Right? And there's a trap that a lot of us fall into swinging between totally in distrust.
[00:10:36] And then that just willing ourselves back into full trust because we love our kids, we love our people, and we want things to be normal. We wanna believe that everything's normal, right? We want things to be normal. We wanna feel good. We want the tingling in our belly and the tightness in our chest to go away.
[00:10:55] It makes sense. Again, physical and emotional safety runs deep. Those needs for that, the human need for physical and emotional safety is deep right? However, neither of the swings of the pendulum is sustainable. If what we're hoping to create is real relationship, what we actually get to work on building is earned trust, and it is slow.
[00:11:23] It's incremental. It's behavior based. So have any of you ever been in that conversation loop where your teen accuses you, saying you just don't trust me and find it to be such a trigger? Right. Adolescence, man, it's a wild time. And because it is such a huge developmental transition. Between child and adulthood, our kids should be testing things out.
[00:11:50] Our adolescents should be trying things on individuating, making mistakes. So I think this makes it really tricky when we're considering trust and our relationship with our teens. Something that was useful for me with my kids is remembering not to expect them to be perfect or to avoid making mistakes.
[00:12:11] But instead leaning into trusting that they were learning from the mistakes they were making. They were learning and growing through what they were going through. And then there is the really hard behaviors that come up again and again and erode that trust over time. 'cause we are like, okay, you made a mistake.
[00:12:32] Learn from it. Don't make it again. And for some of our kids, some of the people that we love, apparently they need to make the mistake more than once and then get to a point of being honest with themselves about asking for help or. Determining what alignment looks like. What does integrity look like, right?
[00:12:52] What does that look like? And it can get harder and harder depending on the wedge of mischief to return to that belief that our people are learning and growing and telling the truth. That history comes up and it triggers us back into that place of hurt and disbelief. It's tricky, right? I'm not here to say that it's easy.
[00:13:14] I'm not here to say, here's five steps to moving through this in the next week and being done, right? So as we work to rebuild trust with our loved ones, maybe we hold trust as not a feeling we decide to have, but instead a conclusion that we reach through evidence over time. This reframe takes the pressure off you.
[00:13:37] You don't have to manufacture trust, you get to witness it being built. You get to be the witness for the teen, right? For the loved one. Trust is rebuilt through consistent small actions. Not big grand gestures or apologies, although apologies are great, especially apologies that name the behavior that was problematic, right?
[00:14:01] But. Small actions can look like showing up on time, being where they said they'd be telling the truth about small things. We get to train ourselves, right? We parents, we get to train ourselves to notice and value these things while again, recognizing when what we're feeling is a trauma response and not what's actually presenting itself in the present moment.
[00:14:25] It feels really vulnerable to witness those small things and to let trust build again. It can feel very vulnerable because we don't wanna continue to get hurt. And I just get that. And I just wanna say with any kind of betrayal that you may be moving through. Yes. The person who made the mistake and engaged in the hard.
[00:14:49] Is responsible for finding their way back to the relationship. And also your experience of hurt and pain is valid and it matters. And I just want to say that your experience of hurt and pain is valid and it takes time and energy and effort and oftentimes support to release that pain from the body. I just wanna take a moment and see you and your depth of love for the people that you care about and the ways that you continue to show up for them that are so big and so small that are seen and unseen your willingness to figure out how to move forward.
[00:15:35] I see that. I see your tender heart. Okay. That's what I wanna say directly to you. That's listening. It's real what you're feeling and it matters. And we also get to hold space and create room for our teens, the people that we love to create a new narrative as well, and to do their own work. Without us continuing to be in this trauma response.
[00:16:04] So one thing might be, that might be helpful is you can create some kind of trust ledger, right? You can literally notice and mentally or physically log those small moments of follow through that you're seeing from your. Your person, your team, right? Because this will train the brain to register the evidence of safety and trust building rather than scanning for threats.
[00:16:31] Because right now that's kind of where we're wired if we're moving through. A relationship where our person, you know, where we just feel betrayed, right? All we're looking for is more of that. And so we have to counter, we have to actively and intentionally counter that with looking for evidence of trust and follow through.
[00:16:54] So a trust ledger might be helpful. And you know, the good news is that rupture and repair is actually the foundation of secure attachment. So let's normalize the cycle. This isn't a broken relationship, it's a real relationship. Don't be fooled by what's presented. Public facing right by others. Whether that is the seemingly perfect marriages or perfect teens or perfectly decorated homes, we all know the clutter that lives outside of the frame, right?
[00:17:29] And our closest relationships, those ones with our parents or our partners, our kids. Those are the ones that are gonna grow us the most, not because they're so smooth and easy and the perfect fit, and everybody's doing the right thing all the time, but because these are the relationships that challenge us the most, they challenge us to take responsibility, to forgive, to love after hurt, and yes to trust.
[00:17:57] And here's something straight from attachment theory. I love this. No relationship is ruptured into insecurity by repair attempts. What creates insecurity in rupture is not repairing. So there's so many stories that I can tell about parenting my kids, where I was the one that flipped out and lost my shit only to own it and make repair and feel even closer to my child because of it.
[00:18:22] I was always amazed by the power of repair. What we move through together, when we're really willing to be transparent in it and own our part and make things right. God, this has the potential of elevating the whole relationship, being able to look back and say, God, that was big and dark and hard. You did what it took to recover, including making things right with me.
[00:18:50] This is what the greatest love stories of all time are about, or looking back and hearing, wow, that was big and dark and it took me time to make things right with you, but you were there believing in me and trusting that we could grow. That made a huge impact. This is the goal, right? This is the goal. The fact that you're in this rebuilding phase at all means something is working.
[00:19:13] A teen who's coming back to the relationship owning behavior, trying, that's not nothing, right? And if you're not quite there yet, I see you and I know that it's hard and you get to take care of yourself. Remember, I have already mentioned this, but adolescence is by design a period of individuation. Some of what looked like betrayal.
[00:19:35] Was developmental rupture, which doesn't make it hurt less, but it contextualizes it differently, and the goal isn't to return to the pre ruptured relationship. You are building a new one. This is relationship 2.0. So remember these micro repair moments and micro repair. Is less about making amends and more about just looking for opportunities of pure connection.
[00:20:03] Right? And they're small. That's why I said micro. So you get to initiate those small, low stakes reconnection, not processing the wound, just being together a drive or a show or a meal, warmth. In the morning initiate and generate that move into something different. As you actively seek out time with your loved one, time to delight in them and with them and creating those moments gives you some relational deposits, and that also helps with growing trust, right?
[00:20:39] We also get to do our own work. We get to do our own work. We don't heal by watching them do better. We heal by going inward. Because again, if we're really struggling with trust, it's because we've been hurt, right? And the hard truth is you can't white knuckle your way to trust. If your nervous system is stuck in threat mode, it will poison even the genuine repair happening in front of you, even when they're doing the right thing, saying the right thing, being the right thing.
[00:21:12] Your loved one cannot be responsible for healing your nervous system. That's your work, eh? I find this super annoying, but really, you've heard me talk about that a lot. Our wellbeing is an inside job. Clearly I'm moving through this, right? And when you've moved through hard times with your kids or someone who is significant in your life, when the foundation of your relationship with them has been shaken, it's up to you.
[00:21:36] To do the work of healing you, which means getting your own support, right? It could be a therapist, could be a coach, a community. Hello, living, joyful courage, membership program, processing your grief, feeling the feelings rather than managing them. Having a space for you to express your what? The actual fuck experience, because I know you didn't ask for what's shown up.
[00:22:04] None of us embark in a relationship and say, oh, I'm so looking forward to all the bullshit you're gonna bring into my life to grow me. No, we don't. We think having children will be magical. We believe in the vows we make and say, I do too. We expect the people we love to show up well for us, just as we do mostly for them.
[00:22:23] Hmm. And notice I said mostly, let's not pretend that we're perfect because we are not perfect. We have our own flaws, our own growth edges, our own habits and behaviors that are not useful to others, right? Each of us have quirks that are hard for people to love about us. For sure. No doubt. It's all part of the layers here, and why getting support matters.
[00:22:49] This is where the both Anne lives. I can hold space for my teen's growth. I can hold space for my loved one's growth and do my own healing simultaneously. They are not competing priorities and honestly, one without the other isn't going to get our relationship to where we want it to be.
[00:23:16] And there's also an identity situation, right? When one of our kids goes off the rails, I know this intimately. Parents often experience this kind of identity rupture. Like, who am I as a parent? If this happened, what did I miss? What does this say about me? What does this behavior that my loved one is engaged in?
[00:23:35] What does it say about me? I hear this over and over and it's a shame story that needs tending to. And by the way, again, I've been there. So another practical tool is doing that. I talk about it a lot. Somatic check-in before any difficult conversations. So before you engaged with your people about anything that's trust related, spend a full minute with your feet on the floor.
[00:24:04] A few deep inhales and exhales and ask yourself, am I responding to right now or to our history? Right? How can I get ever better at being in the present moment? Slow down. Be with that question. Yeah. And we get to hold hope as a practice. Hope is a practice, it's not a feeling. Encouragement is keeping focused on the long game.
[00:24:32] Hope isn't naive. Hope is a discipline. It's choosing to stay open to the possibility of something different, even while carrying the memory of something that really hurts. Hope is choosing to stay open to the possibility of something different, even while carrying the memory of something hard or even being in the hard.
[00:24:57] This was so important to me when my oldest was struggling, and it is with me now as I move through healing in other relationships, staying open to the possibility of something different, being born through the experience, the gift of the hard. Is what can come out of it. And I get it. I know. Screw me.
[00:25:20] Screw you, Casey. Like, this sucks. I didn't ask for this gift. I get it. There's a wound you're living with and it might still feel really raw. And if you want to live with hope, it's available. And there's maybe a practical reframe here. What if we reframe uncertainty? Maybe uncertainty is not danger. And often those of us who've experienced any kind of betrayal or that mischief making over time often equates the not knowing.
[00:25:52] Uncertainty with a threat, but uncertainty is just the nature of any living relationship, especially with a teen who's still becoming who they are. Where are they? Who are they with? What are they doing? These questions are valid questions, okay? And can become really overwhelming and slightest again into that hypervigilance.
[00:26:13] In the context of past mischief making, we can get hyper-focused on all the possible what ifs. Which is actually us hurting ourselves. And even second guessing, our teens declared desire to be doing better and wanting to build trust. Our obsession with uncertainty can start to become really toxic to a relationship that's in the process of healing.
[00:26:38] So I have another tool. I have another question to sit with, which I love and I'm using in my own practice, which is. What would I need to believe right now to feel a little more at ease? We're not bypassing reality. We're loosening our grip, right? We're loosening our grip on that hypervigilance. What would I need to believe right now to feel a little bit more ease?
[00:27:06] We are not hurting ourselves when we are looking for ease in the present moment. I'm so into this question. And when I ask myself this question, I think about how much my people care about me and about themselves. I think about them wanting a good life and that they have the tools they need. This question is really powerful, and there's a willingness that we get invited into with this question, right?
[00:27:34] What would I need to believe right now, and am I willing to believe it, to bring myself some ease? This is like self-care on steroids, right? Because when we're in a place of ease, we have all of our faculties, we have the broadest view. Keep in mind that the relationship that you're building through whatever rupture, whatever, you know, painful experience you've had, if you're, if you do the work, that relationship will be stronger and more honest than the one that existed before it.
[00:28:10] And that's not lip service. That's what research shows and it makes sense. And lately what's helped me is to listen to my wise inner self, reminding me that this is all a carnival ride. Yes, absolutely. What happens in this life matters and hurt and trauma is real. And when I can lift up and out of my own experience and see the vast timeline of my life.
[00:28:37] What feels very big and deep while I'm in it feels a little less daunting looking at it from that 10,000 foot view, right? Because what I believe is that we are humans here to evolve and grow with and from each other, and what a gift that is. So as I close out this episode, I have an invitation for you.
[00:29:00] I want you to find one concrete thing that your teen has done recently. Or whoever in your life that you're in this struggle with that surprised you positively, write it down. Return to it. When your nervous system wants to catastrophize, remind yourself of the work that they're doing. You aren't alone and you'll move through whatever you're going through right now.
[00:29:26] I see you. I believe you when you say this is hard, your experience matters. Okay. Your experience matters. Your pain matters, and I hope that this podcast leaves you with some powerful things to consider and tools to practice. Remember that it isn't just about helping your loved one rebuild trust with you.
[00:29:51] You're also modeling and practicing what it looks like to stay in relationship through. Rupture through the mischief, and that is the lesson that is the gift, and that requires you, again, to do your own work just as much as it requires anything from them. I'm talking to you and I'm talking to myself. My gosh.
[00:30:16] I love all of you people. Thank you for tuning in and listening. If you feel like. This show really landed for you and you'd like deeper support with the types of work I'm inviting you into. Book a free explore call with me. You can go to be spr.com/explore to get on my schedule. I have openings. I'd love to hold space for you to see what's going on in your life and how I can be of service.
[00:30:44] So be s spreadable.com/explore. Really appreciating each and every one of you. And if this feels like something that you think others should listen to, feel free to pass the show around. In fact. Pass the show around. I'm always trying to grow my listenership and, um, what I'm hearing is that the content makes an impact.
[00:31:08] So help me share by sharing yourself. All right, thank you. Bye.
[00:31:18] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my Sprout partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you Danielle, for supporting with. The show notes as well as Chris Mann and the team at Pod Shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. As I mentioned, sharing is caring. 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.
[00:31:45] 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 [email protected]. I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.