Summer Series: Eps 198, Grounding Ourselves with Kerry Foreman

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Hey everybody. I just wanted to pop in before the show to remind you that the joyful courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey. Audiobook will be available just in time for the fall. I know that it's summer now, but soon we will all be looking at the transitions that come with starting a new school year. I am super confident that the joyful courage audiobook will be a supportive companion as you write it out with your kids. It's full of stories and tools that will connect you with self and others, and the audiobook is something you can listen to over and over and over again. Keep staying tuned in for details as we get closer to launch day. Follow joyful courage on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for my weekly newsletter at www dot joyful courage.com/join

Wow. Welcome back to joyful courage, a conscious parenting podcast where we get real and raw about the parenting journey. You've tuned into another summer series. Episode this week. I am super excited to bring back my conversation from two years ago. Episode 98 with Carrie Forman, I am thrilled to be sharing this with you. Carrie is someone that I follow on Instagram, and I'm continuously inspired by how she shows up in the world. Carrie has an online program for teens that is based in mindfulness. It's a four week research based course that will allow your teenager to develop beginning mindfulness skills and cultivate a mindfulness practice that will reduce stress and improve their mental health. Your teen will become empowered to take control of their well being, become more aware of thoughts and behaviors, leading to higher accountability, increase their self esteem and find inner happiness, not attached to anything external. I want to take that program, but it's for teens, so I wanted to let you know about that before I share the podcast interview with you. Follow Carrie all over the place. Follow her on Instagram, get on her website. Check her out. She is one of my very favorites. I know you'll fall in love with her just like I did. Enjoy the episode. Hey everybody, welcome back to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I am your host, Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer and parent coach. And as always, I am really excited that you are listening in. If you find yourself laughing, taking notes or excited about what you hear on the show today, if you're doing that, head nod like, Oh yes, yes, yes, do me a favor and pay it forward. Share this episode with your friends, family, neighbors, strangers, at the gas station. Your sharing is the reason I'm able to show up for you each week, and I'm deeply honored to do so. My guest today is Carrie foreman. Carrie is a registered psychotherapist. I love that word psychologist with her, with her master's in clinical mental health counseling, she is passionate about mindfulness, and has been practicing and teaching for four years. Carrie lives in monument, Colorado with her patient husband, a teenager, a tween, and two rescue dogs, Norman and Fern. Carrie was raised in a college town in Indiana, and after a chaotic childhood, moved out on her own. At age 16, she learned to be a fighter. Through some tough life lessons, through using mindfulness to increase her self awareness, she has realized how she can learn and practice well that she had learned and was practicing faulty coping skills during her childhood, and has targeted them one by one, slowly changing the cycles of her family. Oh, that so resonates with me. She's learning new behaviors and working to create new positive habits for life. Welcome to the podcast, Carrie, I'm so glad that you're here.

Kerry Foreman 4:20
Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. You probably know I've been listening and watching you for a while, so I'm excited to be here. Yay.

Casey O'Roarty 4:28
Well, will you fill in the gaps a little bit? So I mean reading your bio, Carrie, so many people myself and so many people I work with, it feels like parenting is really about just what you said. It's about reprogramming ourselves, rewiring habits and behaviors that may have kept us safe, that may have, quote, helped us to cope, but now we're in these relationships with our partners and our children, and they're not so helpful. So will you fill in some more gaps? Ups around like, what? What has been your journey?

Kerry Foreman 5:03
Yeah, so I did not go back to school for counseling until my late 30s, and did a myriad of other things before this, but I had my son at age 30, so I had about six or seven years of parenting under my belt when I went back to school for counseling and until that, those first six or seven years, I just felt like I was going on a map that I had been given as a child, you know, not really given, but what I was following as a child, and I knew from looking around me, from looking at my cousins and my family of origin, and you know, anybody in my family, extended or immediate, that that's not really what I wanted to do, because all of us, in our own way, were trying to create change in our lives, because it was much needed change. I come from one of those families that, yes, there was physical abuse, but the biggest issue was verbal, emotional, psychological stuff going on that was creating it was conditioning me to react in certain ways, and keeping me from responding. Because what I didn't know is there's these patterns that emerge in your house, and they for me, my three main emotional patterns growing up were shame, guilt and anger. I could if I have to just pick three,

Casey O'Roarty 6:52
right?

Kerry Foreman 6:55
But those are those, the three main ones, and those three patterns kept me kind of sick, and I didn't really realize that I was just on this path of reacting until I had my first child, and when he started to search for his own identity and his own little personality was starting to emerge that was not dictated by me. I started to struggle with what I now see as kind of wanting to shut that down, yeah, like, you know, I hate saying that out loud, but it's, it's wanting to shut it down so that he understands this is the path that he has to take. This is the right path, not the one you want, right? And, I did my best in those early years, I said to some members of my family on an ongoing basis, I'm choosing to parent differently. I'm choosing to parent differently when they would give me the look because he talked back to me or he said something disrespectful, like my kid has a mouth. So my oldest has a mouth. They both do, but the oldest for sure, and I kept trying to throw things at it that would help to steer him in a different direction. But I wasn't really sure what I was doing, to be honest with you, until I went back to school and learned more about developmental stages and, you know, just different ways to actually respond instead of react. So hopefully that fills in the gaps a little bit about how I decided to make this change. I'm a first generation college graduate, let alone, you know, graduate school, and I just decided my kids lives are not going to look like mine did in the early years, right?

Casey O'Roarty 8:51
Well, and what landed for me in your share there, Carrie, was that we decide we're having children, and it's gonna be different. And then, like you say, their little personalities emerge, and they are on their own mission to explore the world. And I think that's the place where so many of us have that, oh my gosh, if we're aware enough to recognize, oh my gosh, all the things I said I wasn't going to do are inside of me, yeah, yeah. And that, I mean, because I had that exact experience as well, and it came with one, surprisingly, a lot of compassion for my parent, yeah, because it was like, wow, this is, like, this is, I mean, it almost feels like an out of body. It could feel like an out of body experience when you're on that roller coaster versus so I had that compassion, but then it was also like, but if this was their experience, why did they not say, Whoa, I've got to figure out something different. So once I moved through my own forgiveness around that, you know. And just made it my mission to learn more and grow and expand and look at my own stuff, right? Yeah,

Kerry Foreman 10:07
yeah, yeah. You know, I took the nurturing feeling that I have towards my children, and when I became a parent, I tried to transfer that to my own parents, and think of them as kids. And I know one thing I know for absolute sure, is my mom wanted very different for us than what she had growing up. And I almost said, believe it or not, but you don't know every detail of my childhood. But believe it or not, she believed she was doing that when she was raising us. So I have no animosity. I I love my parents for everything they hoped to be, and I will create change and change cycles. Yeah, yay. I'm

Casey O'Roarty 10:58
so excited that we're having this conversation today, and you, part of your offer is really this mindfulness piece. So today on the show listeners, you are going to get the treat of listening to Carrie and I digging in to what it means to be grounded. And how does that if we're talking about these old patterns that were the change the new you know, creating change, creating a new cycle. How does being grounded fit into that?

Kerry Foreman 11:29
Being grounded? I started it because I did my practicum at a mindfulness Center in Denver, and always considered myself to be so open minded. Joked that I'm the hippie of my town, and went to this mindfulness center and was like, oh, okay, I'm clearly, like, the most conservative one in the room here. So I felt very out of, out of my element, even though that's how I pictured myself and they they immersed us every day in a mindfulness practice, every week, in environment of sanity, all these wonderful, amazing tools that I didn't realize were changing my patterns, my conditioning and the fiber of who I was, even. I mean, this was at the end of my schooling. I had been taught all these different theory counseling theories. I had been taught how to hold space, all these amazing things. And the most important piece for anybody to create change in my mind is to be aware of your own inner state of being, yes.

Casey O'Roarty 12:42
Oh, preach it, yeah. And they never

Kerry Foreman 12:46
taught that. It wasn't even mentioned in my program, which I think was a fabulous program, but it was never even mentioned. So what started happening after about six months, I we do two different practicums. So this was a very long practicum was started happening after about six months, is I started noticing my relationships were different. My relationship with my husband felt more enriched. My relationship with my children was more respectful. It was just different and I it was a different that I loved and I craved and I wanted more of and the only way I could explain it was I felt grounded. And you know, if we talk about being grounded, it's the it's the ability to maintain balance and presence of mind no matter what is happening around this.

Casey O'Roarty 13:40
So let's tease that out. Okay? Because I think that you know, for people like you who have had all this experience, and I've had some experience too, with mindfulness and meditation posts, so for somebody that's listening like balance and what did you say, presence of mind, yeah. What is that in your experience. How do you experience? What does balance feel like in your body? Carrie,

Kerry Foreman 14:14
God, that's a good question. Thank you. Balance in my body feels like noticing it feels like and see mindfulness gurus hate this word. They will say that control has nothing to do with mindfulness, that mindfulness is about letting go of control. For me, somebody who struggles with anxiety, mindfulness actually signifies control, to be honest with you, it's for me, it's the ability to be aware of my own inner state of being a really high awareness have accountability for what that means for me. So. And compassion and empathy for myself, so that it can then spill over onto the people that I love. So in my body, it does feel like control Casey, and believe me, I have had many a debate online with mindfulness experts when I say the word control, but I think for us laypeople, and I consider myself a layperson, because I don't like the word expert. I don't want a guru on a mountain. I want a mom in a kitchen. I want somebody who can say to me, this is what it feels like. It feels like I'm really hyper aware, sometimes too aware of that. Right now my heart is beating fast, and I know for me that means an anxious place. I am very aware that right now my thoughts are, let's say I was just triggered by something my son said, or my daughter said, that I'm very aware that my thoughts were just triggered by what he said right, and now I have the need my accountability is I feel the need to stop him or right, redirect him, or have control of the situation, because I have fear, right? And that fear I know that I have it because my heart is beating fast and my jaw is tight and my shoulders are scrunched. It's just a really deep knowing of who I am physically so I know my warning system really well, and a really deep knowing of what kind of thoughts I have on a regular basis and which ones I should believe, and which ones are stories that I'm telling myself. Yeah?

Casey O'Roarty 16:48
And the word that's coming up for me is release. Yeah, right, like that, like that, because I have that same kind of experience, right? So, and I talk about it on the podcast a lot, and with my clients, it's that noticing the signals that my body gives me when I'm about to really let it go, and I get hot and I get tingly and I get tight, and typically I'm angry or resentful, and the self talk Is everybody is

Kerry Foreman 17:20
to blame, yes, and I'm not right, and I'm

Casey O'Roarty 17:23
the victim. Yes, doing this to me, I yeah, yes.

Kerry Foreman 17:28
And the stuff that go the stuff that I say to myself sometimes is ridiculous. Yeah, it really is. I fully admit that, especially it usually comes when my husband and I are disagreeing. To be honest with you, it doesn't come as much with my kids anymore, because I found a really great place for that. Doesn't mean I don't get upset, sure, but I have found a good place for it. My husband, I think, because he's an adult and in my brain, the story I tell myself is I expect more. I expect him to communicate on this level, and I expect him to respond with full awareness before he says something to me, and all these things that I expect, right, and I fail to expect those same things of myself,

Casey O'Roarty 18:13
right, well, and I feel like too so, so in that triggered body that I was just mentioning when I think about, okay, grounding. I always go first to my like posture, even just like, feet on the floor, pull back the release the shoulders. But it's like release to me, like, releasing the story, releasing the emotion.

Kerry Foreman 18:37
Yeah, what it really is releasing the control, even though, if you struggle with anxiety, it can make you feel like you have more control, right? Got it so? It's this juxtaposition, and that's what I'm saying, is it does make me feel like I have more control of this situation, but that's the end result. It's actually releasing the control that leads me to that feeling. I know it's kind of convoluted, but it's okay. It's fun to talk about. Yeah, it's the knowledge that in any one moment I really have no control, right? None. Yeah, and i i It's similar to that feeling I'm also scared of I don't like to fly, so, so I always took valium to fly, to be honest with you, and now I use mindfulness. But it's that the sinking into I have no control on a flight, somebody else is in complete control, that can feel wildly out of control, if you let your anxiety go crazy, or if you are mindful and you are grounded, that can feel like the most control you've ever had, because you accept that you have zero control and you. Stop flailing around trying to get it. You say, are you okay with cussing?

Casey O'Roarty 20:05
I can mark it as explicit. Yeah, get you get your shit together. And

Kerry Foreman 20:11
it's that feeling of, you know, I I can't even remember what I was gonna say, but the word was ass. That's all I know. It's the feeling that, you know, I want to have control of all of this, but if I just understand that I own zero control, then I'm able to have this physical release in my body, which then allows my thoughts to release

Casey O'Roarty 20:38
well. And I was just responding to somebody about similar to this, the mindset like except for the context, was time and time crunch. And five minutes is five minutes, and we can experience five minutes as, Oh my gosh, there's not enough time. Now you're crying, you don't know where your stuff is. Get it together. Let's go. I can't, you know, and all the emotion and the physical sensation and the triggering that shows up with that, or the mindset could be five minutes, great, we've got five minutes. Yeah, we have plenty of time. And it's a whole different energy that we create inside. And so when I think about back to that control piece, like yes, like our out experiences, events and experiences we don't have control over. However, we can influence our internal experience, and influencing our internal experience results in a whole different external experience. Or can, anyway, hey, interrupting, just to remind you that I'm getting ready for the fall, I've decided to re release the parenting teens with positive discipline audio Summit in September, and then follow it with two Academy tracks in October, one for the 12 to 14 year ish crowd, and another for the parents of the 15 to 18 plus kids, the summit is 15 interviews released over the course of a week. You will have access to those interviews during the week. You will also have the option to purchase the interviews if you'd like unlimited access. The joyful courage Academy is a five week course and is a learning opportunity for parents of teens that includes content community and a powerful one on one call with me. I'm so excited make sure you're all signed up for my newsletter, so that you get all the info about how to sign up. Go to www.joyfulcurge.com dot joyful courage.com/join, to make sure you're staying up to date, and don't forget that there are lots of powerful conversations happening over in the live and love with joyful courage and the joyful courage parents of teens group on Facebook. Ask to join, answer the questions and I'll approve you back to the show. So there is just so much that gets stirred up in this parenting journey, for sure, and I often will talk about how our history is what shows up in our most triggered moments, which we've kind of just touched on, and it can get in our way of being clear and staying connected and being grounded like you mentioned a little bit ago. Sometimes we hear the chatter and we hear it as our truth versus just our conditioning or our patterns. What are your thoughts about this? Our

Kerry Foreman 23:40
conditioning is called conditioning for that reason, it's because there isn't awareness that, oh, there might be a different way. What if this was true, instead of what I'm telling myself, and we don't even take that second in our world now, especially because we have electronics in front of us so often, and we're constantly glorifying doing, doing, doing. We don't have a lot of moments to just be, and in those moments where we can just be, we can hear our thoughts and we can take the time to question our thoughts. And I genuinely believe 95% of us are not questioning our own thoughts. I

Casey O'Roarty 24:23
believe that too. And it's, you know, and sometimes, and even in my own personal practice, like there's times where I'm can be really reflective on what's happening, and then there's the autopilot, right? That can show up and always connected to how I'm sleeping, how I'm eating, how I'm moving my body if I'm taking time to create space for stillness, because when those things get out of whack, that's when I notice my own autopilot showing up. Yeah,

Kerry Foreman 24:55
well, and I always say to clients, you know, if you have real high. Awareness of your of your body and your thoughts and your mind in general. Then you notice when you're triggered throughout the day. Well, what happens to that energy if you're triggered throughout the day, let's say at work, and you can't do anything about it. Maybe it's your boss, and you can't say something back to them. You can't be disrespectful. You don't want to push back. What happens to that energy? That energy gets released when you get home right and it doesn't get released in a positive way, usually, so being grounded as it pertains to how we behave with our spouse and how we behave or, you know, significant other in general, or how we behave with our children, if you don't have that high awareness of when you're triggered, what your thoughts are, what's happening in your body. Then maybe you get home and you just let it fly, and you don't stop and think, you know what? I was triggered all day at work. I was anxious and pissed off all day at work. What happened to that energy? Maybe I need to walk when I get home before I interact with my people that I love, or maybe I need to hit the gym, or maybe I just need to sit and be still and raise my awareness before I interact right?

Casey O'Roarty 26:11
Well. And I also think, you know, there's that, but also, you know, I know for me, when things feel really cluttered, or again, here's the control word, again. When things start to feel like they're spiraling out of my control and chaos starts to show up. I really slip into rigidity. And I think it comes from the modeling that I had, which was like it didn't when things became chaotic, it felt unsafe. And so there's this underlying preservation, you know, self preservation trigger that happens for me, and that's when it and even, like, gosh, and I did better the last time I was in the airport, I have, I'm fine with flying, but with stepping into the airport. Oh my gosh, I and the kids joke about it. They're like, Okay, everyone, Mom's gonna become a freak in about five minutes when we walk in the airport. So we're all, you know, we know what's coming. And the last time I was there, I actually said to the kids, I was like, You know what? How about I choose something different. I'm gonna choose something different, and I'm gonna be different in the airport today and see what happens. And, I mean, oh my gosh, Carrie, it was unbelievable. The path that like, it was literally, I mean, it wouldn't have been surprising if some, you know, fairy Angel person came down with the like, oh, like, this glowing path, like, here's the path of absolutely no resistance, all the way to the gate. Simply because I had shifted. I had decided to be different, to be aware, right? And to be in the practice of connected to myself, connected to the kids, connected to the experience, versus, oh, this is how it always is in the airport. So I'm just going to be this way, and I'm gonna, like, let it take me down the crazy freight train of to crazy town, because that's just how it is in the airport,

Kerry Foreman 28:11
right? Your conditioning from the airport leads you to make assumptions, just like it does in life. Your conditioning from childhood leads you to make assumptions about things that aren't always true, and it's it's the same. You know, we can trick our brain that anxiety. We can actually trick our brain into believing that what it's feeling when it's feeling anxiety is actual excitement instead, and it's fast, that's so I'm such a neuroscience geek, but that that piece is so fascinating to me, and that's all you did. You tricked your brain into believing that this was a fun outing, that this was going to be, you know, you were with your kids and you were with your partner, and that this could be a positive experience. Therefore, you created a positive experience. Yeah?

Casey O'Roarty 29:02
Reframe, yes, yeah. I love that too. Is it true that the body experiences stress and excitement as the same kind of the same sensations, right?

Kerry Foreman 29:12
Yes, it's our thoughts. That's that piece. That's the piece. It's I probably because I came to it late in life, I can't shut up about the brain.

Casey O'Roarty 29:23
It is brain. It's fascinating. So good. Yes, it's

Kerry Foreman 29:27
so fascinating. My kids are so sick of it, and

Casey O'Roarty 29:32
I'm like, don't do that till you're 25 because that's when your brain's fully developed. Okay,

Kerry Foreman 29:37
the other day to my I saw that you and I have the exact same age kids, but my my 14 year old is a boy. He's getting ready for 15, and my 11 year old's a girl. I said to him the other day, we were having a talk about marijuana, because we live in Colorado

Casey O'Roarty 29:51
and we live in Washington. Okay, perfect. Same Conversations, I'm

Kerry Foreman 29:55
sure. And I had the conversation, I'm very. Even keeled. Listen, I won't get into it, but my conversation was, your brain is still pruning. So, and I use that word Casey, I said pruning. I lost all credibility in that moment. So please wait until you're 25 Yeah. Your brain is still pruning, yeah. And by the way,

Casey O'Roarty 30:21
if you want to wait that long to get a driver's license, I'm okay with it. Judge Mike, my 14 year old, is on, like, the countdown for driver's license, and I'm just, oh gosh, like it. And I don't know about you, but I am, I am, I'm on on the daily. I am surprised by how I am experiencing being a parent of a teenager, you know? I mean, there's the things you expect, but then then you're in it, and it's, there's, there's a lot of wonderful, there's so much good. And then there's these moments of like, Oh my gosh. I didn't realize it was gonna be like,

Kerry Foreman 31:02
right? And is it that we didn't realize, or is it that it's so much more than we thought? Right? Like,

Casey O'Roarty 31:09
you can't know it until you're in it, and then you're in it, and it's like, whoa. You cannot read about this in a book. It's not the same as reading a story. It's, you're in it, and it's, you know, I often will say Our kids are our teachers. And my daughter, who's my oldest, has always been my teacher from the very beginning. And I've said this, I come from a long line of oldest daughters. The oldest child is the daughter with controlling moms, ooh. I mean, I don't even know how far back it goes, and it's not any different for Rowan and I, and I am fully aware of my tendency, my conditioning towards that. And it's, again, she's my teacher, because she stands up and she's like, No, that's not how it's going to be, you know. And I get to bump up against like, What do I like? I want to go like, it's amazing how quickly I want to go into fear and intimidation,

Kerry Foreman 32:04
me too. I think on the daily I actually come from the exact same pattern as that. I don't even pattern's not the word I want to use, but controlling moms and firstborn, being a girl and a lot of dysfunction with the women in my family as far back as I can see, and so when I was terrified to have a daughter, and she's my youngest, but I see the difference in how I've parented, how I parented her from the beginning, and how I parented my oldest from the beginning, because my oldest from the beginning, I wanted a lot more control,

and that's what came natural to me and my youngest, who happens to be a girl, I didn't I didn't exercise as much control, and she is a lot less fearful. A lot less fearful. You mentioned driving. My oldest has no desire to drive. He is perfectly fine waiting as long as possible to drive. And you make that disgusted sound because yours,

Casey O'Roarty 33:18
no, it's not disgusted. I am so envious. Yes,

Kerry Foreman 33:23
I know, because yours wants to drive so early about this. I did that to him. I did that to him because I was fearful. I had a lot of anxiety when he was young, and so my fears became his fears. And life is, you know, life is not safe and things are not to be trusted, and you must be careful, and don't step on that and and Nope, don't walk on the rocks across take the Safeway. And so he's scared of heights, and he is not dying to drive, and gets frustrated with himself when he's nervous. And I'm hoping that does not translate into rebellion at some point. Because, you know, when you get frustrated with yourself for being nervous, then you just want to try everything.

Casey O'Roarty 34:07
Yeah. Then it becomes like, Screw it. I'm just gonna do it. And those their little speaking of brains, those the taking risk portion developing quicker than the risk assessment portion. Oh, gosh, almost like

Kerry Foreman 34:19
I know too much now, because instantly, when he says he's not excited to drive, I'm like, I did that to him. I know exactly where that came from, which isn't helpful,

Casey O'Roarty 34:29
and it gives you a lot of credit. I mean, you gotta, I mean, come on,

Kerry Foreman 34:36
you're so right. Because

Casey O'Roarty 34:38
I do the same thing, and it's, you know, it's amazing how quickly I make everything about me. I

Kerry Foreman 34:44
love that you're so stinking, right? That's hysterical.

Casey O'Roarty 34:47
Let's bring it back to this whole concept of being grounded. So whether your kids are teens or school age or toddlers, and the stuff's coming up, right? You're having those triggered moments. What does being grounded mean, and what does it look like in the practice? I guess. What are some steps? So if listeners are like, Okay, this is really fun to listen to Casey and Carrie talking about their kids, I know that it is. Thank you, listeners. But if we're gonna, like, offer some tips, right? Yeah. I mean, one thing I always say is practicing being grounded is not you don't save it for the moments that you need it,

Kerry Foreman 35:25
right? Yeah, so my I like to think of it and I like to explain it. When I'm very first starting to teach mindfulness to clients, I have this brain board, and I bring out Amy the amygdala, and yes, and Amy the amygdala, I explain how she is. I used to call her fat, but my sister was like, Really, now my amygdala is fat too. So I changed it to hot. And when Amy is hot, she can't think rationally. She's just hot and pissed off and going crazy and creating chaos all around her and saying things she can't take back and reacting. And if we can keep Amy cool on an ongoing basis, and we'll do that with the tips that that I'll suggest here in a second, then when the time comes, when your big moment, when the Olympics are here, you are ready. So when your child says something super Sass, holy or snarky, then you aren't having to talk yourself down in the moment. You're not so lock yourself in the bedroom, which I have done. You're not having to do that in order to be presentable. Again, all my kids see, and I'm probably way too verbal with them on an ongoing basis, but all my kids actually see when they react to me is my face changes a little. I go into my head a little bit. I literally think what is happening inside of me right now. Did I come to them upset? Did I come to them with a tone? I go to me and again I, you know, it's, it's accountability in my mind. How did I come to them? How did I say those words to them, are they assuming something from the way I sounded? First Second of all, what can I be accountable for in this conversation? Third of all, I love you too much to argue that's a that's a Doctor Dan Siegel.

Casey O'Roarty 37:36
Oh yeah, oh yes. We talk about him a lot. Yeah. Podcast. Love

Kerry Foreman 37:41
Dan Siegel's, you know, go to phrase is, I love you too much to argue. Mine is, I love you too much to argue, but also I'm gonna love him through it. I'm gonna love him through it. That's constantly what I repeat in my head. Because, let's be honest, some stuff that comes out of a teenager's head is ridiculous that comes out of their mouth. I mean, they say things that you're like, who raised this kid? Are you kidding me? What family are you from? But it's important that you don't undermine them in that way. It's important that you don't come not helpful. Yeah, it's, it's contributing to the problem, not to the solution. So because my amygdala is on a continuous cool cycle, then I'm prepared for it. I'm ready for it, and the way that I keep it on that cycle for me specifically. And what I teach my clients, and again, I will say a million times, it's different for everybody, but what I teach and what I practice on a daily basis is number one, first thing in the morning when I get up, I don't turn my phone on immediately. That creates a place of anxiety in me. Yes, I know myself well enough to know that, so I don't turn it on immediately. I do make coffee immediately. But then I I head into the living room and I create about 10 minutes of just, where is my head this morning? How does my body feel? Where is my head? What does my brain want to think about this morning? So I just create a place of awareness in the mornings. I know everybody's schedule is different. Mine allows for a morning hike or a morning walk. I'm in the Rocky Mountains, so I love to hike. I try and get a hike in at least five days a week, if it's if it's not a hike, it's a walk. It's some kind of bilateral stimulation where I'm working both sides of my body, because we know that this processes things quicker. So if I have trauma, or if I have, you know, some type of chaos that is stuck in my brain, because I believe chaos and trauma get stuck there. Yeah, then bilateral stimulation every single day is helping that process out. We also know it releases endorphins and all things, yeah, it's the dopamine dump. I have a great feeling when I'm done. I work really hard on loving my life, on loving what I get to do. I never say I have to work. I always say I get to work because I've done the jobs that are a nightmare. I've I've done the jobs where I'm wishing for the weekend and for vacations. And getting to do what I love and what my passion is helps me to stay controlled. To be honest. On the backside of that, I also meditate every day. I try and meditate for a half hour each day. That is not always possible.

Casey O'Roarty 40:51
That is a long that feels like a long time. I That would be a goal. I'm a 10 minute? Girl,

Kerry Foreman 41:01
yeah, I was too I was for two years. Yeah, I started. I did 10 minutes for two years every day, because I joke that I'm very and I don't use this loosely, but very ADHD, it's, I am an idea. Girl, I can have 50 million ideas, and it's getting focused and finishing those that it's the hard thing. So 10 minutes was a lot for me, because my brain really wants to wander. But the more you do it on an everyday basis, then you get to the point where you almost crave, oh, God, I wish I had five minutes more, or I wish I had 10 minutes more. And for me, it's a butterfly feeling in my heart, like I really am, like I just reached this level of nothing else around me matters, and it's a euphoric feeling, and I crave longer and longer. So I'm at a half hour. I wish I was at an hour.

Casey O'Roarty 42:00
Do you what time of day do you meditate?

Kerry Foreman 42:03
I meditate at the end of my hikes or in the middle of my hike, so more, always and at the end of that, this is what my facebook page get grounded. Started with was setting an intention and how to do that. So at the end of my meditation, I set an intention for my day, and that might be it's usually for me, an attitude that I am going to exude, because I can slip off. So, oh sure, because of my conditioning, I like to be in control, and I don't like to be inconvenienced, and I don't like to be uncomfortable. So the minute that those things arise and they threaten me, I am in danger of reacting like a fool. So,

Casey O'Roarty 42:47
Carrie, I'm really hearing you encouraging others to get into the routine of taking care of themselves and and so and like Soul care versus self care, right? Being out in nature, moving your body, finding time for stillness and quiet, staying off your phone, okay? I heard that. I heard that. I just want you to know, I heard it. I heard it. We do

Kerry Foreman 43:15
unplugged Sundays too, which I know it's a nightmare with a teenager. He hates me on Sundays, but it is, how does he keep

Casey O'Roarty 43:23
his Snapchat streaks going?

Kerry Foreman 43:25
Well, do you know I'm talking about we have, literally, I can't tell you. I i dabbing in everything with, you know, figuring out how totally my oldest and at one point I took his phone from him over something, I can't even remember what it was, and he said, Can I just log on for five seconds to keep my snap test

Casey O'Roarty 43:49
not real? Yeah, I know, right. You just like, fine. It is important. It is fine

Kerry Foreman 43:55
to them. Yeah, I give them an hour and a half in the mornings. On Sunday mornings, that's nice. You get an hour and a half on your phone or video games or TV or whatever you want. On a Sunday morning, wake up slowly, and then the rest of the day. It's not just the kids. The rest of the day, every single one of us will not be on a screen and will most likely be outside, because I am a huge believer in that vitamin D. And just being out in nature, it puts everything in perspective. And it, for me, creates this place of separate self, which I'm sure you've, you know, studied and heard all about. But it's having the distance, enough distance from my thoughts to create some clarity.

Casey O'Roarty 44:43
Yeah, I think about that as like an outside observer, creating my expanding my observer,

Kerry Foreman 44:48
yes, and for me and for my family and for the clients that I'm teaching, that happens the most easily in nature. Yeah. So yeah, I am, I am definitely encouraging self care, but also soul care. I love that. Getting to know who you were born to be before the world got a hold of you, and really trying to speak that through kindness, compassion, empathy and knowing yourself at all times, because when you give that away, you attract more people to you, and that includes your teenage kids. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 45:29
yeah. So in the context of being living a grounded life and engaging in all of this soul care and being your most authentic self, what does a joyful courage mean to you? Carrie,

Kerry Foreman 45:43
I love that question. So joyful courage to me. First I was toying with things like, you know, a lot of people talk about choosing happy and for some reason, I don't like that term, and that's what came up first, choosing happy, and then I thought, no, no, joyful courage is not choosing happy. It's kind of about finding the joy in being brave enough to parent differently and finding a new path in order for to allow our kids to be who they were born to be. And that's not always joyful that it takes, it takes a ton of courage to do that, because you're, you're going to be judged for it by the parents who like to the judgers, by the judge. Yes, you'll, you'll be definitely judged by the judges and the connection with your children will grow exponentially, and in that you see them taking on more responsibility and becoming more confident, and all the things that you had hoped for anyway. So that's the joy inside of courage.

Casey O'Roarty 46:55
Love it. Where can listeners find you and follow your work?

Kerry Foreman 46:59
They can find me at get grounded on Facebook. They can also I have a YouTube channel that is also called get grounded, and there's lots of free resources on there. I did two different month long challenges. One was setting intention, the other one was a mindful marriage challenge, and they have my husband and I both on there, which is pretty interesting.

Casey O'Roarty 47:26
Was he excited about that? Because I recorded a podcast with my husband yesterday, and he was, like, the toughest guest I've ever had,

Kerry Foreman 47:35
Casey. I joked to my sister, like, Listen, I don't know that we'll be doing a heck of a lot of podcasts and stuff together, because we are best friends. I mean, I love this man, and he's a nightmare to work with, and he thinks the same about me. So yes, it was fun and fruitful,

Casey O'Roarty 47:56
but frustrating for sure, I'm so excited to check it out. Yes.

Kerry Foreman 48:01
And then I also have a blog. It's groundedblog.com, and those are my three main avenues right now. I'm I just gave up my office, and I'm doing a heck of a lot of writing, getting ready to create a podcast, and just trying to create because that's where my light comes from

Casey O'Roarty 48:20
yay. Well, Carrie, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been so great talking to you.

Kerry Foreman 48:26
Thank you so much. I love talking to you. I love your site and your podcast is amazing.

Casey O'Roarty 48:35
Thank you so much for listening. I'm so honored to serve you each and every week. I love hearing about what you think of the show. A great place to share is iTunes. Your review will help others find the show and take in the goodness and you never know. I may read your review live on the podcast. Big thanks to my team, Tay Alison and Chris Mann from pod shaper, so grateful for the ways you all support me and the work of joyful courage until next week, bring your attention to your breath. Ride it into your body. Find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay

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