Hello and welcome or welcome back to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm so glad you're here. This podcast is about helping you have more joy and fewer power struggles as you raise your kids. And I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman, author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting With Presence.

And it's my joy to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years as a teacher, a marriage and family therapist, and educator, and a mom. We really cover everything here. Chores, anxious, kids meal, time, screen, time, money, burnout, everything under the sun that relates to parents. Before we get started, make sure that you're taking advantage of everything that we offer for parents by visiting Susanstiffelman.com.

We've got a monthly Parenting Without Power Struggles membership program. For those who want my ongoing and personal help, we've got a co-parenting with a narcissist support group for those needing, that kind of support, which I co-facilitate with Wendy Behary and we have over 30 deep dive 90 minute masterclasses on everything parenting, including our recent class on the gifts of ADHD with Dr. Ned Hallowell, which was really, really good.

And drum roll, please. I have a special announcement. I want to announce that on February 17th, I'm going to begin offering a live six week in-depth training, preparing. This is the first time in years that I set aside time to do a full lawn, comprehensive live training, and we're going to cover everything I teach in a very structured interactive program.

So if you've been listening to these podcasts or you've read my books and you wish you could make the leap to implement the ideas that I share in those challenging moments, when your kids are pushing every button and your frustration or your anger takes over. I really encourage you to check out the parenting without power struggles intensive.

I have no plan to do this again, and this is really a chance to go deep with support, with structure, with help. Our time together is going to be fun. There'll be a lot of chances to practice the things I teach, including act one, parenting and tips for keeping your parenting cool in the heat of the moment, helping children recover when they move into dysregulated state.

Cultivating cooperation without threats and intimidation and deepening attachment at reducing overwhelm, even a kid-friendly cognitive strategy for shifting out of negative thinking patterns. And we'll even do some of the work of Byron Katie, which I love so much. And so, so much more. So if you go to Susanstiffelman.com, you're going to see that this is priced at an early bird.

The whole series is less than I charged for a single hour of my private time. So as I said before, I haven't done this for years. I don't plan to do it again in the foreseeable future. So if you feel like you want to make some really deep, radical shifts based on the latest research into neuroscience and attachment theory and all of the strategies I've developed over these last 40 years, I hope you'll check Susanstiffelman.com. There's a huge big discount until February 7.

Today. I want to talk about a specific phenomena that I know most of you are familiar with. It's not something we share very openly, but I really like to get down into the honest truth about. What we go through as parents and how we can grow through the challenging times.

So we're going to talk about what happens when something seems to take over us and this angry, shouting version of ourselves shows up instead of that calm kind and patient parent that we want to be. You probably know the feeling you've tried to explain to your daughter why you can't take her to the art store to get her crafting materials.

You're really sorry, but you've got something to do for your own. But if she'd asked you over the weekend, when you were out doing end, you would have been happy to do it. She can't expect you to drop everything just because she suddenly wants to finish her papier-mache project and know you're not a selfish person, you just have limits.

And the next thing you know, boom, you're yelling, you're calling herself for sure. Great. You're listing all the way she fails to help out and all the things you do for her. And now you and your daughter are in a shouting match with her yelling about how much you do for her sister and how you never do anything for her.

And the whole thing is become a really big mess. Now, what I've just described may not happen to you ever or very often, but trust me when I say that lots of parents know what I'm talking about. We know that moment when our switch gets flipped or as Dan Siegel says, when we flip our lid and it's pretty likely that our kids' lives have been flipped too.

And nobody's kind of in their right mind or their heart afterward, we may feel bad. We may feel ashamed or guilty, or we may feel resentful. Like our daughter made us lose our cool by pushing us to the limit. But underneath. Most of us wish that these moments didn't happen or at least that they didn't happen as often as they do.

So I want to talk a little bit about why we lose our cool and get taken over by that mean alien parent, that doesn't says things that in retrospect kind of horrify our better selves. First, let me reassure you that if you think you're the only one who visits these dark parenting places, you're not. As a family therapist, I've been privy to parents, revealing things to me that they would tell almost no one.

And I can assure you, even parents who seem like they have everything perfectly together, and they're always calm and serene, like they're floating above the chaos of life with kids. They aren't always feeling. Okay. Maybe a few of them are floating, but the rest of us are down here on earth and we're struggling to ma manage those kind of conflicting forces inside of anger and hurt, balancing that with sanity and love and peacefulness.

So let's talk about how we end up. So dysregulated, we, humans are complicated creatures. We can simultaneously know something like yelling at my kids as hurtful and potentially harm. And still have deeply ingrained emotional injuries that rear their ugly heads. When those wounds are reawakened, the primitive part of us that feels threatened or re-injured operates from a much more reflexive and reactive place than the rational regulated part of our brain.

So for instance, if we grew up in an environment where we were frequently criticized and rarely appreciate. Where our shortcomings were magnified in our efforts to improve or accomplish something were mostly ignored. And if we're feeling unsupported by our partner or we're really tired, and we can't face the thought of putting together yet another meal that our kids are likely to reject and complain about.

And all we can think about is how much we really, really wish we could just climb into bed and watch some mind-numbing TV to have a little break from the relentless to me. And maybe we're worried about something at work and in the midst of all that our daughter insists that we're selfish because we've set a teeny tiny boundary to try and honor our exhaustion.

And that that's what kind of sets the whole thing up for this big emotional release. It could be a little thing that sets us off our daughter whining about not taking her to the art store. May not on the surface, seem to warrant or justify such a huge reaction. But these things don't have to make sense.

They don't make sense. Our reaction may seem disproportionate to the grind, but that's only because there are so many forces at play beneath the surface that we just aren't aware of. And that is why it's so. That we learn how to dive deeper than the surface. Not only for our kids' misbehavior to try and find the root of what's going on for them, but also in those moments, when we slip into a really dysregulated and reactive state, because if we just stay on the surface and we see what happened and we feel whatever we feel many times shame and guilt, because we've unleashed our anger at our kids that doesn't help us do things differently.

In fact, I often say that shame and guilt can actually make things worse because it kind of sets us up to try and get our kids to behave differently so that we don't explode at them, which is kind of like putting them in charge of our emotional state. Instead, these uncomfortable parenting storms can be put to really good use.

If we learn to work with them. To discover what they're about to kindly and compassionately explore what deeper pain or wound is trying to find its way to the surface for healing. So the next time some raging version of yourself has taken over. I want to encourage you to recognize that there's something important showing up for you to work.

Now I love you to join me for the parenting without power struggles intensive, that's coming up. Cause we're going to explore this kind of thing much more deeply, but in the meantime, doing some journaling around what was going on without judging yourself really important, it can lead to some important insights and move you to make some powerful, authentic repair with your kids.

So using those. Kind of awful deteriorating parenting moments really can become something that moves you in a direction of transformation. Remember that shame is not your friend. It's really our vulnerabilities that make us human and through facing them this deep and profound growth and healing becomes.

I think this is something that very few of us really talk openly about this idea that there are these forces inside of us that show up sometimes when our back is against the wall. And many of us want to aspire to be that parent who is. Offering our children, something really reliable and predictable and steady and calm.

And, and then this thing happened, this storm that appears to come out of nowhere. I want to assure you that these storms don't come out of nowhere. There are a lot of elements and forces at play. It's a little bit like weather. I don't understand weather very well, but I know that there have to be different Airstreams and, and patterns that might be happening far, far away, where we aren't even privy to that kind of weather happening three states from us, but that those things could affect.

Kind of the way that air moves and eventually it lands above our heads and suddenly we have cloudy weather or cold or rain or a heat wave. So in the same way, there are a lot of forces at play in what move us to that threshold, where we fall over the edge and a version of ourselves takes over. And there we are kind of a gas that, oh my gosh, you know, I promised myself I would stop yelling at the kids or I, I, she didn't, she only asked because she, you know, is finally motivated to work on the project.

Yes. Those things can all be true at the very same time. And that's why this is such a, a powerful thing to explore because not only do we show up differently for our kids, but we move more and more into the human being that we most want to be. And. This is where parenting can become such a deeply beautiful transformational path.

So lots to think about if you're enjoying these conversations, these podcasts, I would love it. If you'd take a moment to leave a rating or leave a review, if you have an extra 30 seconds, we've reached hundreds of thousands of parents with this series and everything that we share in part, because so many of you are cheering us on.

So. Be sure to hit the subscribe button if you'd like to be notified. As soon as I release a new. Remember to stay in touch and get your regular doses of parenting Susanstiffelman.com, where you can sign up for our free newsletter and see all the forms of practical parenting support that I offer to our community.

And I especially hope you'll check out the brand new six week parenting without power struggles in tensive, which is coming out very soon. That's going to be a powerful, beautiful, wonderful. Jeez. I just cannot wait. Really. I'm working on it every day and it's thrilling to really feel like all these elements can be brought together in a structured order with a real curriculum.

And, um, one of my favorite favorite things to do so that's it for today. Remember, no matter how busy life gets look for those moments of sweetness and. Stay safe and stay well. And I will see you next time. .