Secret #90: Emotion Savvy Parenting with Dr. Alissa Jerud
Recommended Episodes
What if good parenting isn’t about keeping yourself or your child calm? Dr. Alissa Jerud joins Emma and Chris to explore how accepting, regulating, and tolerating difficult emotions can help parents respond more effectively without expecting themselves to get parenting “right.”
Parenting advice often focuses on what to do about our children’s behavior. But what happens when our own emotions take over? Clinical psychologist Dr. Alissa Jerud joins Emma and Chris to explore why trying to control our children’s feelings, behavior, and even our own emotions can leave parents feeling more stuck.
Drawing from her book Emotion Savvy Parenting, Alissa introduces her ART framework: Accept, Regulate, and Tolerate. Together, they explore acceptance without judgment, mindfulness, emotional regulation, practical strategies for intense moments, and how parents can set limits based on their own values rather than searching for a one-size-fits-all approach.
Highlights:
Parents don’t have to eliminate difficult emotions to respond effectively.
Trying to control a child’s emotions can sometimes be an attempt to reduce our own discomfort.
ART stands for Accept, Regulate, and Tolerate. Secret #90_ Emotion Savvy Paren…
Acceptance doesn’t mean liking or approving of what is happening.
Mindfulness and emotion-regulation skills are easier to access in difficult moments when we practice them in lower-stakes situations first. Secret #90_ Emotion Savvy Paren…
Parents can feel intense emotions without automatically acting on what those emotions urge them to do. Secret #90_ Emotion Savvy Paren…
Limits and boundaries can be flexible and should reflect the needs and values of each individual family.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:41 The parenting book trap
01:36 Meet Dr. Alissa Jerud
02:35 Why we try to control our children’s feelings
05:06 Letting go of control
06:48 Parenting as “struggling well”
12:32 Emotional agility and not being governed by emotions
13:45 The ART framework: Accept, Regulate, Tolerate
15:48 Acceptance without judgment
17:13 Grief and what acceptance really means
20:16 Clean pain vs. dirty pain
23:31 Mindfulness and acting as if you accept
28:46 When should we regulate emotions?
39:29 Learning to tolerate intense emotions
42:12 The CARE skills
48:48 Setting limits and boundaries
52:30 Letting family values guide your boundaries
54:08 Navigating different parenting styles
MORE ABOUT DR. ALISSA JERUD:
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motionsavvydoc onInstagramFollow Alissa Jerud on Psychology Today
Dr. Alissa Jerud is a licensed clinical psychologist and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in anxiety-related disorders and emotion regulation. Her work draws on exposure-based treatments and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills, including mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. She also teaches and supervises psychiatry residents, trains clinicians in exposure-based treatments, and speaks on mental health, stress, and parenting. She is the author of Emotion-Savvy Parenting, a science-informed guide to helping parents welcome difficult emotions without letting those feelings control how they respond.
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Reach out and let us know you are listening and what you would like to hear on the show - email:lifesdirtylittlesecretspodcast@gmail.com
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[00:00:41] Parenting Book Trap
[00:00:41] Chris McCurry: welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Chris McCurry
[00:00:46] Emma Waddington: And I'm Emma Waddington. There is a shelf in every bookshop, and it keeps getting longer: sleep, boundaries, screens, tantrums, gentle parenting, firm parenting, the four types of attachment. But [00:01:00] something odd happens after we read one of those books. You are no longer just having a hard evening with your child.
[00:01:07] Emma Waddington: You're having a hard evening while thinking that there is a correct way to do this, a book that would have told you. So you're managing a child and managing yourself and quietly grading your own performance all at the same time while someone small is screaming. And underneath all of it sits this assumption that almost nobody argues with, that if you get this right, it will feel so much better, that the goal is a calmer child and a calmer you.
[00:01:36] Meet Alyssa Jerred
[00:01:36] Emma Waddington: Our guest today has written one of those books, and it makes a different argument. Dr. Alyssa Jerred is a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She trained at Penn's Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, and she spends her working life doing exposure therapy, which is, put bluntly, the business of helping people feel hard emotions in the service of a [00:02:00] life with purpose. Her book is Emotion Savvy Parenting, and the subtitle is The Part to Notice: A Shame-Free Guide. So today's dirty little secret is this: You don't need to calm down, and perhaps you don't even need your child to calm down. You need to get better at feeling some of those inevitable emotions that come with parenting, even when doing a brilliant job.
[00:02:26] Emma Waddington: Alyssa, welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
[00:02:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Oh, thank you so much, Emma and Chris. It's such a joy to be here
[00:02:33] Emma Waddington: We are delighted indeed.
[00:02:35] Why We Control Feelings
[00:02:36] Emma Waddington: So just before we came on the podcast, I was thinking about our first question, and really I think I'd like to go straight in, 'cause for me and for many of our listeners parenting, I believe, is one of the hardest jobs because we care so deeply about what we're doing.
[00:02:51] Emma Waddington: And, and I think what makes it the most difficult is that we seem to measure our worth by how we're feeling about [00:03:00] our children and by how our children are behaving, and perhaps how they're feeling about us, especially when they become adolescents and sort, have a tendency to tell us all about their feelings not in the sweetest of ways.
[00:03:12] Emma Waddington: And I'm just curious, why is that? Why is it that we get into this kind of war with our feelings about our children and almost like a bit of a tussle to try and control how they behave because of how much it hurts us or it makes us judge ourselves? Why is it that we get caught in this struggle?
[00:03:34] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Hmm. That is such a good question, and I don't know that I have the answer. I just have a few thoughts that I'll share. And the first is that, if you think about it, probably most of us from day one when we were crying as babies, we were told, "Shh, shh,"
[00:03:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: right? Like, "It's okay. It's okay." We were kind of immediately soothed and encouraged to calm down essentially.
[00:03:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And I think that message for many of us was [00:04:00] one we probably heard repeatedly throughout our lives, and maybe even when we were parents. When we first became parents, we said the same thing to our kids. And so it's this idea that, oh, it is my responsibility as a parent to soothe this infant, to get them to stop crying.
[00:04:16] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And then that extends to, it's my job as a parent to, when my kid is upset about something, to fix it right away, right? To find some way to get them to not be so upset.
[00:04:28] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Then I think, if you think about that so that's for our, our, when we're thinking about our kids' emotions. But I think there's that other piece that our kids' behaviors and their emotions also stir up uncomfortable emotions in us, and the normal, natural reaction to those uncomfortable emotions is to try to damp them down in some way, to avoid them, to get rid of them.
[00:04:49] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And so I think there's that other piece of part of the reason we wanna control our kids' behaviors or their emotions or fix them is because they oftentimes leave us feeling so uncomfortable, so it's [00:05:00] almost like a way of controlling our own emotions. Those are just a few thoughts. I'm happy to elaborate on any of that
[00:05:06] Letting Go Control
[00:05:06] Emma Waddington: I guess the reason why we're having this conversation is because that's a really hard thing to do. Because if-- And, and, and Chris and I often joke about the fact that, we were doing some research about writing a parenting book, and we realized how many tens of thousands of books there are out there.
[00:05:23] Chris McCurry: 66,000 at last count, and that was
[00:05:25] Dr. Alissa Jerud: my goodness. Wow.
[00:05:28] Emma Waddington: That's quite significant, isn't it? There's something to be said about the fact that there are so many books out there, and if there was a way for us to truly perhaps control our children's behavior, we'd only have one book. If that really was possible and not at a great cost, 'cause perhaps it is possible, but there's probably a humongous
[00:05:48] Emma Waddington: cost to it.
[00:05:49] Emma Waddington: So we get ourselves really quite, tied up in knots,
[00:05:54] Emma Waddington: and it's a very distressing place to be when you, you feel like you should be able to do something that you can't. And I, I [00:06:00] really love your honesty and your openness in, in your book, and as you talk about right at the beginning, your journey into choosing a different way of parenting was through that, wasn't it?
[00:06:11] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Yeah, through realizing that I, I didn't have the control. Like, There w- it wasn't, it was kind of a fruitless quest trying to control my kids' emotions, their behaviors, even my own emotions and, and relea- releasing that, right? Focusing more on controlling my own behaviors just didn't make me calm, right?
[00:06:29] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Didn't make parenting easy, but it has made it much
[00:06:34] Emma Waddington: Mmm.
[00:06:35] Dr. Alissa Jerud: What, how are the words there? It, it, in some ways it has made it easier to navigate, and I would say made it more fulfilling and enjoyable as well. But again, certainly not easy.
[00:06:44] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah
[00:06:45] Chris McCurry: My favorite definition of resilience is struggling well.
[00:06:49] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Mm, I like that
[00:06:52] Chris McCurry: I think that really applies to parenting, where it's like, "This is a struggle, but I'm doing it well." And that [00:07:00] includes bearing all that stuff, the emotions, the, the frustration, the whatever but not compounding that with the resistance to the, that stuff that shows up.
[00:07:12] Chris McCurry: It's, it's part of that acceptance piece, that allowing piece that we should get into. But, I like what you said earlier about that dance, as I call it, that parents and children get into when child gets upset, that stirs up emotions in, in the parent, thoughts and feelings that they don't like, and so they'll do anything to terminate their mutual upset, and then that becomes very reinforcing.
[00:07:37] Chris McCurry: What one author used to call the coercion trap.
[00:07:41] Chris McCurry: So, yeah, it's, it's-- and it's a very, very difficult trap to get out of
[00:07:46] Culture And Judgment
[00:07:46] Emma Waddington: and do you think that as a community, I mean, we, we kind of know this. Well, do we know this? I fall into this trap all the time where I don't, feel great about how my kid is feeling. I find that actually my children [00:08:00] experiencing disappointment is one of the hardest feelings to witness and not want to do something about.
[00:08:05] Emma Waddington: Obviously, anxiety is very difficult. Anger, when they behave disrespectfully, I'm doing air quotes because that seems to be a tremendous trigger for many parents. Our kids are behaving in ways that somehow, make us feel really uncomfortable. I wonder sometimes whether there is a cultural piece around this that it seems like the community is also giving us that message.
[00:08:28] Emma Waddington: It isn't just we're making it up on our own in our own houses. We move inside a soup that is telling us that we should be in better control. Like, If I think of, you know, the classic example of grandparents going, "Oh, can't you just do something?" Or, "Can you get them..." I remember this, this summer I was back in the UK, and we had family members around, and my little nephew, who is sort of 18 months old and had no intention of sitting at the table [00:09:00] every intention of pulling everything off the table, and I noticed a few family members were like, "Can't you just do something about that?
[00:09:08] Emma Waddington: Can't he just sit still?" and I think if my sister knew how to make that happen, she would have. So I think as a community, we seem to be moving, and I don't think it applies, cross-culturally. I think some cultures are much more open to children running around and perhaps behaving in different ways.
[00:09:26] Emma Waddington: I think, what is acceptable behavior is very contextual. But there's definitely messages that are coming from outside of us that are telling us that we should be better at this, that we should really manage our children, and that's why their behavior reflects on us, because we should do better to control them
[00:09:45] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah, when we're not, when our kids are engaging in disruptive behavior or behavior that in other people's eyes seems inappropriate, it's kind of like our, as society, we, we then judge other parents. And I think probably before I was a [00:10:00] parent, I judged other parents when a kid was screaming in the store or something.
[00:10:04] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And yet now I realize that's doesn't say anything about that parent necessarily, right? Again, but it, but it's hard, right? When, when society is reinforcing that message to start thinking in a different way, for sure
[00:10:17] Emma Waddington: totally. I remember growing up and I was an expat child, so we used to do long-haul flights quite often. And I remember there being babies on flights screaming and and my mother used to always go, "Poor parents." And as a kid, I was like, "Poor parents? Poor kid." And she'd be like, "Poor parents."
[00:10:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah
[00:10:38] Emma Waddington: Because it's hard.
[00:10:39] Emma Waddington: everybody's trying to sleep and your baby's the one that's crying. Oof, I've been there.
[00:10:43] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep, you feel that pressure.
[00:10:45] Emma Waddington: You do. You feel that pressure, and
[00:10:47] Emma Waddington: you can do usually very little about it.
[00:10:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep.
[00:10:51] Emma Waddington: Especially at 30,000 feet there's no escaping. So yeah, very, very difficult indeed.
[00:10:57] Emotional Agility Skills
[00:10:57] Emma Waddington: And so we really want to find a [00:11:00] way, and perhaps that's our conversation, today, to try and get outside of this struggle, this very big pull that we have to try and control our feelings. That somehow our feelings, too. The other piece is, being a parent is hard, not just because we can't control our children, but also because we can't control how we feel about our children.
[00:11:20] Emma Waddington: And sometimes we feel incredibly blessed, and sometimes we don't.
[00:11:25] Emma Waddington: Sometimes it's really hard and, Depleting. Chris often talks about, parenting, depleting us. so it's, it's not just their feelings, it's our feelings that we're learning to navigate, and it's really complicated to be doing all at the same time.
[00:11:40] Emma Waddington: And we just recently had a guest on our podcast Lindsay Gibson, just a couple of episodes ago, and she has a fabulous book, or a few books actually, talking about immature adult parents and the impact that that has. And her definition of a mature adult is that freedom that comes from [00:12:00] knowing you don't have to be governed by your emotions.
[00:12:02] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I love
[00:12:03] Emma Waddington: I thought of that when I was reading your book. I was thinking, "Yes, when I become adults," which, some of us digress multiple times during the day sometimes. But that maturity to be able to feel that freedom from knowing that we don't have to be governed, that we don't have to be pushed around by emotions.
[00:12:21] Emma Waddington: We don't need emotions to be in the driving seat. But that, requires a lot of agility and a lot of skill. It's not easy. Emotions just take over. So I thought perhaps we could start talking a little bit about how you talk about emotional agility. I love that. I think that is so, such a good word, and very much aligned with the model Chris and I use of acceptance and commitment therapy.
[00:12:46] Emma Waddington: This sort of
[00:12:47] Emma Waddington: Ability to be flexible psychologically and emotionally. And you have lots of great examples and lots of tools in your book.
[00:12:54] ART Framework
[00:12:56] Emma Waddington: So perhaps we can start talking about your first tool. You start talking [00:13:00] about ART the ART of emotions. So perhaps you could lead us and tell us a bit about your, this acronym and why it's so important for parents to start thinking about some of the wonderful ways in which we can become more agile.
[00:13:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. So the acronym stands for accept, regulate, and tolerate. So I call it ART, like you said. And kind of just simply put, these words accept, regulate, and tolerate are ways of relating to uncomfortable emotions as well as kind of what's going on in our environment. And each, within each kind of letter, right, so accept or regulate or tolerate, there are like mini skills that we can use as parents or as humans in general to help us navigate those painful emotions we all encounter.
[00:13:48] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So accept is really just about, it's not about liking what's going on, necessarily approving of what's going on, but just really acknowledging the facts on the ground. What is happening or what [00:14:00] has happened without judgment, not judging it as good or bad. And it is easier said than done but that is accept.
[00:14:08] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And there, there are many reasons why acceptance can be so helpful for us as parents and humans, so we can certainly get into that. The regulate piece is all about h- understanding the emotions we're having and then kind of m- using skills to help ourselves become less vulnerable to painful emotions in the first place,
[00:14:29] Dr. Alissa Jerud: and maybe even start to change those unwanted and painful emotions when they aren't serving us well. And then the final skill, tolerate or like the final letter there, tolerate is all about when, when we can't change an emotion, right? When it's so understandable that we'd be feeling a certain way and maybe there's not much we can do about that. How can we feel that emotion without doing something that we're later going to regret, without doing something that's going to make the situation worse [00:15:00] or ourselves feel worse?
[00:15:02] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So those are the kind of like the the letters in a nutshell. And then again, there are those skills under each of those letters that we can use to help us accept, regulate, and tolerate.
[00:15:12] Acceptance Without Judgment
[00:15:12] Chris McCurry: Can I say something going back to the accept piece? You mentioned doing it without judgment. It reminds me of Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness, where it's, he talks about, j- non-judgmentally. And I, I think that if you're having a judgment, you can step back from that as well, because good luck
[00:15:36] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00:15:38] Chris McCurry: about, what you're thinking and feeling.
[00:15:39] Chris McCurry: I think that what's-- that's what trips up a lot of people when they think about mindfulness or, accepting is like, "But I'm still mad," or, "I'm still... I shouldn't be feeling this way," or whatever it may be. Well, that too you can make room for. And, or shame that shows up, so I don't think you necessarily have to be shame-free. You can just [00:16:00] feel that, have those thoughts, step back from it and go, "Oh yeah, that, that's showing up. Yeah, right on time. That makes sense."
[00:16:06] Chris McCurry: And pivot toward, what needs to be done using these other skills of regulate and tolerate.
[00:16:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah, I think that's such an important point because we're humans, and as humans we're wired to have those judgments, to feel all emotions including shame. So it's not that those judgments aren't ever gonna come up, but I think it's ideally recognizing, ah, yeah, I'm having that judgmental thought, let me shift back on to accepting what is here and now without kinda getting stuck in that story that this shouldn't be the case or that this is bad.
[00:16:37] Grief And Acceptance
[00:16:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I will just give you a personal example. So I just shared that I was in Seattle with my family. And on our flight out there, our beloved dog, Yogi, who was 10 years old passed away really
[00:16:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: unexpectedly. He was perfectly healthy and just like this happy dog. We'd been playing fetch with him the night before.
[00:16:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And he had I'm gonna mess up the name of it, but [00:17:00] like bloat is the short name, and it's like GVD or GDV, I don't know.. basically this thing in the stomach that causes the stomach to flip and then kinda cuts off circulation in the body, and it all happens within hours. So it happened overnight and we found out about it the next morning.
[00:17:16] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And it was hor- it's horrible. Thank you. It's horrible. And Yogi's usually... he was usually in my office during every call, every session I ever had, and I've been... it's, it's so hard to accept that he is not here, and I keep fighting it and saying like it shouldn't have happened. We should've known that this was even a possibility and prevented it.
[00:17:36] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But those judgmental thoughts that this, this isn't fair, this shouldn't have happened, they're not serving me well, right? it, it sucks that this happened, and yet
[00:17:45] Dr. Alissa Jerud: it happened. It happened because he's at-- he was at risk for this condition. And and so I guess when I think that way, that like it happened and of course it was going to happen given that we didn't know [00:18:00] and that he was at risk and it's this really quick emergency that takes place, it helps me feel better than when I'm trying to fight the fact that it happened and say it shouldn't have happened and, why didn't we do this or that or whatever it may be.
[00:18:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So that's the idea behind acceptance, not liking or approving of it. I'm, I'm devastated that he's
[00:18:18] Dr. Alissa Jerud: gone, and yet I can accept that he's gone without saying it shouldn't have happened or it's even unfair that he's not here.
[00:18:27] Chris McCurry: Well, there've been lots of times, when I've been talking about acceptance with families, and it's very tricky because I've had many parents look at me and say, "You mean I should just accept the fact that my child's having a tantrum?" My answer is, "Well, he is, and that's the reality at the moment."
[00:18:44] Chris McCurry: And so, you don't have to like it, and you don't have to approve of it or, or think it's correct or anything. But it's the definition of acceptance a- as in, to receive what has been given whether you like it or not. But that's the starting point for being able to [00:19:00] do something about it rather than being in denial
[00:19:02] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep, and I'll just add, it's not a one and done thing, right? You might accept in one moment that your kid is having a tantrum, and then the next day struggle when your kid's having a tantrum. Just like for me with Yogi, I'm accepting in moments and then fighting it in moments, and I just notice the difference when I move toward that acceptance.
[00:19:18] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And I think as parents, the more we move towards that acceptance, again, like the lighter the struggle feels
[00:19:24] Chris McCurry: It opens up the possibility to respond to it in ways that may be more effective than the rigidity and the, the denial.
[00:19:31] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah。
[00:19:32] Clean Versus Dirty Pain
[00:19:32] Emma Waddington: It's like it's reminding me of this concept in ACT about the clean and dirty pain. We have this idea that, you know, living life, being human, being sentient human beings means that there will be pain. There will be emotions that we feel that are not pleasant, and that's kind of the clean pain.
[00:19:52] Emma Waddington: It's inevitable. Like you losing your dog or, if, our child doesn't get into the, the sports team they were hoping [00:20:00] for or whatever it is. That sort of disappointment, that hurt is inevitable because we care. So that's kind of the clean pain. But then the judgments, the self-criticism, the struggle, the avoidance, that's what they call the dirty pain, and that's the bit we can do something about.
[00:20:17] Emma Waddington: We can't do much about the clean pain, but if we do let go of the struggle, if we do accept that that clean pain is there because we loved our dog, or we really cared about being on this, football team, or, we were really hoping to be invited to that party, then we're better able to tolerate 'cause it's almost less, less that we have to tolerate.
[00:20:40] Emma Waddington: There's less pain to have to manage and accept. So that I find really quite useful for myself is to think of, there's an inevitability and that I can make room for. There are things that perhaps I can't make room for, which are, the self-judgment or the harsh words and that perhaps we have a little more influence on that [00:21:00] part too.
[00:21:00] Emma Waddington: But that clean pain we don't, we can't do much about, and so that's when we need acceptance.
[00:21:07] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Marshall Linehan, who also speaks about non-judgmentalness when talking about mindfulness, talks about how really the judgments turn that ordinary pain, right, pain that we all are going to inevitably encounter into suffering, right? And so when we can let go of those, again, we can experience it as painful, but just not quite as, intolerable as when we're adding those judgments in as well.
[00:21:33] Practicing Acceptance
[00:21:33] Emma Waddington: And in the book you have this line where you say, "The longer the list of behaviors we choose to accept, the better." And I thought that was, that was a really interesting line because it is true that the more we're open to accepting around our children's behaviors, around our own behaviors, as long as they're not dangerous in any way or, our children's emotions and our own, the better it will [00:22:00] be, the less struggle we will have
[00:22:02] Emma Waddington: It felt quite liberating to think of it like that, that we have some- we have a choice in that. So maybe we could talk a little bit about some of the, the ways in which we can learn the process of acceptance. Like you, you mentioned that it's not just once and done, right? We- it's something, it's a process.
[00:22:19] Emma Waddington: We keep doing it. We keep working on accepting.
[00:22:23] Acceptance Skills Reset
[00:22:23] Chris McCurry: what are some of the skills that allow us to make these acceptance moves as we've described them?
[00:22:30] Mindfulness And Acting As If
[00:22:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I think probably the biggest one is mindfulness, just which is really simply put, and, and it sounds like you've talked about this as my guest on your show before, but really just tuning into the present moment exactly as it is, as you experience it through any one of your five senses.
[00:22:46] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And again, aiming to do so non-judgmentally, recognizing that those judgmental thoughts, those distracting thoughts are gonna come up, but then choosing when they do to gently shift back on to whatever it is that you're trying to be mindful [00:23:00] of. So that is one skill that is really-- can be really, really powerful, being just, just noticing what's happening or participating fully in a given moment as opposed to getting caught up in stories in your head about, whether this should be happening or shouldn't be happening or what it means that it's happening.
[00:23:20] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So that's one of the big ones. I would say the other skill that I, I think dovetails with this is really to act as though you're accepting.
[00:23:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So you may not accept it, right? So just as an example, like Yogi's bed used to be right behind me, and I didn't wanna take it out of my office, and part of accepting that he's no longer here was to take it out, right?
[00:23:42] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So I can act with that acceptance even if I haven't fully accepted it in a given moment in time. So those are the, the two, I would say, kind of primary skills there for acceptance.
[00:23:52] Emma Waddington: Mm-hmm. And a bit like you mentioned earlier, it really is a catalyst for change because I know that in dialectical behavior [00:24:00] therapy, there's this dialectic between acceptance and change. Without acceptance, we can't actually get into thinking about what we can do about this issue and this challenge. So, the more we struggle with our children's emotions or our own emotions or their behaviors, the less ability, the less bandwidth we have to really think about what can be done.
[00:24:22] Emma Waddington: It's like all our
[00:24:23] Emma Waddington: energy is going into struggling with that emotion.
[00:24:26] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Right. And so instead, if we can shift to just noticing what's happening, either what exact- what our kids are doing or what we're feeling inside, that can oftentimes cue us into, oh, like what might we wanna do about this situation to potentially bring about change, or just to be able to get through the moment skillfully
[00:24:44] Practice In Low Stakes Moments
[00:24:44] Chris McCurry: And, and I, I think, ac-accepting, d-doing those mindfulness moves when your child is on the floor of, the supermarket aisle, uh, is really hard. I think practicing mindfulness [00:25:00] in less provocative situations
[00:25:03] Chris McCurry: like, the traffic is bad. Sometimes I tell parents, "Cope out loud," uh, to model for your children, how they can handle these situations.
[00:25:13] Chris McCurry: So talk out loud about how frustrating the traffic is and how you really wanna honk the horn, but you know that's not gonna help, so you're gonna take some deep breaths instead.
[00:25:21] Chris McCurry: So practicing on these, these little areas that are where you can be more successful in, in being mindfulness and accepting can help build up those muscles so that when you really need it, when your child's on the floor of the, the aisle of the supermarket, it's more available to you.
[00:25:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Yeah, and I'd say even trying in lower stake situations first, maybe ones where emotions aren't even really all that much present for you, right? So just when you're drinking that morning cup of coffee or washing those dishes, taking just even, it can be five seconds, 20 seconds to tune into that present moment and really just notice what's happening in the moment can be really [00:26:00] powerful.
[00:26:00] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Another thing Marsha Linehan talks about is like those, those brief moments of mindfulness as almost being like Pac-Man moments of mindfulness, right? Like in the game Pac-Man, each little dot you eat kinda gets you a little stronger, and like you're saying, kinda really builds those muscles for being able to tune into the present, for being able to move toward acceptance so that in a really difficult moment, those muscles are much more likely to be able to kick in as opposed to if you're trying to use them and just like another example, it's almost like learning to ride a bike, right?
[00:26:28] Dr. Alissa Jerud: We don't start learning to ride a bike on a downhill. That's not gonna be, that's not gonna set us up for success. We start on a flat surface, and then eventually move to going on those downhills. Same idea here with mindfulness
[00:26:40] Emma Waddington: Hmm.
[00:26:40] Acceptance Is Not Feeling Better
[00:26:40] Emma Waddington: Mm. And I think what's really important for me is to keep remembering that, as I'm practicing mindfulness or acceptance, it's not about changing how I'm feeling
[00:26:49] Emma Waddington: Because that can add to the struggle. Yeah
[00:26:52] Emma Waddington: exactly. So the goal isn't actually to feel any different. The goal is how we relate to our feelings,
[00:26:58] Emma Waddington: you know, how we make [00:27:00] room for it
[00:27:01] Dr. Alissa Jerud: yeah, and I'll just note that like a bonus side effect of welcoming those feelings, not trying to push them away or change them, is that oftentimes that alone can actually bring about a shift in our feelings. That's not the goal of doing so, but it's like the icing on the cake
[00:27:17] Emma Waddington: It's
[00:27:17] Emma Waddington: paradoxical because the more you want it, the more you've got it. So,
[00:27:21] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep.
[00:27:22] Emma Waddington: The more you sort of wanna fight the feelings, the harder they get. So if we're using acceptance and mindfulness to feel better, we will be quite disappointed and frustrated,
[00:27:32] Emma Waddington: which, um, I always find is a really important reminder that I need for myself too.
[00:27:38] Emma Waddington: So moving
[00:27:39] When To Regulate Emotions
[00:27:39] Emma Waddington: on to the next one, talking about managing
[00:27:41] Emma Waddington: our emotions is the regulation. So what do you think? So we're talking about accepting emotions, so making space, noticing our judgment. When is it that we need to think about regulating then? What's
[00:27:52] Emma Waddington: different about using regulation?
[00:27:55] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah
[00:27:56] Chris McCurry: what are we regulating?
[00:27:57] Emma Waddington: yeah. What are we regulating?
[00:27:59] Emma Waddington: [00:28:00] Yeah
[00:28:00] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Such great questions. I mean, I think regulating is again really about noticing those emotions, understanding our emotions, and then trying to prevent maybe the really intense ones or reduce the likelihood that we're gonna experience those really intense ones in the first place and shift them when they are showing up and maybe aren't all that adaptive for us, aren't that effective, aren't serving us well.
[00:28:23] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So I, I guess the, it, it's the most basic level, what I will just note first is that our emotions are really complex. There are a number of different components to any given emotion, and when we're thinking about regulating, we're thinking about how can we shift those components of a given emotion that are going to make an emotion fire or that are keeping that emotion firing essentially, if that makes sense.
[00:28:48] Dr. Alissa Jerud: We need certain ingredients in order for an emotion to get set off in the first place. And the three that I think of as being kind of components that we're gonna target with the regulating skills [00:29:00] are a prompting event, right? So if usually in order for an emotion to set in, something has to happen.
[00:29:07] Dr. Alissa Jerud: It could be in our external environment your kid wakes you up in the middle of the night. It could also just be that you... It could also be something within you. You wake up and you've got a headache or a stomachache. So that's like the prompting event. Then usually there are thoughts or interpretations, sometimes judgments that we have about that prompting event.
[00:29:27] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And then we've got vulnerability factors, things that have happened either in the recent or distant past that make us more likely to have those unhelpful thoughts or judgments or interpretations about a prompting event that are going to, again, lead to that emotion firing in the first place. So when we're talking about regulate, we're really thinking or what, what I think about is, again, how can we go address one or more of those three components that do set an emotion in motion,
[00:29:58] Emotion Ingredients Cookie Model
[00:29:58] Emma Waddington: Actually, I love your cookie [00:30:00] metaphor that you use in the book. I think it's
[00:30:02] Emma Waddington: such a smart,
[00:30:03] Emma Waddington: Way of thinking about emotions. Do you wanna talk a little bit about it? 'Cause
[00:30:07] Emma Waddington: you've talked about some of those ingredients already.
[00:30:10] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah, Yeah, sure. So just a batch of cookies is made up typically of a number of ingredients that you can't always see when you're eating that delicious cookie, the same thing is true of our emotions, right? So our emotions, sometimes it just feels like, oh, it's anger, it's sadness, but there are actually all these little pieces that go in to bring about that anger or that sadness to make it up.
[00:30:32] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So as in the case of a batch of cookies, typically when you're making cookies, for those of you who bake, you know that you oftentimes will have a bowl of wet ingredients, a bowl of dry ingredients, and it's things like, your flour, your sugar, your maybe sometimes a little salt. And then on the wet side you've got...
[00:30:47] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Typically, like an oil or a milk, an egg, something like that. And when we mix them together, that gives us that delicious cookie. And the same is true, I think, of our emotions, that we've got these what I call [00:31:00] primary ingredients and secondary ingredients.
[00:31:03] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So those primary ingredients are the ingredients that we need, again, in order for that emotion to fire in the first place, and that can sometimes keep that emotion firing. So those are the three ingredients I just talked about, right? A prompting event and a vulnerability, vulnerability factors, and those unhelpful thoughts and interpretations that we can have about the prompting event Once an emotion fires, though, there are all these other things that again, sometimes we don't even realize are kinda going on.
[00:31:32] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So typically, there are these like rapid biological changes that happen in our bodies. That's kinda what like gives us like the feeling and the sensations of those emotions. So maybe our hearts start racing if we're angry or anxious, or we notice that our- we're clenching our muscles. There are kind of things happening, like we feel tight in our body, maybe we get hot and sweaty.
[00:31:54] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Those are those like rapid biological chemical changes that can occur in our bodies. Then we [00:32:00] have oftentimes these action urges, urges to act in a certain way. So with, anger, for instance, maybe my urge is to act to lash out or to fight. With anxiety, oftentimes the urge is to avoid. With sadness, it might be to withdraw.
[00:32:15] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But there are, again, there's usually at least one, if not more urges that come with a given emotion. And then oftentimes around that point when we're feeling those urges, the physical changes are happening in our body, there's like awareness. Oh, yeah, like there's, there's something going on.
[00:32:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Maybe I can't pinpoint what that emotion is, but I know I'm feeling something intensely. Maybe I'm feeling flooded. So that's the the awareness. And then even once that emotion starts to dissipate a bit, we oftentimes have after effects of that emotion. So for instance, if you've ever been angry maybe at your partner or something before and then maybe the the anger subsides a little bit, but then you're quick to jump to anger again, either with your partner or with somebody else 'cause it's [00:33:00] kinda like that emotion is still lingering around, leaving you vulnerable to experiencing anger or another kind of painful, unwanted emotion as well.
[00:33:09] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So those are the, the ingredients and, and the skills for regulate aim to target, again, those primary ingredients, and the skills for tolerate aim to target those secondary ingredients.
[00:33:20] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And, and I'll just add one, one other piece what I think is neat. It's just like a batch of cookies. If you change one of the ingredients in a batch of cookies, it's gonna totally change your recipe, right?
[00:33:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: If you forget to add in sugar, you're not gonna be eating sweet cookies. And I think the same is true with these emotions, that if you change one of the ingredients, chances are you're gonna get a very different outcome. It's not gonna be the same emotion if even an emotion is gonna be present at all
[00:33:47] Chris McCurry: Can you give an ill-illustrative example of somebody going through that process?
[00:33:52] Chris McCurry: Of pulling out the different ingredients and making changes where changes can be made
[00:33:58] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah.
[00:33:58] Teen Disrespect Example
[00:34:00] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So I think it's, maybe, maybe it would even be more helpful if there's like an example that comes to mind that you can think of that like, might, resonate with your listeners,
[00:34:08] Chris McCurry: teenagers being rude and disrespectful and it's
[00:34:11] Chris McCurry: really pushing the parents' buttons
[00:34:14] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Oh, fabulous. I love it. Okay, so
[00:34:16] Emma Waddington: That's a good one.
[00:34:17] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Rolling their eyes, telling you they're... You're, you're the worst parent in the world, slamming the door, all of those sorts of things. Yeah. Okay, so a few things, right? One, you could go after that prompting event if that's really upsetting to you. So that would be one option, which is really trying there to control your kid, to get your kid to be more respectful, and I would say good luck with that.
[00:34:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: It's probably not gonna work all that well. But you could go there. Or you could say, "Okay, when my kid is acting this way, I start to have all these unhelpful thoughts about my kid. They are, like, ungrateful. They're they're mean. They're acting like jerks. They're... Like, how, how dare they? This is unacceptable.
[00:34:58] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I wasn't allowed to talk to [00:35:00] my parents this way." So you have all these unhelpful thoughts that are probably amping up the emotion, causing the emotion of maybe anger or disappointment to really flare up. So it could also be going after those thoughts specifically with trying to reframe those thoughts in a, a more adaptive way, right?
[00:35:19] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So instead of jumping to certain conclusions, again, that this is, this is not right, this shouldn't be happening, or this is... my kid is a jerk, maybe thinking about reframing that, and we could talk about how you could go about reframing that. The other option would be to not even reframe, but simply just to n- more take the mindfulness approach of just noticing, "
[00:35:40] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Ah, yeah, I'm having these thoughts," without treating those thoughts as fact.
[00:35:44] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Other thing we could do would be to go to the vulnerability factor. So for me, I know that the thing that tends to make me most vulnerable to painful emotions is when I am feeling hungry. When I'm hungry, when I'm tired that's oftentimes when I'm going to snap. And so sometimes just [00:36:00] making sure that I've met my basic needs.
[00:36:01] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I've gotten some food in me. I've... If I need to rest maybe I take a pause and I, I rest for a little bit, or I just think about making sure that I get a good night's sleep so that the next day I'm not completely depleted. So those are some things on the kind of regulate side
[00:36:17] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Jump to the tolerate side, but maybe I'll just pause there for a moment to see if there's anything else that would be helpful for me to elaborate on there
[00:36:24] Chris McCurry: Well, no, I think, I think it is recognizing, and stepping back from a little bit what's going on without necessarily trying to get rid of the thought or feeling that you're having. But to be able to, like categorize these thoughts. I like to talk a lot about time traveling
[00:36:40] Chris McCurry: as, A problematic place that people can go.
[00:36:43] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah, totally
[00:36:45] Chris McCurry: if, if my son does this with his boss someday, he's gonna get fired. But, my child is eight. so I'm really ti-- I gotta bring it back to here and
[00:36:55] Chris McCurry: now. So sometimes just recognizing, "Oh yeah, one of those,"
[00:36:59] Chris McCurry: can be [00:37:00] helpful, "Oh yeah, there I am thinking about how unfair it is," another one of those unfairness thoughts.
[00:37:05] Chris McCurry: So the-- as opposed to the, the content itself,
[00:37:09] Chris McCurry: which can be so appealing
[00:37:11] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Yeah, and I'll just add that just to be clear, 'cause I realize it might sound overwhelming what I'm suggesting here, like all these different points of intervention. Again, you don't have to intervene at every single point, right? You don't have to address every component of an emotion in order to shake things up.
[00:37:27] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So maybe you just go after the thoughts, or you just go after the vulnerability factors, or the prompting event, or something in the secondary ingredients
[00:37:35] Chris McCurry: And anything just to break out of that rut
[00:37:40] Emma Waddington: And
[00:37:40] Emma Waddington: like you said with the
[00:37:41] Emma Waddington: cookie metaphor, just change one ingredient and it will change the taste.
[00:37:47] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep.
[00:37:47] Tolerate Skills Overview
[00:37:47] Chris McCurry: So yeah, tolerate.
[00:37:49] Emma Waddington: Hmm.
[00:37:50] Chris McCurry: this is an interesting topic,
[00:37:52] Dr. Alissa Jerud: on the tolerate side, there are a number of skills we can use. So again, I mentioned that some of those [00:38:00] secondary ingredients, we've got the intense changes that happen in our body so rapid sometimes that we don't even realize are happening. And so one of my favorite set of skills for addressing those are what I call the care skills.
[00:38:11] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And for those who know DBT they're basically the tip skills, but I just changed the acronym to care just 'cause I find it easier to remember and a little more straightforward. So I could go into those care skills, but those are skills for really rapidly reducing physiological arousal in a matter of seconds without doing any, in, in a way that really works as quickly, I should say, as, maybe using some sort of a, a substance an illicit substance or alcohol, but without the harmful side effects of those.
[00:38:39] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So those are the care skills. You need to bring cool temperatures down a notch. Then there's opposite action, which is really about when we have a strong emotion, as I noted earlier, oftentimes there are these really intense urges that go with those emotions. It feels as though we have no choice but to explode or but to [00:39:00] run away.
[00:39:01] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And opposite action is really aiming to say, "I can feel this way. I can feel this intense anger. I can feel this anxiety, this sadness," and do the opposite of what those emotions are telling me to do, especially when, like acting on those emotions wouldn't serve me well. It wouldn't enable me to act, me to act in in line with my values, for instance.
[00:39:23] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Then we can also just be mindful of what's happening in us, not judging what's happening in us or outside of us as good or bad, but just noticing what's happening. Sometimes even, again, as I mentioned earlier, the kind of that bonus side effect of just like letting those emotions be there, not judging them, not trying to make them go away, is that that it can allow them to naturally run their course.
[00:39:45] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And then the other thing is just to, recognize that we can make space for, like recognizing that that emotion might stick around for a little bit of time. And again, letting that feeling be there knowing that that [00:40:00] might leave us more vulnerable to other painful emotions, but doesn't mean we have to get rid of that, that emotion by any means.
[00:40:07] Chris McCurry: So maybe, maybe a, a quick run through of the care skills would be
[00:40:12] Chris McCurry: of interest
[00:40:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah.
[00:40:14] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Sure.
[00:40:15] CARE Skills Deep Dive
[00:40:15] Dr. Alissa Jerud: In terms of the CARE skills, I will say, and I-- just to note, like I love sharing these skills. The CARE skills really, the first one is cool with ice.
[00:40:22] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And,
[00:40:23] Dr. Alissa Jerud: that is probably one of my favorites of all the skills in the book just because I think it is so cool how it works.
[00:40:29] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And so basically, the idea is that when we use ice to cool our faces, we can actually elicit something called the dive reflex, which is what happens to us humans when we are submerged in really cold water. And what happens when we are in cold water, our hearts stop pumping as intensely and stop sending blood to our extremities in order to heat our core and conserve energy.
[00:40:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And so we can actually elicit that dive [00:41:00] reflex simply by putting a cold ice pack or on our face or dunking our head in a bowl of cold ice water. And we can do that in about thirty seconds or so. And why that is so cool, I think, is because when I'm upset, when I'm activated, when I work with other parents who are really, in the moment with their kids and they're really heated, oftentimes what they share is like their hearts are racing, right?
[00:41:22] Dr. Alissa Jerud: They're just pounding. And so we can actually slow that process down, which can help to take the edge off of that anger, especially by bringing out an ice pack or dunking our head in a cold bowl of ice water. So it sounds silly, I realize, but it works wonders. And, and I should note that this skill can, again, it rapidly reduces heart rates.
[00:41:44] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I've seen heart rates plummet by fifty percent or more in just thirty seconds, so it works really quickly.
[00:41:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So if any
[00:41:51] Emma Waddington: it with my couples in the couples therapy sessions.
[00:41:54] Emma Waddington: I've never thought of it. I'll bring an ice pack in next time.
[00:41:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: yeah.
[00:41:58] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah.
[00:41:59] Emma Waddington: I didn't know
[00:41:59] Dr. Alissa Jerud: It [00:42:00] can be really effective. The only thing I will note for your listeners, for any of your couples you work with, would just be that if anybody has a heart condition it's worth checking in with a doctor before using this skill because of the fact that
[00:42:11] Dr. Alissa Jerud: it does rapidly reduce the heart.
[00:42:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. Yeah. So heart or other medical conditions, an eating disorder might render the skill contraindicated, but in general, for most of us, it's one that we can use to, to rapidly reduce those emotions. And I actually have a f- a friend who told me, it was almost a year ago, but I remember it stuck with me.
[00:42:30] Dr. Alissa Jerud: She had read the book, and then she was in the heat of the moment with her kids, and she was like, "Ah, I know what I need. I'm gonna go grab an ice pack." And she did, and she said it really wildly changed the moment. And I love when I-- somebody, shares that with me that something they learned from the book really did help in the heat of the moment.
[00:42:47] Dr. Alissa Jerud: just I'll add for that one briefly, again, you can put an ice pack on your face so it's covering your temple temples and cheekbones, so right in here. You could wrap that ice pack in a cool wet towel just so it's not so cold on your face. [00:43:00] Leave it there for 30 seconds. Or if you don't mind getting a little wet, a little messy, you can get that a large bowl of cold water maybe add a few ice cubes to it, and dunk your face in for 30 seconds.
[00:43:12] Chris McCurry: Which in And
[00:43:13] Chris McCurry: of itself is gonna interrupt the dance between you and your child
[00:43:17] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah.
[00:43:17] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Right. You're pause, you're, you're kinda stopping for a moment, taking a step back
[00:43:22] Chris McCurry: me, I'm gonna go into the kitchen now. it's like the child's sitting there like, "Wait a second, we're
[00:43:25] Dr. Alissa Jerud: what's going on?
[00:43:26] Chris McCurry: are you going?"
[00:43:28] Chris McCurry: It's
[00:43:28] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. No, but you could say, "You know, I, I'm feeling really overwhelmed, and I don't think I'm gonna be helpful here. I'm not gonna be effective, so I'm gonna take a moment. I'm gonna get out my ice pack."
[00:43:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Right?
[00:43:37] Chris McCurry: Yeah, that's modeling
[00:43:38] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yep,
[00:43:39] Dr. Alissa Jerud: exactly. So
[00:43:40] Dr. Alissa Jerud: that's, that's the first one of the care skills, cool with ice. Next is activate your body. So just, it could just be a few moments of intense aerobic exercise, but if you've got the ability to go for a 30-minute run, go for it. And the idea there is that it's kind of paradoxical, right?
[00:43:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Because when we're really activated, we're feeling a strong [00:44:00] emotion, oftentimes our hearts are racing. Intense exercise is gonna keep those hearts racing, but what happens when we do that is there's this thing that occurs after intense exercise called heart rate recovery. So our heart rates just kinda naturally slow down after that intense exercise, which can help us feel calmer.
[00:44:18] Dr. Alissa Jerud: It also can release those, those feel-good chemicals, those endorphins, that intense exercise. So again, it could be going for a run. It could just be deciding, you know what? I'm gonna do some jumping jacks or in the living room, or I'm gonna turn on some music and we're gonna have a dance party for a moment.
[00:44:33] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Just something for a few moments can jog you out of what you're feeling in that moment Then there's relax your muscles, which is the idea that, like oftentimes when we're feeling a strong emotion, we're, we're tensing in our body and that can actually further exacerbate what we're feeling.
[00:44:49] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And so we can practice tensing and then releasing those muscles just for a few seconds at a time, and we can do that with individual muscle groups or all throughout the body. [00:45:00] And doing that can actually bring about a sense, a greater sense of relaxation than just trying to say, "Oh, I'm gonna relax my body."
[00:45:07] Dr. Alissa Jerud: 'cause that's hard to do, just to relax. But if you first tense and then you relax, you can really notice the difference. So that's relax your muscles. And then the final care skill is exhale slowly, and that's based on the idea that when we tend to be upset we oftentimes hyperventilate, we take in more air than we need to, and that actually can cause our heart rates to speed up.
[00:45:29] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So if we can instead take a normal breath in and a really slow breath out, that can also slow our heart rates down because it turns out that our heart rates tend to slow down on the exhalation and speed up on the inhalation. So just that normal breath in for three or four seconds and then a really slow breath out for seven or eight seconds can really slow things down, including your heart rate, which can help immensely in those intense moments.
[00:45:57] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But again, with all of these skills, especially like the, that [00:46:00] breathing one, exhale slowly, that's one that trying to use in the heat of the moment if you've never practiced breathing in that way is probably gonna feel really hard to do. And so the more you can practice maybe at moments of calm when you're not especially upset about anything, the more likely it is that in a difficult moment you're going to be able to pull out that skill
[00:46:20] Chris McCurry: Exactly. These are skills. They need to be practiced so that when you really need them, they're more available to you
[00:46:26] Emma Waddington: Really helpful. And I thought, know, now we're sort of thinking about tolerating emotion, and I think it's a really important one, tolerate, 'cause often we're just not very good at tolerating we tend to struggle a lot with them.
[00:46:39] Setting Limits And Boundaries
[00:46:48] Emma Waddington: So having some skills to sort of take perhaps a little of the edge off it and make it easier to actually tolerate feels really I wondered if we could talk a little bit about setting limits with children. Because we have sort of-- you know, we've touched on, accepting behaviors and, learning to [00:47:00] regulate our emotions and get better at tolerating some of those more challenging emotions. But when is it that we actually want to sort of influence behavior, perhaps change behaviors?
[00:47:13] Emma Waddington: And I do think, parents listening to this will be thinking about that too.
[00:47:18] Emma Waddington: That this
[00:47:19] Chris McCurry: This i- this is a whole episode
[00:47:21] Emma Waddington: Yeah, maybe. But maybe you're right. Of course it
[00:47:24] Chris McCurry: In the interest of
[00:47:25] Chris McCurry: time,
[00:47:26] Emma Waddington: Yes. There we go. I
[00:47:28] Emma Waddington: told you, I warned you.
[00:47:29] Chris McCurry: a few, a few words just to whet
[00:47:31] Chris McCurry: people's appetite for the next episode with Alyssa Jerred.
[00:47:36] Chris McCurry: Stay tuned '
[00:47:36] Emma Waddington: cause maybe we don't have to talk about setting the firm lim- uh, limits, but perhaps just acknowledge that sometimes we need to think about setting limits.
[00:47:44] Emma Waddington: That it's not just, you know, all about regulating our emotions. There are times where we do need to intervene on the behaviors.
[00:47:50] Emma Waddington: and perhaps you can talk to that a little bit
[00:47:53] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Sure. Yeah. I think one piece I'll note is that sometimes setting those limits is actually crucial to being able to regulate our [00:48:00] behaviors, right? If, if our kids are doing something that is actually leaving us more vulnerable to lashing out later, then we might wanna intervene in some way and set a limit, right?
[00:48:11] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So, if our kids are, getting out like all sorts of art supplies right next to the beautiful new white couch we just got, right? And we just know that it's gonna make-- There's a good chance that white couch is gonna get ruined, then maybe the limit is, "Ah, you know what? I know you wanna, you wanna make these beautiful art projects, and let's move to the other room because I, I don't want the couch to get ruined, and if it does, I'm probably gonna get really upset.
[00:48:37] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So we're gonna move elsewhere."
[00:48:39] Chris McCurry: did I buy a white couch
[00:48:40] Dr. Alissa Jerud: I know.
[00:48:41] Chris McCurry: when I have children? I know, it's
[00:48:42] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Sure. Yes. Yeah. So that's one example, but I think the only other piece that I'll say is sometimes our kids are engaging in behaviors that are unsafe, right? That we can't
[00:48:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: let fly.
[00:48:51] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But then I think also recognizing that our kids can't-- Often if they know that they shouldn't be engaging in those behaviors, they're hitting a sibling, and they know that that's not [00:49:00] okay but they're dysregulated, and they're gonna keep going after the sibling.
[00:49:03] Dr. Alissa Jerud: You could try say, "Ah, you know what? Please stop hitting," or, "I can't let you hit," or whatever it may be, but sometimes that's not gonna be enough. Sometimes part of setting a limit is actually going in physically and intervening, so blocking that hit, for instance, to prevent it from continuing to land.
[00:49:19] Dr. Alissa Jerud: So that's just a little bit there, but, but by no means am I saying that we should let all behaviors go unchecked. And obviously, there are certain things that we need to make sure our kids are doing, like brushing their teeth or, maybe at times showering or taking a bath. And so we certainly can and should hold tho- set those limits.
[00:49:39] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But I think there are many other behaviors, like I said, that we can probably let, let go.
[00:49:44] Chris McCurry: Yeah, and hopefully those, those rules and those expectations, those limits have been established proactively and not always just in the heat of the moment when your child is probably less receptive to what you have to say. but yeah, [00:50:00] that's, that is a, a topic for, you know, a whole, a whole other
[00:50:04] Emma Waddington: Yeah, what I like to think about when I think about, what boundaries we set, it is deeply personal to the family, to your context what you think are important limits, what your values are, what you think, what you want for your child.
[00:50:17] Emma Waddington: And and once you are in touch with that, it makes it easier why it's important as opposed to just because I say so. It's, coming from this place of, I want my child to be able to sit at a table and have a conversation,
[00:50:33] Emma Waddington: And that feels really important. So setting a limit around that expectation perhaps, feel a little easier when we have the why
[00:50:42] Emma Waddington: Bit clearer in our minds.
[00:50:44] Emma Waddington: And that we want, children that can function in society as opposed to feral animals
[00:50:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah, and I think you just said, I know we're almost out of time, but I know you said something there that I think is really important, and that's that it is very individualized, right? What might be important [00:51:00] to me, what I might value might be very different from what you or somebody else listening values.
[00:51:04] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And I think a large part of this, what I hope I'm conveying in my book and here on this podcast is I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all
[00:51:11] Emma Waddington: I agree. Yeah.
[00:51:13] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And I think a lot of it is recognizing, again, what is important to us. What are the, the limits that I believe I need to set either for my own well-being, for my own ability to regulate my emotions, or for my children's well-being, and holding those.
[00:51:29] Dr. Alissa Jerud: But recognizing that, those can be flexible, those can change. They're not all, the, and just because somebody else has different limits that they're setting doesn't mean that I have to adopt those same limits
[00:51:39] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:51:39] Co Parenting Differences
[00:51:44] Emma Waddington: And just quickly before we finish, 'cause you've just reminded me of something I wanted to ask you. in that it's the complexity of managing differences within the parenting
[00:51:50] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Uh-huh.
[00:51:50] Emma Waddington: that we might have with our co-parent, and perhaps they have different ideas on the limits we should be setting.
[00:51:57] Emma Waddington: And it's quite often the case, more often than [00:52:00] not, that we have different views on how to do it. and that's something that we need to learn to navigate
[00:52:07] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Yeah. I'll just give a- brief example of we, my family, we love to hike, and I tend to be more open to my kids, like taking time to explore while we're hiking and get into, playing in the dirt or whatever it may be.
[00:52:21] Dr. Alissa Jerud: My husband, he's really goal-focused, and he wants to get to where we're going on that hike. And so, when we there's no right or wrong approach, and it's just recognizing that we both have different styles. And so when I'm going on a hike just with kids and I, they know they can take their time to play.
[00:52:39] Dr. Alissa Jerud: And when we're all together as a family, we're going to, I'm gonna help move them along, and he's gonna help move them along because it's important to him. So again, even within like a given family, we can be flexible on which limits we're holding when.
[00:52:52] Emma Waddington: That's a very good example. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:55] Wrap Up And Book Plug
[00:52:58] Emma Waddington: Well, thank you very much. Gosh, I have still have lists of questions. [00:53:00] I haven't managed time very well today, so, my apologies, but this has been really fun. Thank you. Thank you, Alyssa, for this fabulous book as well, and I think
[00:53:09] Emma Waddington: it's really warm and gentle and a really good read, so I highly recommend it
[00:53:15] Chris McCurry: And
[00:53:15] Chris McCurry: we'll, we'll have a link to your website and the book in our show notes. Once again, the the book is "Emotion Savvy Parenting"
[00:53:25] Chris McCurry: And it's a, it's a fabulous book and very helpful. So
[00:53:29] Chris McCurry: Thank
[00:53:29] Chris McCurry: you so much, Elisiv.
[00:53:31] Dr. Alissa Jerud: Thank you both so much for having me. This was so fun
[00:53:33] Emma Waddington: So fun. Really helpful. Thank you so much
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