We all experience those moments when our feelings threaten to consume us and make us act in ways that don’t align with our values. In this episode, we’re wrapping up the SAFE series and I discuss how I navigated my own emotional storms by using the SAFE model to help me. We also discuss how we can stay connected to our values, even when faced with big emotions and use self-awareness, mindfulness, and emotional regulation to help us through. Listen in to discover how to stay connected to your values so you show up like you want to- and then teach your kids to do the same.
What you will learn on this episode:
- The importance of staying connected to your values during emotional storms.
- How self-awareness and mindfulness can help in navigating stormy emotions.
- The significance of emotional regulation and metacognition in overcoming difficult situations.
- The power of letting go of judgment and becoming curious about behavioral patterns.
- The value of preparing for tough situations in advance by reverse engineering the process.
- The importance of self-talk and reaffirming that you will be okay no matter what happens.
- How to apply the SAFE (Self-Awareness, Acknowledgment, Flexibility, and Engagement) process during emotional storms.
TRANSCRIPT
*This transcription below was provided for you or your convenience; please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.
It could be so hard to act the way we want when we’re really emotionally dysregulated. In today’s episode, we’re closing up the SAFE series by talking about how to engage in what matters most to you, even when you’re in an emotional storm. This is Leadership Parenting, episode number 11. Did you know that resilience is the key to confidence and joy? As moms, it’s what we want for our kids, but it’s also what we need for ourselves. My name is Leigh Germann, I’m a therapist and I’m a mom. Join me as we explore the skills you need to know to be confident and joyful. Then get ready to teach these skills to your kids. This is Leadership Parenting, where you learn how to lead your family by showing them the way. Hello, friends, and welcome to Leadership Parenting.
We are on our last episode of the SAFE series, where we’re going to talk about the E engaging in what matters to you, which, in translation, really means how do I act in the way I care about when I’m dealing with all of these crazy big emotions and my body? it’s all dysregulated. Well, taking five episodes to talk about this has been indulgent. What I mean by that is I’ve asked you to indulge me in breaking all of this down and looking at the parts that go on during an emotional experience. Usually, these kinds of experiences hit us pretty quick, like a flash flood. Sometimes they may only last a short time, a few minutes or maybe just a couple of hours. Why would I take five episodes to talk about this? Well, it’s because my goal is to help you understand all the pieces and maybe to start with, just to recognize that there are actually. There are pieces, because this is what I am looking for if I were to work with you just after you had an emotional storm. And when you can see the pieces I can see, then you’ll also be able to see the key to handling the storms in your life and really also the storms in your kids’ lives. So I’ve indulgently taken all of these episodes to show you the pieces, and we’ve been talking about what emotional storms are, how they feel in our body and what to do to handle them, and hopefully by now you can start to identify what your own emotional storms look like. And through all of this repetition, the terms are hopefully getting more familiar and you’re starting to be able to spot some of the pieces that might be happening around you, and I want to share with you that, as I’ve been recording these episodes over the last month or so, i’ve experienced a few of my own emotional storms.
One was a time I got really upset when I was trying to return a defective oven that we’d purchased and it wasn’t working and it didn’t fit our space And, despite the return policy, i was being told that no one could help me. And after two hours on the phone with like three different people, i could feel my chest getting hot, my heart pounding and I don’t often get really angry, but I could feel it And I felt like I was going to lose it And I wanted to yell. I felt that temptation to have one of those adult tantrums that we talk about And I had feelings like helplessness and anger And I had thoughts like this is not right. I’ve been patient, no one is helping me. I kept trying to slow things down and to take big breaths and to find the values that I cared about and to get connected to them So I could keep myself on track and stay very like, civil and respectful on the phone Which, by the way, is what we’re talking about in this episode How to act in ways that match our values even when we’re not feeling calm, when we’re feeling other things And we kind of have this temptation to do things that don’t match our values.
And it was hard. I found myself saying over and over to the people I was talking to like kind of through gritted teeth, i realized this isn’t your problem, i’m trying to stay calm, thank you for trying to help me. But I also raised my voice and I got very direct at one point And my family in the other room kind of peeked their head around the corner and raised their eyebrows a little bit like wow, mom’s mad, like there was this battle going on inside me. I really wanted to kind of figuratively or actually stamp on my foot and scream, but I also knew that that wouldn’t help my case or help me and that I kind of know from experience I would have felt worse when I got off the phone because I wouldn’t be proud of how I treated the people I was talking with, and so I was trying so hard to stay connected to my values, and the values at play here for me were fairness and commitment, and those were the ones that were getting me all stirred up about how wrong this was and how I had in writing and someone approved this and now you’re disapproving it And this is expensive, and who do I have to talk to to explain this? like fairness and commitment, we’re just like circling around in my head. But also I value respect and kindness And those were tugging at me too And I was having this tug of war inside. And how do you keep calm and collected when you really don’t want to? Right, because some of those fairness values were like kind of having me not want to stay calm, and yet I really did want to stay calm, but I really didn’t. But I really did, and this was the tug of war. It was a struggle, but I didn’t want it to be a struggle. I didn’t want to be in that emotional storm. Yet there I was And by the time I got off the phone my stomach was in knots, my whole body felt tense And I don’t think I showed up fully the way I wanted to. I mean, i held it together mostly and I was polite, but it was such a struggle And maybe, as I tell this to you, i’m thinking maybe this is my way of paying penance and feeling better about it, because I’m kind of confessing it to you, but I do think it illustrates, for me at least, that time where I got taken by surprise. I thought I was just going to make a phone call and quickly get a task done and it turned into something so much bigger, so much more challenging.
Another emotional storm I had recently was less about getting angry and more about feeling sad and anxious. This storm for me happened recently as I was saying goodbye to my daughter in another state after being with her and her husband for their graduation ceremonies. There’d been a quick change of travel plans on my part which got me home sooner to be ready for work that week, but it meant that I cut a day off of our visit, even though she had a busy day scheduled, saying goodbye to friends and neighbors, and I’d already spent three jam-packed, really wonderful days with her. I kept having these big, overwhelming sad feelings. I just got so stormy and I could kind of see it was starting to happen, but I didn’t catch it in time and I ended up in like this big crying session in the hotel room that night and I had to work through it.
I think it’s really a blessing that I was working on this kind of series, as I was having this experience, because, you know, right at the forefront of my mind was the invitation that I was in an emotional storm and that I had an opportunity to apply the safe process, just like I’d been teaching you about. So I had to look at my thoughts and even talked through them with my sweet husband, who actually looked absolutely confused because we’d had this wonderful three days together and I was kind of on cloud nine and everybody was happy. And then all of a sudden he looked over and there I was so upset in the hotel room and he kept saying wait, what’s happening? everything was just fine, it’s all good, wait what’s wrong. And I had an opportunity to practice that safe process and use particularly that F in safe and realize I was having thoughts, lots of thoughts that came at me with all sorts of regretful stories.
What if she felt disappointed? or worse, what if she felt like I didn’t think she was important to me? and this, by the way, is even though we’d had a clear conversation about the travel decision earlier and we’d felt good about it. But I was having those thoughts and they were coming hard and fast in my mind. What if I was missing something really important that day that I’d regret later? What if my wonderful in-laws, who are also there celebrating with us? What if they felt hurt that I left early? What if I missed out on strengthening that relationship? I think these were the top thoughts that kept rolling around in my head and they were causing all of my sad and anxious feelings.
And I’m familiar with these kinds of thoughts because I recognize that they come from kind of my own personal history of worry about being separated from people that I love and missing out on time with people that I love, and I know I’ve done my own kind of emotional work around this. I know this comes from some of the hard things I experienced as a young person and the people that I lost when I was young. So, if you remember, in the last episode we talked about cats that can come to our door and thoughts that hang around even when they aren’t good for us. Well, this was one of those little thought kitties that trip me up sometimes and I have a tendency to overthink things and get into a worry cycle and sometimes that can turn into a threat cycle and create this emotional dysregulation. So I was definitely not sailing through this storm in a beautiful way, even though I know this stuff, even though I teach it, even though I should have it down like hands down I should be good at this I was really rather kind of panicking on my, you know, stormy sea.
So here I am, a teacher of this, and I found myself walking through the same exact steps that I am teaching you. I slowed things down, focused on my breathing and started to look inward. I literally put a hand to my chest and asked myself what am I feeling right now? This was an important step for me, because when I slowed down and asked myself, my answer was not connected to the whole weekend we had just experienced. It was like I’d had this great experience, so much connection and so happy. And then bam, here I was feeling sad, feeling fear, and this was a great awareness moment for me, as I was acknowledging my feelings remember, i’m not trying to change them yet, i was just noticing them. I started to attend to myself and, by the way, i think we should add the word attend to the A in safe because not only was I acknowledging what I was feeling, i needed that little bit of attention to what I was feeling. And as I did that, i started to look for that imaginary string to follow and see what thoughts it might be connected to, and this was the F in safe.
I started to do that emotional audit we talked about last week. What thought is this feeling connected to? If I’m feeling really sad and afraid? what is it I’m thinking right now? I made the wrong decision. that was the thought that kept going through my mind, and I could see that this was one of the biggest thoughts that kept giving me this awful anxiety, feeling like I was in trouble, like I was losing something. So, even as I retell this story, i can see a mismatch here and I wonder if you can too. Right, there wasn’t a wrong or a right decision. I wasn’t missing anything life-altering and I was definitely not losing connection with my daughter or even my sweet in-laws.
in the moment, though, all of those feelings that I was having made those thoughts feel so true, and remember we talked about the lower and the upper parts of our brain, while the lower part of my brain was reacting to those thoughts, and I’ve had those thoughts before at times when I wished I’d had more time with the people I loved, especially those who’d passed away when I was young, like this feeling of loss I have in relation to leaving a day early. It made no sense on paper like I wasn’t, nobody was dying, nobody was. You know, there was no major break to the relationship, but to my lower brain it was connected and it turned on my threat response and this is why we want to have a whole brain approach to getting us through storms. I really needed my higher brain to help me connect the dots, to see that everyone truly was okay, that I was only reacting out of love and connection, and remember those things are in my values that I care about, and that this was an okay decision. I hope you can start to see how this might apply in your own storms, because the details and the specifics of each situation may be unique, but the pattern and the elements of what gets us upset and what we need to sort through are the same. And, by the way, i had to decide what I was going to do with all of this, all of the thinking and all the feelings and how I wanted to behave. And this is the final step that we’re talking about today the E for engage in what matters to you and safe. What am I going to do with all of this?
I could have changed my plans right back to how I had originally scheduled things. I could have called my daughter and asked for her reassurance. I could have stayed up all night trying to think through it And in the end I made a decision to put my focus and my attention on thoughts that served me in the best way I could think of. Getting flexible with my thinking allowed me to remember some of the other things I know to be true, to change my focus, to be on some other things like no one’s in danger, i’m not missing anything important, everything is okay. Even though right in that moment it didn’t feel that way, these were the thoughts that helped calm my heart and let me sleep. I also asked for a hug from my husband, who ended up holding my hand as I fell asleep, because I also needed support. I needed that grounding, that connection, and if he hadn’t been there I could have called a friend or prayed or journaled my feelings to help me feel that support. And when morning came, the storm had passed and I felt calmer and clearer, even though I did have kind of one of those crying hangovers with puffy eyes and a little headache. I got through it Now, hopefully after confessing two of my messy storms, you won’t lose faith in my ability to help you handle your stormy times.
I share this with you because storms happen to everyone and we all get dysregulated. It’s getting through it that we want to focus on and get better and better at knowing how to help ourselves. As we get through it, i mean, you will get through it. But can we get through it with less suffering and maybe in a shorter amount of time? Like, can we become more confident that, no matter the storm, we’re going to do our level best to choose how we’re going to act so that it aligns with what matters to us, because how you act is going to make a difference in everything you do in your marriage, in your friendships, in your parenting and even in how you take care of yourself.
When I’m feeling upset or I’m hurt or I’m angry and defensive, all of my feelings are just cheering me on to panic or say a mean thing or yell or threaten to walk away or, even worse, to leave to say I’m done, i can’t be here, i can’t do this. I guess it’s possible that we really have decided that we’re done and we’re not really staying married or we’re turning in our mom badge and giving away our children. I’m going to guess that most of the time, we’re probably just stuck in an emotional storm and our feelings are leading us to the behavior that, if we were calm, would not be at all what we would do. And that’s what the E is about in safe, in understanding how we’re going to act and letting that be our choice in spite of the storm rather than a result of the big feelings that come from the storm. And this is the action step in the safe process where you get to use some of that internal control you’ve gathered by slowing things down, by acknowledging and tending to your feelings and by getting flexible with your thoughts. So for me, this is the place where I had to choose how I was going to act on the phone with the oven lady and even though I was feeling really upset, and how I was going to choose to take care of myself and guide myself through a stormy period of time, even when I was feeling anxiety about my travel decision and leaving my daughter.
Now, you might relate to these examples or completely think they’re ridiculous, but I guarantee you have something that gets you all stormy, all dysregulated, and it really doesn’t matter how you and I compare to other people. It’s the process that matters knowing the process to help yourself through hard things, to know what’s happening and what you need and what you’re going to do. This model actually utilizes self-awareness and mindfulness affect regulation, which is regulating your emotions and metacognition, in which you’re changing the relationship with your thoughts and feelings in such a way that you get more choice. These are serious skills that you’re learning, and the choice, the internal power this gives you, is the ability to decide how you want to behave. So we’re talking intention rather than reaction, and it actually starts to look like a decision. Not a decision to be regulated all the time, rather a decision to notice that you are dysregulated and to help yourself through it. Deciding to notice what’s going on in your body, deciding to move towards your feelings rather than trying to push them away, deciding to look at your thoughts and consider there may be other options on the menu, other ways to decide, to think about it. You know there’s no shame in getting dysregulated. In fact, it’s part of life, and that’s why I shared my last few emotional, dysregulated times with you.
I think we need to be free to acknowledge this process and not get caught up in the shame of it, because that’s going to make us ineffective and we’ll want to push it all the way and not look at it. And we need to actually be able to do the opposite so we can help ourselves through it, because this is hard and people train for this. Whether you realize it or not, you are training for this by listening to these concepts. You’re learning that your feelings have a power to influence what you do, but that you can override that by understanding that your feelings come from thoughts and that you are not your thoughts. You’re just having thoughts, and that means you can work with them. All of this lets you make the kind of decisions that serve you, and this is powerful when you need to be able to act, when you want to act in a way that works for your relationships and that works for you, and this is important because you don’t want to be beating yourself up with self-criticism or doing the opposite, blaming others right. I call it compassionate responsibility. You want to help yourself, deal with your own feelings in a fair way to both you and others, and we’re choosing to go at this in a whole-brained way, to not just let our automatic lower brain call all the shots, and this is what we call flexibility. Wow, i love that word, this concept. I know I geek out on it, but think about what it means to be able to have thoughts and see them as separate from you, almost as an experience you’re having, where you can say these thoughts are happening in my internal world and creating my reality And I’m probably going to act in response to this. So do I want this reality? Like, is this what I want And what reality would I choose if I could choose it? How do I want to feel right now? What choices do I have and which ones help me move toward the things that matter most to me?
Remember the mom we talked about in episode eight, the one who had her morning kind of fall apart. Her kids were arguing and they couldn’t find their shoes and a child hit another one, and they were late and there was crying and everything was kind of out of control. And that mom said she felt like she had a volcano in her chest and that she couldn’t think And tears came to her eyes and her muscles felt tight and she was yelling And it was not what she had planned on doing that morning. So let’s look at the safe process in this story. Can you see the storm this mom was feeling and how it happened At first? it seems like the storm is the circumstances, the kids not listening, the hitting, the chaos. It seems like too much and it caused the storm. But here’s the thing She usually handles all this chaos just fine most of the time.
This is what makes it so hard and what made it so hard for her that morning and why it can be so hard for us, why we can feel so broken, like we aren’t good moms. Because this day, unlike other days where she could manage it normally, this day it caught her by surprise and it turned into so much more than her usual chaos, like it hit her hard and she started to think that she was getting chewed up and spit out by her mothering role And she judged her reaction against her values, which were to be loving and kind and patient and all those things that she normally is and that she cares about. And when she judged herself against those, she made a decision that she was deficient, when in reality she just got caught up in an emotional dysregulation. And I don’t know if you remember the shame that this mom had, but she had so much shame It was so hard for her to even talk about it. And I’ll tell you this is an amazing woman. She’s a great mom. She loves her kids, she does everything to teach them and care for them And at the end of a long day of like a hundred wonderful acts of service and tenderness and goodness, this is how she feels like a failure, and this just is not fair. I feel so strongly about this. This is just not fair to judge ourselves so harshly.
It doesn’t fix the problem. If the problem isn’t you, it’s in being dysregulated. That is what we can work on, and I almost said fix. Like you know, we can fix dysregulation. But I stopped myself because I think fix implies that it will never happen again. And I just opened this podcast with my own confession to you of having emotional storms just this past week. After years of practicing this, i am not ashamed. I just told a thousand people. I’m not saying you should be proud of your actions that don’t reflect your values That we can learn from and repair and work on to choose actions that better reflect our desires. We want to change those things. That’s what we’re talking about today. But if we see the problem as a defective view, then you’re going to get stuck. So we need to see that these times are just threat responses, dysregulation, and then take responsibility for that and learn from that. And I think we can take that mom meltdown and deconstruct it.
Here are the questions I had her ask and that you can ask yourselves When did the thinking start that triggered my feelings? How did I take care of myself? What could I have done in retrospect to slow things down so I could have worked a little bit more with my thinking? And what could I do next time And the time after that? Are there any patterns I can see that could help me prepare for next time? This is what we do in a session when I work with someone. We break it down and we learn from it, and you could do that too. I think I shared with you how I worked with my own expectations about having kind of that clean model home And I adjusted them so I wasn’t upset at my big family chaos most of the time. I came to that conclusion after learning from my own emotional storms, watching for the patterns, listening to my thoughts and sorting through them so that I could figure out a way to think that was achievable and that would work for me And, honestly, that took a little time. And as you practice this, don’t expect that you’ll stop having emotional storms. This is a vehicle that helps you get through your life, not that helps you bypass your life. Life has storms. You’re just going to be better prepared to weather them, and I do think that knowing these steps helps us decrease the number of storms and their intensity, and we get better at catching clues earlier and learning the patterns and understanding what our triggers are or the things that push our buttons, and we’ll get better at recovering and maybe even learn to preempt the storms.
So let’s start thinking about your personal experience with getting dysregulated. I want to invite you to think of a time you may be likely to experience dysregulation. This could be a time you get angry, you get anxious, you have some panic or worry or maybe sad or depressed feelings. Now think about what usually happens. What’s the scene or the situation Like? what does it look like around you in your external world? What are the circumstances, what might be going on, what are other people doing And maybe what are the things that kind of trigger the storm. Then I want you to think about how it affects the people around you when you’re so stormy. Does it go in the way you want it to? Are you able at times to manage that storm and, kind of like, show up the way you want to? Does it match what you want it to look like? Just kind of being curious, and we’re starting to look at where can we apply these principles.
Okay, now I want you to think about what’s happening on your internal world, on the inside. What are you feeling Like? where are those feelings coming up in your body? Like if you were to put your hand to your chest and take your emotional temperature. What feelings are you having And what are you thinking? What are the things that you might be saying to yourself? And is this a new story or is this a familiar story? Kind of like a cat at the door, something that you’ve thought before, like a phrase that keeps coming back over and over? You know, when you do some research on thoughts, and particularly negative thoughts, we find that many of us have a very familiar set of thoughts that come back to us on a regular basis, and we may be aware of them, we may not be aware of them. We’re looking to have your awareness open up and notice this, notice how you might handle your own feelings of overwhelm and maybe start thinking about what are the values that might be coming up for you, like you know, that are getting triggered in all of this, and they’re the same values in there that could guide you through the tough times so that you’re acting in the way that you want. Okay, those were a lot of questions. I don’t expect you to have quick answers for them, but I’m trying to get your brain kind of rolling here because I wanna now start to apply the P’s we talked about in that first opening episode, about the safe model, that we wanna plan for it. That was the first P not judge it. And this is where most of us get stuck. Where my clients get stuck, they’re so focused on feeling bad about it that they can’t see the patterns, they can’t see the process. So I’m really inviting you to let loose of this judgment, and I don’t know what else I can do to prove to you that it’s okay to do that Like I’m telling you what my emotional storms are and I wanna normalize it. Let’s just notice that we get stuck and start to plan for it, and so we’re prepared for what to do. And that’s our next step.
Step one in preparing what would you like to do next time something like this happens. Like you could take a sheet of paper out and say I want next time my kids are all melting down as we’re getting ready for school. I want to act this way. You’re kind of like going to the end results and looking at we’re reverse engineering this. How do I wanna act And how do I want my kids to feel, or my spouse to feel, or that sales, the oven lady, to feel? How did I want the oven lady to feel when I was finished talking with her? What values do I want to lead my behavior? Now, this is a big question. If we’re judging ourselves, this is gonna be a very painful question And we’re probably gonna just say shut the book, i’m not doing this. So I’m asking you to not judge yourself. We’re just being curious, like wouldn’t it be cool if you could just dial it up and say, yeah, this is how I wanna show up, so let’s just kind of plan for that. We’re gonna prepare for that.
Step two now, this is the reverse engineering. What would I have to be feeling in order to act that way. So I want you to think of the emotions on the menu and how they feel inside and which ones help you act in the way that you want to, like that match your values. For me, most of the time I need to be able to kind of get a hold of some level of peace or love or confidence or calm or safety so that I can act accordingly. And if I’m feeling defensive or angry or victimized by my kid’s behavior, then it’s gonna be hard to act calm and respond to them in this strong parenting leadership that we’re really trying to show up with. So I need to imagine what I want to feel. So I’m imagining first how I wanna behave and now I’m imagining how would I need to feel in order to act that way. What feelings do I need more of? Is it calm? Is it confidence? Is it peace? Is it self-respect? Is it gratitude or hope, love, patience Like these are all really helpful for us to be reaching for. I’m not saying you reach for all of them, i’m just saying maybe there’s one I like calm, because it’s kind of neutral, right, like I don’t have to love this situation, but maybe I could be calm or peaceful.
So imagine yourself in a stormy situation. See the details and now see yourself feeling calm inside, feeling more of what you want to feel. Okay, step three what would you need to be thinking in order to feel this way? What would the story have to be for you to feel okay inside so you could act the way you want to be acting? Remember, this is in the middle of the storm, so nothing is changing outwardly, in your external experience. This is all inside in you, where you have more control. So just try to get a picture of it in your mind, like I see myself standing in front of my fill in the blink, my child, my spouse, my boss, the oven lady connecting to my calm, or my patience or whatever safety I need inside because I’m saying things to myself.
Here are the thoughts I’ll be okay, no matter what this person does. I’m okay. There’s room to figure this out. I can get support if I need it. I can take a break. I can take care of myself. This is almost over. Whatever you need to say that helps you get to that place of feeling like you’re gonna be okay because your threat response is turned on. We gotta turn it off, unless you’re in a situation where your threat response has to happen right, like if you’re in a fire and you got your threat response on. We’re not trying to turn that off. You have to get you and your family out of the building. But if that’s happening and you’re on the phone with an appliance return person, then maybe calm will serve me better.
So remember from last episode, option number two and three in our imaginary thought menu my child is having a tantrum and this is not a terrible thing. Like we said, that’s farther down the list. It is, but we can get to it. We can actually prepare for it, because is your child gonna have another tantrum? Yes, they are. Is this a terrible thing? No, it doesn’t have to be. I can be planning for the tantrum, preparing for it so that I can stay calm and now I can actually respond to my child and focus on how to deal with the tantrum.
I want you to try this before the storm. This is preparing for a storm, because it’s coming for you, maybe not in the next 10 minutes, but definitely in the next week or month. You have a storm headed your way and we can’t escape it. We can only prepare for them and then feel confident that we can ride the waves through. So do you have a little scene in your mind with all the details separated out? I want you to have a little out of body experience where you get to see the potential storm headed your way and how you want to weather it.
You know those awful storms, those meltdowns in our homes, with our kids, those breakups, those hard nights, the disappointments. They have an end, maybe not as quickly resolved as we want them to be, but there are always hidden glimmers of hope and things to learn and ways to find silver linings in all of our situations. And this does not have to look pretty. My storms were not pretty. There were tears and frustration and tense emotions and impatience because it was stressful. We’re all just trying to do an important work to put on a good day, a nice dinner, get to work or school on time, teach our kids manners and to be kind to each other. We’re dealing with stresses that life brings. It’s messy and it routinely gets stormy. But if we can slow things down inside of us when we get stressed, we can start to work with our internal world in a way that helps us get through these hard times.
So our final P is practice, and that means expecting the storms and being ready to learn from them and then working at it and realizing that you’re never gonna be finished practicing. This is not a task to get done. It’s your skill set to live your life with, and sometimes you’ll feel adequately prepared and sometimes you won’t. But you can always come back to the same process because it works, it holds you and it helps you, and you can count on that And you can start to explain this to your kids as you’re doing it.
When you say things out loud to calm yourself down, that self-talk that anchors you in your values, you can say it out loud and they can hear you saying we got this. We’re just having a hard day. It’ll feel better tomorrow. I just need to get some slow breaths. We’re all just tired. This is going to work out. We can do this. You’re modeling this for your kids when you say it out loud And hopefully they’ll start to say it out loud. You can even guide them to say it out loud when you notice that they’re working through this And it will take them some time, just like it takes you and me some time to get it, but they’ll start to pick it up.
So, my friends, I wish you peace in the stormy days of your life and trust that you’re going to grow in your capacity to face these waves and ride them through to the other side of the storm. I believe in the steps of this process. I believe in you feeling safe inside. I believe in you. Thank you for indulging me in these five episodes. I hope that it was helpful and I’m excited to meet again with you next week. Take care.
Thanks so much for listening. You can always find me on Instagram, @Leigh Germann, or on my website at LeighGermann.com. Thanks again and I’ll see you next time. The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness or disease. It’s also not intended to be legal, medical or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care.