The Gottman Institute – Inspired New Horizons

Connective Tissue

A few years ago, I started to notice that the more I was really getting to know myself, the greater my curiosity about others. Even when I watched a Netflix series or read a compelling fiction book, I found that I was more empathetic with the characters and their backstories. Truth to be told, I discovered that I could see parts of my own life reflected back to me in their experiences and reactions. It was also easy to see the patterns of cause and effect that we messy human beings bring to our relationships.

It dawned on me that I was now engaging with books and shows on a deeper level and I loved it. I was able to feel and relate to so many characters almost as if I knew them personally. The story lines and plot twists of shows like This is Us or Parenthood were intimately familiar. Some felt like they had been pulled right out of my own family history. It was easy to readily identify with characters and events because I too “have been there”.

Conversations with some of my closest friends revealed that the same thing was happening for them. As they deepened their own self awareness, they too were more intrigued by the complexity of their favorite characters in a book or tv series. They could recognize blind spots and insecurities that contributed to missteps and bad decisions.

Discussing episodes of these shows with friends was much like being in book club with a fascinating twist — our focus was on the whole of the family dynamics and how one issue could cause a cascade of varying problems amongst the family members. We could clearly see the through line that ran from childhood experiences right into the adult lives of each family member.

These mini series became a classroom for recognizing familiar behavior patterns and coping mechanisms. We got a zoomed-out view of how complicated families are. We gained a deeper understanding of what drives people to make some of the choices they do; again, because in many cases, we too “had been there”.

While my friends and I laughed that it is easy to recognize the many fault lines in family dynamics when we simply watching a show, we did agree that we gained from observing the bigger picture. These programs give the viewer a different vantage point; we get an abundance of nuance and context from so many different perspectives and experiences. That is rarely the same lens we use in our own complex family dynamics.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we rarely know our family members as well as we think we do.

Another is that we rarely know the “whole” of each other.

The Bigger Picture:

I titled this blog post “connective tissue” because that is what we are growing and strengthening when we become cycle breakers and agents of change.

I am a firm believer that replacing that tightly woven yet constantly unraveling fabric of complicated family dynamics with healthy “connective tissue” is the ultimate safety net for our families and relationships.

Dr. Michael Gervais (one of the world’s top high-performance psychologists) shares this wisdom with us: “To lay the foundation for a strong sense of self, the prime dictum is to not focus on the self. The way to do this is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less often.”

The real value of personal growth and self discovery happens in relationship with others. When we truly get to know ourselves well and change how we show up, that’s where meaningful change occurs. When we take Dr. Gervais’ advice to heart, we build a strong foundation of who we are and who we wish to become. We pay attention to how we get unmoored from ourselves in our relationships with others.

This is a giant step in building healthy connective tissue. It’s sticking to our core values and getting more consistent in behaviors and skills that match who we want to be. We can cultivate greater self awareness about how we show up at work vs. how we behave at home, how we act with parents and siblings vs. our own kids and friends. It’s exhausting to shape shift and adapt to all these different relationships if we are constantly matching the environment instead of who we really are at the core.

So often in the self help space, we are told to shed outgrown behavioral patterns that we learned in childhood. Yet they are second nature to us and fit like our favorite pair of comfy jeans. Eventually a good friend or our spouse is going to tell us that it is time to ditch the well worn jeans — they look terrible, no longer fit the body we now have and surely don’t match who we are today.

The same is true with childhood coping skills and poor emotional regulation. They are just old jeans that need to be tossed and replaced with something that makes us feel like a million bucks when we put them on. And while the jeans become a staple in our wardrobe, we can dress them up or down depending on what we are stepping into. Our strong sense of self is that great pair of new jeans. The jacket, the hat, shoes or other accessories are all the skills and tools we use when stepping into relationships with others.

A strong sense of self is our core foundation for everything we do and all the relationships we are in. We become more consistent in how we show up whether we are at home, work or community. When people describe us to others, they capture the essence of who we really are — across all our relationships.

A core reason why family dynamics are the most challenging is that we have a long history of shape shifting, people pleasing, shrinking or puffing up to get our needs met and to also feel a sense of belonging. One false move and we become an outcast. Misunderstandings, rifts and estrangements are so commonplace for this very reason.

Remember that takeaway from the mini series I mentioned above — We have no idea of all the nuance and context of our family members unique emotions and experiences. If we don’t even know ourselves well, how could we possibly know others? And if we are all donning different behavioral patterns to “make things work”, it’s unlikely anything actually stands a chance of working.

A little perspective here: Even if your sibling is only two years older or younger than you, their childhood experiences can be remarkably different. First of all your parents were not the same that they were when you came into the world. They learned a lot from raising you and they adapted in a lot of new ways. What might have changed in your parent’s lives in that time span? Job change, relocation, loss of a parent, health issues, financial struggles? Life events have an impact on parents and kids. If there is a five year or greater age difference in siblings, then essentially it can be like being raised in two remarkably different families.

Healthy connective tissue for family dynamics has to replace the old tangled web we weave by losing ourselves in multiple identities. No wonder our relationships are so complicated.

Our sense of self, our identity, gets shaped and molded like Playdoh when we are growing up. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve been cut, pounded, stretched and kneaded so many times that we have a hard time figuring out who we really are. It’s unfortunate that most of our self worth and self identity is under constant scrutiny and subject to change at any given moment throughout childhood.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” — Carl Jung

Being a change agent and breaking generational family cycles, starts with us. Once we free ourselves of behavioral patterns that keep us stuck, we have more wiggle room for self discovery — and to forge the identity we truly want. We can spend our energy on getting consistent with who we are, rather than exhausting ourselves to fit in.

We need to get very clear on our own identity and self worth. Again, this is a familiar refrain in psychology and the self help space, but it is not cheap talk. It is only when we know our worth and what is critically important to us that we can use a relationship tool like boundaries. Boundaries help others recognize how we want to be treated. Every time you set a boundary, you are getting clearer with yourself about your value and worth.

For the record, when we use boundaries in parenting instead of punishment or dismissive attitudes, we are leading by example. We teach our children not only how to treat us and be respectful, but also how to use this invaluable tool in their own lives (both when they are young and when they are adults).

The fear of other people’s opinions is yet another detriment to really getting to know ourselves intimately.

Most of us lived in this thick fog of other’s opinions all throughout childhood; especially with those old parenting models that did not integrate emotions into our experiences. Kids were told they were too much, too sensitive, too bossy, too timid. First and foremost, we were labeled by behaviors and those identifies stuck with us. — you’re a jerk, you’re a good girl, you’re perfect, you’ll never amount to anything. Secondly, we had to wrestle with these assessments of who we were while trying to figure that out for ourselves. Most of our childhood behavioral patterns and coping skills are rooted in the “fear of other’s opinions” – at home, in school and beyond.

“Identity is our subjective sense of self built on our experiences, beliefs, values, memories and culture. It’s a set of physical and psychological characteristics that is not shared with anyone else. Often derived in relationship or comparison to others, our identity provides a framework to better understand our place in a complicated social world. “ — excerpted from the book The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

“When we have fused ourselves to an identity that is not true to who we are, or to an identity that’s too narrow to contain the whole of who we are, or to an identity incapable of incorporating new information and growing, the opinion of another can feel like an assault where our survival is at stake.” – excerpted from The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

When you let these two excerpts soak in, you can see why we get so confused about who we are. The first excerpt addresses how we make sense of the world when we are kids. It is a private internal narrative we create about who we are. We create it when we are young and powerless and that identify feels vulnerable and in need of protection even when we are older.

The second excerpt reveals why we develop coping skills and behavioral patterns. Our identity does leave us vulnerable to the slings and arrows of other’s opinions so we develop armor to protect who we believe we are.

It’s that armor that gets in the way of us really knowing who we are; and it gets very complicated by the fact that we keep returning to home base to figure it out. Yet, that identity we created at home when we were young no longer feels like it fits who we’ve become.

Without honest self-awareness, it is incredibly hard to see how we stay stuck in an identity we’ve long outgrown and how we stay trapped (especially in our families) in old limiting beliefs about who we are.

We are not the same person we were when we were 5, 10 or 15. We are works in progress throughout our entire lives. A pivotal shift in our mindset around our personal identity is to recognize and embrace this.

We change over time and that is a marvelous thing. We are not forever stuck in an old story, or shackled to a troubled childhood, or doomed to relive an old trauma like a recurring nightmare. We would never want this for our children. When we get clear about who we are, we can parent from our most authentic sense of self. It frees us from protecting our kids unnecessarily from the things that once had a big impact on us.

The benefits of “connective tissue”:

Just imagine the positive difference we are making for younger generations, when we steer them clear of the pitfalls that derailed us from building the life we wanted. Today we have better life skills and relationship tools to teach them. We have a much-improved parenting model and are integrating their emotions into their developing complex brains. We are validating each other’s emotions and experiences which is the preventative medicine for suppressed emotions and unprocessed trauma. We recognize that rupture and repair strengthens our relationships and builds enduring trust. In fact, we normalize the fact that ruptures happen in life and we have a responsibility to repair our most valued relationships. We are learning the integral role body budget plays in our daily lives and the importance of sleep for our brain health.

Most importantly, we can help our young people develop a strong sense of self and be the scaffolding they need through all the growth spurts and life changes they will surely have.

This is an extensive list of key components of “connective tissue” for our families. It’s so much more beneficial than what most of us experienced — because we don’t put each other in boxes, but rather we give each other room to grow – with a big safety net underneath. We encourage each other to explore, discover, stretch, try new things, experiment — with the confidence that they can express themselves honestly and will have the support and guidance they need and deserve.

Dr. Michael Gervais has a nugget of wisdom that he shares on his Finding Mastery podcast that serves as a core reminder for the changes we want to make: No one does it alone.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

If you struggle with FOPO –the Fear of Other People’s Opinions, you will love this book. Check out Michael Gervais podcast too — Finding Mastery

LISTEN TO DR. ANDREW HUBERMAN’S CONVERSATION WITH PARENTING GURU, DR. BECKY KENNEDY, author of Good Inside This Episode is entitled Protocols for Excellent Parenting and Improving Relationships of All Kinds https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000646851810

If you are unfamiliar with Internal Family Systems, you might be surprised to learn that it is all about YOU not your whole family! Discover all the parts of you that have something to offer about what is most important to you and how to best take care of YOU!

New Year, New Skills

Can you feel that little updraft in inner drive and determination that comes from a brand new year? There’s nothing like a brand new calendar, clean and pristine, to let our imaginations run wild with big dreams of how well organized and productive we will be. This psychological phenomenon is called the “fresh start effect”. It marks a clear delineation for our “out the old and in with the new” mindset. A brand new year is when we get to double dip in this fresh start effect — it’s not just a new month – it is a brand new year.

I confess that I love a Happy New Year fresh start and I prepare for it as eagerly as I do for Christmas. My desk has stacks of colorful, inspiring blank journals and brand new chunky, spiral-bound idea notebooks; along with an assortment of gel pens and varied sizes of neon post-it notes. And the real gem is that pristine 2024 planner. Thanks to my grandkids who gave me a generous gift card to Quail Ridge, I also have an inviting stack of new books I cannot wait to read. There is a rush of pure joy and an eager excitement every time I look at the endless possibilities that will manifest when I actually use all these tools.

It was in that moment, that it dawned on me that this was the direction I wanted to take my blog in 2024. This year, my blog posts and Daily Gummies of Wisdom, are going to become more relatable and digestible. This is the year where the “rubber hits the road”. I want to share more real life stories, examples and experiences that reveal how beneficial it is to be using better tools and becoming more skillful with them.

This is the year that I want my blog to help others stock their desks, toolboxes and backpacks with diversified resources for building the life they want and showing up more often as their best selves. It is an exciting time to be alive because thanks to science, we have taken a lot of the mystery out of old paradigms about emotional and mental health, parenting and relationships – and yes, even personal growth.

I love diving into groundbreaking and ever-evolving data. I also love distilling it in a way that is easy to understand and implement in real time. I’ve become a bit of a “reverse engineer” with 7 decades of life experiences to draw on. By sharing familiar and relatable real life stories, I can teach and role model how and why these much-improved relationship and life tools are meaningful game-changers.

There is another confession that I have to make: I am over the moon thrilled that it no longer feels necessary to keep self discovery and personal growth under wraps. The proof of this is in our current overuse of the word “normalize”. We toss that word out like a disclaimer reminding us that no one is immune to “feeling” their way through life.

No more cloak of secrecy when it comes to mental and emotional health — it is now fully mainstreamed! And, it is not only mainstreamed, we are making genuine progress in connecting the dots between our physical health and our emotional health. Our eyes are being opened to the many no-cost and low-cost steps we can take to proactively improve both.

The pivot I will be making with my ever-evolving blog will mirror the pivot that is being made in modern medicine, psychology and neuroscience. There is a shift from problem solving to prevention. Many fields, modalities and people are taking proactive steps to improve their physical, mental and emotional health to safeguard against future health and relationship issues. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

Food for Thought: This is a new element that I will be adding to my blog posts this year. I will wrap each one up with a little food for thought, something to reflect on and then consider putting into practice. The “food for thought” I offer today is to take time to look through – and reflect on – your planners and journals, camera rolls and playlists, on the biggest challenges and fondest memories of 2023. Before you toss them in the trash, or pack them in a box with birthday cards, archived bills and tax receipts — spend some time distilling what mattered most to you in 2023. Use that as a map for where you are headed in 2024.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Arthur C. Brooks is a well known happiness expert. His last book was entitled “From Strength to Strength” and it had a big impact on me. That book was really meant for those of us who are transitioning from one stage of life to another. It was such a helpful guide for reflecting on past experiences and using it as a solid foundation for reinventing ourselves for the next chapter.

In this powerful new book, Arthur works his magic once again — and makes it easy to understand the latest breakthroughs in science and how to take that knowledge and weave it into your daily life. One message comes through loud and clear as you read this book – we need to put in the reps – we need daily practice with all kinds of situations and people for these new tools to stick.

THE RICH ROLL PODCAST: Treat yourself to a new podcast in 2024 – and check out the diversity and dynamics of Rich Roll and his inspiring guests.

There is a vast ocean of podcasts these days. It can be both time-consuming and overwhelming to sort through the catalog and find the ones that call to you.

There are times in our lives when we need a little extra knowledge about core physical health tools like quality sleep, nutrition and exercise. Other times, we need some encouragement to get through tough times. We also need to be inspired through other’s stories of how they used all these new tools we are learning about; stories from others help us digest and metabolize new information.

My recommendation is to listen to Rich Roll’s podcasts in chunks. Few of us really have the time to sit and listen (let alone pay full attention) to a lengthy podcast. But if we listen for 15 – 30 minutes at a time on our drive to work or while running errands, we can gain a lot. Instead of scrolling on your phone when you need a break, listen for 10-15 minutes to part of the podcast. This is how we put some really nourishing and healthy content into our brains.

There are so many subjects, modalities and tools to support our self-discovery and personal growth. What captures your attention? What do you want to learn more about? Rich Roll offered two podcast episodes at the end of 2023 that offer a diverse menu of choices. I am sharing the links for these two episodes, rich with guests that we all know and love – and full of inspiration to get you super-charged for the new year.

Rich Roll Podcast, The Best of 2023: Part One https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000639648780

Rich Roll Podcast, the Best of 2023: Part Two https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000639901420

Making a Splash

“There are going to be some changes around here” announced my 6 year old daughter, standing proudly in her blue Daisy Scout smock with several Boy Scout merit badge books tucked under arm. She was headed off to her very first experience in Girl Scouts but she clearly had some preconceived ideas about what it might be like. Her brothers were 10 and 11 years older than her and they already had quite a few Boy Scout merit badges sewn on their brown sashes that they wore to their meetings each week. My spunky young daughter was not here for monkey business. She wanted to learn real life skills, like how to pitch a tent and make a fire. Her suspicions that Daisy Scouts would be about making toothpick crafts motivated her to become an activist for change. I’ll be honest — I was incredibly proud of her.

In case you are wondering, my daughter did not last too long in Girl Scouts. This did not come as a surprise to me or her — or even her scout leaders who often felt challenged by her. It’s just human nature to be resistant to change – and especially if it comes blazing in a pint-sized blonde haired, confident, feisty spokesperson. What could she possibly know?

Turns out that kids instinctively know a lot. Sometimes they are keenly aware that change is in order even when we ourselves can’t see it.

The image of my amazing little girl in her blue Daisy smock and those Boy Scout Merit Badge books is a touchstone for me. It also represents a pivot point for the direction of my blog in 2024 and it is all about change in action. I’ll be sharing real life examples of how game-changing it is to update our brains, embrace new parenting models and modernize our life skills backpacks.

So let’s dive in!

A few weeks ago, I was attending a swim meet for my grandddaughter. Four swim clubs coming together at the premier indoor community pool to compete for the season championship. You could feel the excitement in the air mingling with giggles, splashes and indecipherable loudspeaker announcements. Coaches were busy making last minute changes to their event line-ups when some of their swimmers were unable to attend for a variety of reasons. Anxious parents watched from the second floor gallery as their kids nodded in agreement with a coach or got into big discussions with other swimmers.

During one of the 200 yard medley events, a young teenaged girl dove into the pool, the last leg of her team’s freestyle entry in the field. All the other teams had already finished this event when this teenager entered the water. She swam the first 25 yards but when she reached the end of the pool where she should have done a flip turn and continued on, she stopped and hung to the edge. An adult volunteer assigned to make certain that each lap was completed, leaned over to talk with the girl who was now shaking her head and visibly crying. Initially the volunteer urged her to finish but it was clear that this young teen had not only hit the pool wall, she had hit her emotional wall. She could not go on.

She was trembling all over as she gingerly climbed out of the pool. Her coach wrapped an arm around her shoulder and escorted her to a quiet spot on the poolside bench. Her coach stooped down in front of her, made eye contact and was talking with her. Her mother appeared and sat down beside her, wrapping her in a towel and a hug.

Meanwhile, up in the gallery, nosy spectators watched with deep interest and more judgment than curiosity. The comments that were made ranged from pity to criticism to shame. There were more strongly held opinions about how to handle such a situation than there banners hanging above the line lanes.

I could not hold my tongue – the opening to plant a seed of change was too prime to ignore. “This is exactly what should be happening in a moment like this,” I stated loudly enough for those around me to hear. ”According to Dr. Dan Siegel the power of showing up and being present with a child when big emotions are consuming them validates their experience, builds resiliency and prevents shame and insecurities from taking root.”

In that moment, I felt just like my Daisy Scout daughter, speaking up when it mattered most. We don’t know what we don’t know.

We don’t realize that our old parenting models were broken and they set us up for failure, for poor coping skills, limiting beliefs and a fixed mindset.

Shame and embarrassment do not motivate us to try harder, begin again and learn from our failures. Criticism erodes trust – trust in ourselves and our potential as well as trust in others that they will do all they can to help us overcome obstacles. Pity is the near enemy of compassion – and it puts a lot of distance between us and others (even in the face of a similar situation that we could easily find ourselves in). Pity just enables us to think we are so lucky because we are not having that experience.

But wait — what if it was OUR child having that experience? Would those in the gallery who were so judgmental when it was happening to someone else, do a complete 180 if it was their own child?

Even if it was only briefly, I could see that some people were taking a minute to reflect on my comments. I knew that some parents were well aware that their own child had been asked to swim in a new event for this meet – and yes, they were anxious about the looming possible outcome.

None of us really know the full backstory for that young teenaged girl. Yet it was clearly evident that something much bigger than swimming another 25 yards was in play. Imagine for a moment that you were asked to swim 50 yards in a relay, to be the last leg of your team’s event. And you knew the moment you dove into the pool that your team was going to finish dead last because every other team had already completed the event. How would you be feeling? Defeated before you started? Why bother? What’s the point? Why me?

The more life experiences that we personally have, the greater our ability to tap into our empathy and compassion for others; the more likely we are to normalize moments like this for children and parents. Why would we ever deny another person the support they need the most in moments like this?

What if this young girl was really struggling with all the hormonal imbalances of puberty? What if her parents had recently divorced or the family was newly relocated to this town? What if this was her first swim meet? What if this was her first Christmas without her beloved grandma? What if her teammates had taunted her and said she shouldn’t be in this event?

I left that swim meet that day thinking about that young girl, hopeful that her mom was skilled in offering her daughter the scaffolding she needed to fully process this experience and grow through it rather than unhealthily “going through it”.

The power of showing up and listening to a child’s full emotional experience is a game-changer. Validating their true feelings and helping them to name all the emotions they feel is how we become the training wheels for an expanded emotional vocabulary and healthy coping skills.

This is how we build resilience and inner confidence in our kids. They are more likely to try again and trust in their own potential. Kids are more open to trying new things that may seem hard and challenging. In fact, conquering their fears feels empowering to them.

Food for Thought: One of the best ways to help others in moments like this is to validate and normalize it for them. We’ve all had experiences like this even as adults. When we know that we are not alone in what seems like the worst moment of our lives, it is incredibly comforting. Refrain from offering how you would feel in that moment — and let the other person fully express their own emotions. Surprisingly, many times what they are actually feeling is not at all what you might feel.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

All of us come into contact with children – and being knowledgeable about vastly improved parenting models is like having an ace up your sleeve. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers and coaches will all benefit from discovering brand new skills and tools for age old childhood emotional moments.

I highly recommended reading Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy and by all means, check out her wide array of workshops on her website: https://www.goodinside.com/about/

Dr. Becky is a mom first and foremost. She is a child psychologist by profession – and she is a shining example of putting her work into practice.

If you follow her on social media, you will be highly entertained by her sense of humor and oh so relatable parenting moments. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll commiserate and you find real support for real life.

MATT EICHELDINGER – check out this incredible teacher who has created the most heartfelt videos about his students over many years as an educator and caring human being. Life lessons from real life with kids that will stay with you and your kids.
https://matteicheldinger.com/

ATLAS OF THE HEART is a family reference guide that should be in every home. If you want to get serious about building your emotional vocabulary, this book is for you. Not only will you gain a working knowledge of 87 emotions and experiences, you will discover when those emotions are most likely to show up.

The Baggage We Should Be Unpacking

It’s no surprise that we all have family and emotional baggage that has never been unpacked – mostly because it feels like opening Pandora’s box. Who would ever want to do that?

What if we were to reframe it as exploring a treasure chest instead? The clues to unanswered questions; the keys to unlock some of our hidden assets; a mystery solved; a weathered, yellowing journal of unknown and revelational history.

We are fearful of what we might discover in our family and emotional baggage. Many of us don’t care to relive the painful memories we stashed in there decades ago. But we are not the same as we were then – we are older, have had more life experiences under our belt and have more nuanced perspectives. Maybe we can unpack the baggage and clear up much needed space for a lighter way of being.

We are not alone when it comes to complex family histories and generational patterns. We are all in the midst of a big unraveling of old societal conditioning, gender stereotyping and poor parenting models. As Maya Angelou espouses “when you know better, you do better.” Thanks to the major breakthroughs in neuroscience, psychology and emotional science, we now have much better resources and tools available to us for personal growth, self-awareness, relationships and parenting.

In fact, it is these very breakthroughs that provide an entirely different framework for hard conversations and more productive dialogue about the elephant in the room –debilitating family dynamics.

If we wait until parents or grandparents pass away, we miss asking the questions we would like answered. Have you ever sifted through cardboard boxes of old photos and had no idea who the relatives were or the stories that went with each photographic memory? It is just like that with family baggage. So many secrets boxed up and sealed tight. If family members are courageous enough to enter into these challenging conversations with honesty and a desire to learn, it will jettison that cumbersome family baggage.

Just look around at all the complex family dynamics the next time you attend a graduation, wedding, family reunion or holiday gathering. You can readily spot familiar family patterns, passed down from one generation to the next, taking its toll on our younger generations; families dealing with the same adversities, just a different cast of characters.

The baggage may be invisible, but its impacts are as apparent as blue eyes, tall stature, the shape of a mouth or nose and even personality traits.

No generation is immune from common life events including genetic health issues, divorce, co-parenting, behavioral issues, co-dependency, estrangements, blended families, addiction, mental health issues and trauma. Hard things happen in life. We can, and must, stop making them harder than they need to be.

Today, we have the rare opportunity to involve four living generations — grandparents, parents, siblings and grandchildren — to do the work necessary to break generational trauma and address dysfunctional behavioral patterns. It may be the first time ever that we also have evidence and impetus to come together to do this multi-generational unpacking of emotional and behavioral baggage.

A good starting point would be to collectively acknowledge that the old ways of parenting and dealing with emotions are primary root causes of ongoing family dysfunction and our growing emotional health crisis. We got it wrong and now we need to be actively involved in turning the tide on that old paradigm. Just acknowledging this truth can lift the fog of shame, guilt and blame. These conversations are long overdue and we don’t want our grandchildren being burdened by the weight of unhealthy, unproductive family secrets. We can stop spreading harmful patterns and limiting beliefs from one generation to the next.

When we can overlay the new template for parenting and emotional health onto our past experiences, we gain clarity where once there was only murky confusion. There are a lot of stories embedded in our family history that are horribly inaccurate. Imagine discovering this and realizing that we’d been making incorrect assumptions and judging others when we really could have been showing up and offering each other support and emotional scaffolding.

Yes we are afraid to have those hard conversations, mostly because we are feeling very strong negative emotions arise in us each time we even think about it. It would be analogous to refusing to go to the doctor for a suspicious lump. We can no longer afford to let our fear and anxiety prevent us from learning and discovery.

The biggest challenge in having these hard conversations and unpacking family baggage together is the massive entanglement of old, unprocessed emotions, traumas and false narratives about each other. The only way we can do this work is to become very skillful in interpersonal and emotional skills.

If we are going to do a deep dive into the dark, deep waters of our generational family history, we want a seasoned, skillful dive master and tools to help us see clearly, cut those falsehoods that keep us tethered, and avoid getting re-snagged on past trauma. Emotional triggers, limiting beliefs, fixed mindsets and jagged remains of adversities are hard to navigate without compassion, empathy and powerful listening skills.

For the record, we may have attempted to do this in the past, but all we really had to guide us was “hindsight”. While hindsight can shine a light on our regrets and help us own the consequences and outcomes of our choices, it often leaves us at a dead end. Problem identified, but no meaningful path to healing and prevention.

In 2009, Dr. Dan Siegel introduced a new concept for personal growth and self-awareness. He was planting the seed of what would become “other awareness”. But there was no way for us to get to “other awarenesss” without knowing ourselves deeply. Dr. Siegel called his revolutionary personal transformation concept “mindsight”. Mindsight picks up where hindsight stopped. No more dead ends.

Dr. Siegel framed “mindsight” this way: It is a powerful lens through which we can understand our inner emotional lives with more clarity, integrate our brain and our emotions, and enhance our relationships with others.

Mindsight is how we put our own oxygen mask on first. There is no way that we can be of meaningful value in helping others on their emotional health journey if we ourselves haven’t done our own work. Full stop.

In my previous blog post, “Learning What We Need to Teach”, I shared the steps and the benefits of Dr. Siegel’s concept of mindsight and whole brain parenting. Doing the hard work and committing to a lifetime of personal growth is not for the faint of heart. But as we often say with physical fitness, “no pain, no gain”.

Dr. Siegel encourages us to use this “mindsight” lens to go back and look at our own childhood to discover how our experiences and our caregivers shaped us. Imagine being able to do this – AND have conversations with siblings, parents and grandparents about those experiences that would provide context and nuance, not to mention long overdue accountability and the possibility of repair.

Do you know what your emotional triggers are? Are you aware of the limiting beliefs that were baked into your inner critic when you were a child? Are you still having meltdowns like a two year old when big emotions consume you? Do you expect more emotional regulation and better coping skills from your partner, kids or friends than you can muster in stressful situations?

These are the warning signs of compromised emotional health. If we do not attend to our emotional health, two things will happen — (1) our physical health and quality of life will also be compromised and may even go into serious decline; (2) we will pass down to our children similar unhealthy emotional patterns. Ignoring our emotional health has perpetuated the multigenerational family dysfunction since the dawn of time.

When Dr. Dan Siegel introduced mindsight in 2009, he was an advance scout for what has now broken wide open into the mainstream of our lives. Over the past two decades, multi disciplines have merged and reverse engineered what we need to do in order to address our growing mental health crises.

We need to undo and unlearn all the things we got wrong about parenting, about emotions and about relationships.

It has taken several decades, a ton of research, and more family heartaches and brokenness than we can imagine to bring us to this moment in our collective evolution. We are now able to visibly see and feel why we need to commit to this work when we look at our children and grandchildren. Not only do they deserve better, we are motivated by our hearts to take this work seriously.

In the past, each generation entered adulthood and parenthood with a strong desire to do better than the prior generation. Good intentions, but faulty information and poor diagnostic tools. We labeled kids, rather than naming emotions. We unplugged their first love language (emotions) as soon as they learned to talk and express themselves. We had blindspots and blurred life maps. We unconsciously repeated the same old patterns and reactions from which we recoiled or hid from as kids. We numbed our pain rather than extracting it and healing.

The reverse engineering that neuroscience, psychology, epigenetics, neurobiology, emotional science and social sciences have done is now extending a call to action that cannot be ignored. This call to action is meant for all of us — all 4 generations to become involved. We need to do some serious excavation work on generational baggage.

We each need to make our own emotional health a priority. We need to plug it back into the core foundation of a meaningful, satisfying and rewarding life. We need to upgrade our default systems that were never integrated in childhood. Plug those emotions into our operating systems and get more skillful at regulating them, learning from them and growing because of them. We need to unpack emotional and family baggage that is putting more obstacles in our way than we realize.

We do not have to wait until we are at the master class level to dive into teaching our kids and helping our partners. We can learn together. In fact, our children and grandchildren are the best teachers in the world. If we can step back and ask ourselves, “what did I need when I was their age?” we will instinctively know how to meet the moment. Instead of asking “what’s the matter?” we can pivot and learn by asking them “What matters most?”

This blog post is the first of a new series I’ll be sharing about the life-changing benefits of personal growth and self-awareness not only for our own quality of life, but for all of our relationships. Let’s explore how we got here, what is fresh and new for our emotional health, what we are discovering about the connection between fixed mindsets and limiting beliefs, better ways to help kids through divorce and blended families how we can improve the education system from preschool to college and so much more.

There is an “emotion revolution” rising from the ashes of old parenting models, lack of emotional regulation into our human operating system, and the hard lessons learned through a global pandemic. Are you in?

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