Pt. 4 How to Be Your Teen's Number One Influencer: Fear

Dr. Thayne speaks about the role of fear when we are trying to be our teen's number one influencer. Fear is natural and can be healthy in doses, but when it isn't handled right, it can spiral out of control and have a domino effect on the family. Tim explains that you have to recognize the fear first. Then you can address it by talking yourself down from expecting the worst and taking action despite your fear. 

Challenge: When you feel fearful, articulate what you are afraid of. Communicate with someone, talk yourself down from catastrophising, and act despite your fear. 

Get a copy of the Not By Chance Yearbook at https://notbychance.com/yearbook/

Transcript

Dr. Tim Thayne: 0:04

There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world. But there is one way to parent that wins every time. And that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired. Find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr. Tim, Thayne, author of the book and host of the podcast, not by chance, I believe that a family's success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me for this podcast. today. I'm excited about the topic. This is a continuation of the the series of topics related to becoming the number one influencer for your team. The twist on this one, though, is we're not trying to, to, you know, talk about something that you want to add in, we want to talk about something most likely you need to subtract, because too much of this is influencing in the wrong direction. The topic today is about fear. And you might think of it clinically as anxiety inside the family system. And how that has an impact that we don't want. I would say that fear is one of those things that very few of us have become expert and have learned to master. And yet it plays a huge role in family life and and actually the outcomes we're getting as a family. So let's dive into this topic for a second and see if we can both identify the impact of fear where it comes from. Talk about the way it's affecting our family life. Talk about how it's it's something that is transmittable inside the family, and usually causing lots of havoc in our family. And then we'll talk about some tips and ideas for learning to conquer fear. And in the end, I hope to give you a challenge that that will help you to assess how much anxiety is in the family and what's your role in that and how you can begin to diminish the effects of fear. Think about it. The opposite of fear is confidence and movement. Fear is one of those things, when there's too much of it. It actually paralyzes individuals in the family system and makes them kind of crumble. So let's let's dive into this topic. I had a mentor at Virginia Tech. And he always used to say something like, men never feel fear. What they feel instead is anger. And I think there's a lot of truth to that because fear is one of those things kind of at the root of so many other things going on. But But normally if we're feeling anger, if we dig back a little bit and dig down, we'll identify something that we're worried about we're afraid of, but then it comes out as anger. And interesting quote by Yoda, he said that fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Interesting, that fear is the path to the dark side. And for those Star Wars fans out there, anything that Yoda says is true. I tend to fully agree with Yoda here. Roxanne asked me to identify a story about fear. And it was easy because the biggest fear I had really, up until I was a teenager was fear of the dark. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that because that's not manly at all to be afraid of the dark. And but yet it was my greatest fear. I can't tell you how many nights I had nightmares and turn on the light and slept with the lights on his little kid. In one of the homes we lived in. We were in a kind of a farm and our barn was a long ways from the home. And in the barn was where we had plugged in our big chest freezer, where we kept all the ice cream and the meat and other things. And invariably after dinner especially in the wintertime and it's dark. I would I would be requested by one of my parents to go to the freezer and and get the ice cream. And of course I wanted the ice cream as bad as anybody. But that meant I had to go through the dark This, which was probably about 75 yards from the house, there was no yard light out through there, get to the barn and flip on that light. And I'll tell you, I tried to walk, I tried to walk this multiple times. In other words, I was trying to not be afraid. But every time I would end up in a full on Sprint, as hard as I could go, to get to the barn, flip on the light and have that relief, because my fears were that there were things lurking in the darkness that would hurt me that would monsters and I could die. I mean, I had all of these fears. And so pick up the ice cream. And then I had to make the long trip back. And again, I'd flip off the light, try to be calm, try to walk and be within two or three or four seconds, I start to jog. And ultimately, I'm at a full dead run, trying to get to the house before somebody kills me. Now, poor little kid, right, that he had that kind of fear. And the reality was what he was afraid of didn't exist. And that is the reality of most of the fears that we have. Will Smith said that fear is not real, the only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not exist ever. And isn't that true? And yet it has such an impact. Something that's imaginary, non existent has such an impact on our own lives and the lives of our kids. So let's talk about the impact of fear in family life. I want you to think about the last time that you got angry at one of your kids. My guess is that if you dug a little deeper, you would identify a real fear you have. And and that fears kind of like like Yoda said, it leads to the dark side, which is anger, and, and so on. So do that exercise. Because my bet is that in most cases, if we say, What am I afraid of, in this situation, we actually get something much more important than then what we're on the surface angry about. We all know that, at the at the core level fear is, is a biological, and psychological situation that that is meant to be in place to help us deal with truth threats in our life. And we know about the fight and flight response. So let's say that there is a real threat out there. And that fear plays a really good role where it might help us to flee the situation. But if we're not able to flee the situation, we then turn to a fight situation. And think about flat fight as now anger, you got to have that anger to actually do the fighting. So there's your connection between fear and anger. But in reality here in the, On the homefront, in our homes and families, how often is a really actually a truth, truth threat that that we need to run from, to us, it's not so much fleen it's this fear of something in the future usually worry over a child and their happiness and fear of them not succeeding, fear them, ultimately, maybe being very sad or struggling. And those are real, potential possibilities for sure. And there's plenty of examples of where that actually plays out. And so it's credible, when we have things going on our family life, and we have some fears, they're not these far out, you know, situations like I had when I was afraid of the dark there. You know, in that case, they were all purely imaginary. In the family life situation. You know, there are real fears. But the problem is, is that we will take those fears to the nth degree. Over the years, I've talked to a lot of families and and fear and anxiety has been prominent in those conversations. And I would say that when I hear about a child that suffers from anxiety, most of the time, the parents are also suffering from anxiety and I don't know who started it at first, but the reality is that we share it with each other. It's transmittable. I don't know if you've ever seen a herd of horses when we had a wilderness treatment program out in the west desert of Utah. There was a large large herd of Mustangs out there, and I would if I ever was driving through there and found them I'd usually pull over and just observe. One day I pulled out overrun was watching them from up on top of this hill and loved it for about an hour or so. And then I saw that there was kind of this disturbance or over 200 horses there. Disturbance, where some horses started to run, well, whatever scared them actually triggered the fear response in the whole herd and the whole herd took off. And that was the end of my viewing of this herd. Well, that's a very common situation where they're so attuned to the nonverbals, that are going on the body language of other members, the herd that has this domino effect as it goes through the entire herd. So if they can do it, if they are attuned enough to sense fear and each other, how much more are we as humans able to pick up on small cues of anxiety or fear? And how does that trigger? What kind of emotional response does that trigger with with dynamics inside the home and family, it could start by any one of a number of things that tend to trigger us as parents to have fear, it might be the risky behaviors that our teen is going into, we might see them start to change a little bit in our minds, maybe they're really engaged with the family and they start to pull away, I can trigger the fear, we see that they're starting to engage in some risky behaviors. And maybe it's rebellion, that'll trigger fear and anxiety in our part. Another one is, is when our teens start to struggle, maybe internally, and they've got anxiety or depression. And, and especially when they're around their parents, they might flop is what we call it, where they have the strength to stand on their own two feet when they're around other people, but they go home. And they sort of flop in front of their parents because it's in that home. And in that setting where there may be a dynamic, whereas if I flop as a kid, my parent, one of my parents is going to step in, and help me through a situation that really is hard. Another one that is a general category that where fear can be triggered, is where there's apathy. Now, as parents, we are set up to fill anxiety and fear over our kids, because we care about them. That is innate, I think in in loving somebody, you you feel the all the bumps that they're going through, and you worry about them, and you want them to do well. Well, if we have a child that's becoming apathetic or depressed, and they're struggling with motivation, even that is fear promoting, because we'll take that and say, you know, they're not giving their all or they're really struggling here. And I have to say that I've had this experience with with one or two of my kids where it felt like there was nothing really motivating for them, and I could see their potential. And yet, I could see also that they're not going to achieve their potential. And so as I watched this over time, the the fear and the anxiety is growing and mounting. Now what does that trigger me to do? In my case, it's quite clamping down, trying to control trying to get them to do what I want them to do to move forward in their life. And of course, that ends up not being very productive, almost as bad, maybe just as bad as if I were to smooth the path out in front of them, so that they don't have those hardships. Boy, there's a lot of ways as a parents that fear can get in the way of actually doing a great job as a parent. All right, I've mentioned this before in the past, but I want to bring it up again, this is the fourth edition of the not by chance, yearbook, and it is full of inspiration and great information. There's one article in there in particular, we're talking about anxiety and fear that I wanted to point out to you. It's an article by Sam Berman amazing parent that I know who wrote this article about being a mother bear, and ultimately learning that that Mother Bear energy was probably not the best thing to bring to every situation, and that had anger and anger and anxiety involved in that. Instead, she says she overtime, learned that her spirit animal needed to be more often the wise owl. And so that's a great article specifically related to the topic today that we're discussing. So get your copy at not by chance.com backslash yearbook, and we'll get that sent out to you. All right, so what do we do about this fear? You know, first of all, we have to identify that it is playing a role, we have to identify it before we can really conquer it. Once we've done that, though, there's a couple of things we need to do. We need to talk ourselves down, look at the thoughts that are going on in our mind. And we'll see that they're catastrophic thinking, and we need to lessen that and make it more in line with reality. If we can't do that, then we need to bring somebody else in, who can give us a better perspective. There's a lot of times that someone can come in and hear our worries and concerns and say, Oh, I don't, I don't see that. I think that what's your believe the outcome is going to be is just not going to happen. And hearing that from an outside voice is super helpful. So have people in your life that can give you a reality check and kind of put the fear in on the on the backburner, even get rid of a completely another method. And I think this is sort of the the one where you kind of grit your way through it method is to act in spite of your fear. And you have to start by saying, if I was not afraid, what would I do? And it might be helpful to really actually write it down. Well, if I wasn't afraid of the situation, I would do x y&z and it would be calm, and I would be able to, you know, bring my best self to the situation. And then you need to go ahead and do it, you know, literally act your way through. One of the methods for overcoming anxiety and treatment programs or in therapy is basically exposure to the thing that creates the anxiety and fear. And so in other words, they're acting anyway, you know, they're asking the client to go ahead, even though the texture this cloth on your skin, you know, where it grabs your skin, because you've got rough, rough parts of your skin on your hand, and it sticks to it could freak you out because you got all this anxiety, but we're going to ask you to do it anyway. And we're going to have you expose yourself to this thing and act anyway, even though you're afraid. And they do that in small doses, and then they work up to greater and greater actions that they're counter to what they would do if they were afraid. And so it's the same thing we can do without maybe the therapist helping us do it. And that is to identify what would be the healthy action anyway, in spite of the fear, and it might be I'm gonna stay calm, I'm going to talk to my team, I'm going to listen, I'm gonna be open what they have to say, even though I'm afraid that they don't have the answer. And an any number of really healthy behaviors would come out of acting as if there's no fear involved. Now, let's talk about the amount of fear. The the amount, the intensity of the fear, is is a really important question. Because if there's a little bit of fear, that kind of keeps us on our toes, it makes us aware of real threats and dangers or ways our teens could be struggling that we can help them. But if you add anything beyond what is helpful, it actually has fairly negative effects pretty quickly. I see it as the recipe of, you know, any kind of recipe where you're making brownies or something and, and the amount of salt that you're asked to put in is very small. But if you just doubled that one teaspoon, or one tablespoon to two tablespoons, all sudden, you've ruined the whole recipe. And that's very similar to what happens as we're trying to parent a little bit of fear actually is okay because we're alert we're aware we're, we're attuned to what's going on and we're able to help anything more than that then becomes unhelpful, and in a lot of ways destructive. The vicious cycles that can happen I've seen play out over and over again, to where the system itself almost comes to a standstill. Like there's they've tried everything and they can't get unstuck. One of our coaches not too long ago, worked with a family that whose son at this point in time, had completely refused to go to school anymore. He had pretty much resided kind of moved his whole life into his bedroom, and he had barricaded the door so that his parents couldn't come in and he was in there with his technology. And that was his safe place. That was the only place he really wanted to be. Well before this, it all started with the you know, some social anxiety about school, not wanting to go and, and instead of going he would be sick that day. And that ultimately progressed because the family didn't know how to deal with it at that level. And they had anxiety too, because there were other signs of anxiety for him that ultimately, he, he went from just a day or two missing a week to three or four days and eventually not going at all, to ultimately flipping the hierarchy of the family upside down where his anxiety and fear was completely in charge what was going on, and his life shrunk down to his bedroom. Well, when they called us, they basically were saying, you know, we don't dare change a thing, because there's been threats of self harm, and even not wanting to live. And so now they're super afraid. Now, the fear is completely paralyzing. And they're not able to parent, I can tell you that I've had so many parents telling me that, at a certain point in this cycle of fear, they actually literally stopped parenting, and turned everything over to the team who had no ability that time to actually make good decisions for themselves. But they did that to kind of buy time until they could help their team get to a place that was safe. And I can understand that. But we need to catch it sooner. And stop the cycle of fear that that leads to this. Before it gets to the full shutdown. A lot of families will have, you know, explosive behavior in the home. And of course, that's that next stage of refusal. And if you keep, you know, pushing me to go forward with something I don't feel comfortable doing, I'm going to explode. And and that will get parents to back off again out of fear. So we've got to reverse that, and come up with the strategies for reducing fear moving through it, conquering it, so that we can have totally different outcomes. What I want you to know is that fear triggers fear. And it is at the root of so many things that we don't want so many outcomes that we don't want. You've heard of the self fulfilling prophecy. Like we get what we don't want, because we're so afraid of we actually bring it into our life, it is incumbent upon us to ultimately overcome fear. I close with a final quote from Nelson Mandela, a man who had real reason to fear once said, The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid. But he who conquers that fear. My challenge to you is to week by week, get better at reducing the effects of fear in your family. That starts with identifying the fears that you're facing, making those conscious, and then really trying some of the techniques that we're talking about here either to individually talk yourself down or use other people as another way of overcoming it to have them talk you down or give you a different alternative ways of seeing it. Or third, act your way into confidence. And that is to move through the fear and do it anyway. Well, I wish you all the best. Measure it and as you measure it, I guarantee you will improve the more you track it the more you notice it, the more power you're going to have over it. Stay intentional, and have a great week. Parents, your time is valuable and I'm grateful you spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long term effects. Ask yourself, What am I going to do because of what I've learned today?