006 One Simple Way To Find Balance

Today Teresa and Kelly explain cognitive behavioral therapy also known as CBT. Here at the Parenting Balance Podcast, you'll find simple, science-based tools and tricks for parenting kids with ADHD or anxiety. Although we are both family therapists, this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not replace the guidance of a qualified professional. Join us as we debate and discuss our own experiences as parents of kids diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety and breakdown the latest research into easily digestible portions. We created this podcast to educate, inspire hope, explore new ideas and discover together what we know to be true: you are not alone, and finding a community of support can make all the difference. Please join our Parenting Balance Podcast Community here and sign up here to be the first in line for our new Modern Guide to Understanding Kids With ADHD mini-course.

CTA to Magical Mornings

Transcript

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Hi everyone! Welcome to the parenting balance podcast. My name is Kelly Williams. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and an ADHD parenting expert by experience. I'm here with my partner, Hi I'm Teresa Van Pelt, I'm a licensed mental health counselor and anxiety parenting expert by experience. And for the past 10 years, Kelly and I have had a family practice in Florida. This podcast is for parents who want to really understand what's going on with ADHD and anxiety so you can ditch the chaos and feel confident and happy again. Hi. Welcome back. Today I had a phone call from a mom who was in tears. So her child was just diagnosed with anxiety by the pediatrician. And the pediatrician told her that she needed to find a therapist who uses CBT. So she was calling me and asking me if I did CBT... let me guess. She has no idea what it was. And so I had to explain it to her, and so this is kind of perfect timing for us because this is something we're asked a lot. Yeah, we get asked a lot, and it inspired this episode of our podcast to lay it out there for everybody. What is CBT? And why does everybody want you to find a therapist who can do it? I'm sure you've heard of it. If you don't know what it is, you've at least heard of it? Sure. So CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. And what do you think? Like 20 years ago? Maybe was Well, that was evidence based practice, right? Yeah. That was around the time where insurance companies were, you know, requiring less sessions. You know, they were really pushing the therapist to get the job done and a quicker period of time, Quicker amount of time. And so CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy was Um, an evidence based practice. Yeah. Was one of the first ones. A lot? Yeah, it's a, um it's a technique. Or let's let's, like, explain what it is. Yeah. So cognitive behavioral therapy is it's a, type of talk therapy for the therapist explorers. How the client thinks about the problems and then helps them identified their flawed thinking. Yeah. So give us some examples of flawed thinking. Okay, so it would be kind of inaccurate thoughts like often, because I see kids with anxiety, often a child will come to me and say that they can't sleep in their own bed because they're afraid someone's going to break in their into their bedroom on the second store in the second floor and steal them. Take them away from their family. So it's like totally unrealistic, right? Right. Like something that never could actually happen. But it's this thought in their brain that keeps happening again and again and again. And they are convinced that it's possible because it has happened so many times, yes, and so that's inaccurate thinking. Yeah, and so a CBT session around that would involve what? So a session that I this is I've done this. I could do this with my eyes closed while having a root canal. It's just like it's so common. So what I would do is I would say, OK, well, how would they get into your house? And they would say the front door or, you know, like they say different things. But the front door. Okay, well, do you guys leave your door unlocked? Oh, no. We lock it. Okay, so how would they get in? So we explore that. So you basically you go through all the flaws in their think in the thinking, and you kind of break them down one by one. And at the end of the session, the ideal is that the client says, Oh, gosh, you're right. That's unreasonable. And the thing that's, however likely. So you don't want to tell them that they're wrong, but they have to come up with it on their own. Like, how likely do you think that this is gonna happen in the end is what we say so. Okay, so that's an example of CBT for this one kind of flawed thinking there's a different kind of flawed thinking also, And that would just be like a mother who feels like I'm a failure. Like I can't even get my kids to school in the morning. All or nothing. Yeah, right. Like you can only think about the negative things that are happening in your life and that all the negative overtakes all your thoughts, and there's like, a 1,000,000 little positive things that are happening that you're doing. But it that never enters in to balance out the negative. Right? Right. So we call that all or nothing thinking. There's another one is over-generalizing. And this is you know, I think about like with husbands in your life. You always leave the dishwasher for me there and load or yes. Oh, man. Any time the word always comes out of your mouth, your over generalizing right or you never give me a kiss. Goodbye. Yes, So always and Nevers are red flags. Uh, all right, what's another kind of flawed thinking? Like labelling ourselves? Like, um, I'm such an idiot. I'm so stupid and okay, so this is the one that I see all the time with my kids with ADHD right? And so remember that article. I'm gonna probably talk about this article on every single podcast episode, but the 500 times more corrective feedback, right? What happens when every single time you do something somebody says, Oh, no, it's not exactly right. Fix it right. And then this idea comes in like I can never do anything right. I'm an idiot. I'm not smart. I'm not this I'm not that right. And so that is kind of in part this kind of thinking, But it, um it's so close to the reality, right? So it's really I think it's really hard sometimes when you have a non-neurotypical brain and you're trying to function in a neuro-typical environment because you're reinforced, which is what you know, right? The academic environment is, um, how do I convince a child that, you know, this is actually flawed thinking and not really real? and I probably shouldn't talk about this in this this episode, but I think that CBT has a lot of value, and I use it often in my sessions, but I don't really use it by itself. I think that it's helpful, but it doesn't get to the emotional piece. I'm so with you, man. All right, so here's the deal. Emotions are not logical. CBT is based on logic, right? You cannot think yourself out of these strong emotional kind of thoughts. I find that there's a percentage, you know, because my the population I work with its kids. There's a percentage of kids who are able to have a handful of sessions, and that works for them. And my son was actually, one of those when he was younger are we would challenge a lot of his thoughts, and he tells me now that he because he's a very logical one person and so he thinks through everything with logic and that helped him. But they're still a large portion. That it doesn't help or it reduces things a little bit, reduces the symptoms a little bit, but there's more that remain. So this is where I kind of go to the wise mind. Um, I have, like, this session where I do, and it's always talking about the Wise mind right, And it has to do with neurology because that's my thing is about the brain science. And so CBT is a kind of a talk therapy that, um basically the basis of it is that how how you think about something impacts how you feel about something which impacts how you behave about that thing, and it's like think of these things in a circle, right? Because, um, it's all you know, you can have a feeling and then a thought, and then a behavior or a thought, and then a behavior and then a feeling or right, so it's all connected. I'm sure people can relate like there in that circular pattern and they can't get out of it, huh? That's right. But here's the part of the neuroscience that we need to understand, I think is that the part of the brain that processes the feeling is always going to arrive in consciousness a split second faster than your logic. And that part is more primitive. That's right. Then the logical part of our brain. Yeah, so that part of the brain, it's called the amygdala. And it is, um, you know, it's just it's how the brain evolved. Um, logic was right. So think about cave men. You know, um, back in the day, we didn't have We had danger, no danger. And there was no logic. You didn't. You know, you saw the shadow. It could be a saber toothed tiger. It could kill me. You didn't logic that out. You responded to that immediately. You know now, in later time, as humans evolved, we developed the logic, the balancing out the thinking it through piece of it. But because that developed later the, um the sensory input into the brain today, it will always your your emotional response will always hit your consciousness a split second faster than your logic. So what does that mean? And then here's the other thing is that, um from evolution. Humans have a negative bias what we call a negative bias. And so, um that Was that we will always assumed danger before safety. And that was to keep us safe, right? Because you can't If it really was a saber toothed tiger it's better for you to run, Well, maybe I'll just check it out. Guess what? You're dead. So in order for our species to evolve, we have to assume danger first. And so we see that kind of a lot right now when you have hyper-cognition, which is what's kind of happening with ADHD where your thoughts are going faster, kind and then, you know, a neuro typical right. There's no space there to let the logic enter in. We are actually reacting to emotions, and we're not thinking it through yea. So a lot of times, the CBT in the ADHD kind of therapy is about the pause. How do I get the pause there so that we can just wait a split second for the logic to come in and for us to kind of evaluate this emotional response before we go on to the behavior. And it's good if CBT can address it this way. If there's something that can help minimize that emotion to bring that emotion down so that the logic part kicks in. Okay, so you're sort of implying Theresa has discovered this amazing therapy EFT, and we have done a whole episode about it. Um, but let's talk just for a second, right? Because what EFT is, is tapping therapy, and the tapping on acupressure points helps your brain regulate. Because we talked in earlier podcasts about how what ADHD is is a. It's not a deficit of attention. It's a deficit of regulation. And this being able Teoh, um, have the timing be right between the sensory experience between the emotional experience and then the thinking experience that's related to the regulation. So this tapping therapy is one thing that we have absolutely discovered. I tell kids when I'm working with kids, it's like it turns the volume down on the emotional experience. So you know how, like when you jump in your car and you've left the radio too loud and you turn the car on and you don't remember that, like like and even the sound can be a little distorted If it's if it's too loud, you can't even hear what it is. Your body is just reacting and shocked to this loud sound. So non-neurotypical brains respond to the, um to the feeling part of their sensory experience, sometimes as if it's too loud and it can be distorted, like their reaction is so fast they can't even figure out what what it is, what the problem is, it just sets the alarm bells off in the body. So the tapping when we tap through those kind of experiences, it has the effect of turning the volume down. Yeah, yeah, but that's what we've seen. Yeah, it's a remarkable we've seen that it's been really helpful with your your clients. I refer everybody for EFT. Everyone said the combination of CBT and Ft. I think that's what we advocate, right? Definitely so understanding the feeling thinking, behaviour, connection, but also understanding that, um, the feeling part of it when it comes in too loud, wee have to address that. Or else the thinking part of it can't We can't even get to that part, you know? And so that, you know, it's all about the balance. Yeah. So I think what's important as a take away today is to be aware of your thoughts. Sure. And when you're, you know, falling into any of those patterns that we talked about like the all or nothing thinking the, um, over generalizing catastrophe eyes very advising that you just first number one become aware of it. And then number two try to think of how it could be reasonable. Right? So I always say, negative to neutral. We can't like, you know, you can't go negative to positive because that's like, who? That the big jump? Yeah. Two big negative to neutral. So uhm, I'm really worried that I'm going to screw up this big talk I have to do on a podcast tonight, right? Sounds familiar. Yeah. Okay. Um, what would be neutral? The podcast is gonna be hard, but I am going to do my best. And I have done X amount of podcast episodes prior to this. I've done them. Nobody is calling me and telling me It's awful, and I'm going to be OK. And I have talked about the subject for 20 years with me not 20 years, but hollow. That's the truth. That's the truth. Okay. Yeah. So let's do one for parents, right? Like when you wake up in the morning, Okay. I used to do this all the time. The dread Now, we don't have to go to school right now because of the quarantine. But there were days when I woke up and it was like, Oh, God, is she gonna get dressed on time? Right? Like, And the dread would just set in. Okay. And that's a total set up for having a terrible morning. Trust me. Been there, done that a 1,000,000 times. So the negative to neutral is gonna be It might be hard. I'm gonna follow my plan. She's gonna get up. Yeah, yeah. You know, like and I get up every day if she does, if it doesn't work out, it's not, You know, it's not gonna affect me personally. This is her, you know? I don't know. How do you and then that just helps us refine it for the future. We're find the plan moons kind of testing the plan. So I will say this that, um, I am an advocate of something I call positive self talk. And I do this because I know that humans have that negative bias. So I know that we lean negative, if you will, in our thinking. And so my strategy for kind of balancing that out is to insert positive ideas like in the simplest way possible. So give examples of where you insert that in your life apart. So, for example, my screen saver. Let me look at it and read to you what my screen saver says. I have to clear all these things off it. Here. Things are always working out for me. So every time I turn on my phone and there aren't a 1,000,000 notifications, my phone says to me, Things are always working out for me. The other thing I found this was five years ago. I actually got an email from I think it's called Think up. It's an app, and, um, it's like a reminder app. But I would put my positive self talk into the subject line, and it randomly sends me an email. And so the other day I got an email that says, I am enough. And I scheduled that email to be sent to me over five years ago. 11 a Mitchellville arrive in a and I have never turned it off. Man, every time I get that around like I am enough. I love this. Right. So the other thing that I coach my teenagers to do all the time is to set an alarm on their phone for a time. A day like we all kind of have, like a dip in our day. We have a like a low energy point for re Glock moon, Just which it happens to coincide with the time that I used to be sitting in the car pickup line, you know, total, you know, recipe for disaster. So I would settle an alarm and name the alarm. You know, like, I haven't alarm called. I can do hard things. I can stay positive even though I don't like this, Um, you know, So whatever it is, I can I'm gonna be happy. Today we have a sign over top of the coffee pot that says make today awesome in the shirt that you're wearing right now. Yes, mind over matter. That's the CBT motto. Yep. And mine says heavily meditated. We should totally do an episode about the benefits of meditation. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I think we're good for today. We're at 19 minutes and we don't want our episodes to be too long. Um so cognitive behavioral therapy is a kind of a talk therapy that explores how you are thinking about what's happening and how you're thinking about what's happening affects how you're feeling about what's happening. And that's because we know from the science that how you think how you feel in how you behave is all linked together. Um, the Theresa Kelly wisdom is that we got a combine CBT with E f. T to have the most efficient and effective. Absolutely absolutely. And so we're going to give you an awesome podcast on the next episode. That's all about FT. Because I bet you have at least of the people who are listening to this right now, I have no idea what the FDA is great. And check out our podcast community on Facebook Way started group you guys during our group Turner Group two in our group parenting balance podcast community on Facebook. We would love to have you there. You can make suggestions for future episodes after questions like We want to hear from you. Yeah, Please, Please, please, for Social, you have to us do it and we're learning and we're not so great at this. So come on, help girl, help us out was healthy girl now, all right, that's all for now. All right, so remember that your take away for today is that it's really important to balance out your negative bias with positive self talk. You can do that by, um, creating a message for yourself as a screen saver, using different APS to send yourself reminders or naming an alarm. Something positive that you need to train your brain to think about. Thank you for listening to the parenting balance podcast to doing our mailing list. Go to parenting balance dot com slash podcast. When you join, you will be notified of upcoming live Q and A's. You could help us plan future episodes. We'd love to hear comments and questions You can reach us by email. Hello at parenting balance dot com and If you found this information helpful, please share it with anyone else who can benefit and subscribe and give us a rating on your podcast platform. And until then, remember, different isn't wrong.