Non-Formularity: A Non-Pathologising Approach to Understand and Support Children's Needs with Thedy Veliz

In this episode, I'm joined by Dr Thedy Veliz, a child and family therapist and founder of the Institute for Non-Formulaic Youth, to explore his framework for non-formularity.

Thedy Veliz, PhD, is a child and family therapist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founder of the Institute for Non-Formulaic Youth. He recently completed his PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies which is based in San Francisco. Dr. Veliz primarily works with parents of difficult children to help them understand the source of their children’s behavioral, learning, social, and emotional challenges. This understanding is then used to adjust their parenting interventions to downregulate their children’s sensitive nervous system. Dr. Veliz has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s in business administration, and a master’s in counseling psychology. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, he held positions in engineering design and finance management at energy and technology companies. 

Dr Thedy Veliz makes the case that these children aren't broken or bad, they're wired with a nervous system that's exquisitely susceptible to their environment, and that the variable we can actually change is the environment around them, not the child. We talk about why punishment so often backfires, why behaviour is the last thing to surface after a long and invisible build-up of stress, and the powerful shift from correcting our children to connecting with them. Thedy also shares the PACE stance for parents (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy) and the link between this sensitive neurobiology and real gifts like creativity, empathy and a fierce sense of social justice.

Find out more at  https://www.nonformularity.com/ where you can also download Thedy's free parenting guide.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. I'm your host, Jules DeVito, and you're listening to the Highly Sensitive Human Podcast, the show that offers an insight into the world of the highly sensitive person and helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to feel more empowered and resilient without denying their authentic gifts.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Teddy Valis' PhD is a child and family therapist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founder of the Institute for Non-Formulaic Youth. He recently completed his PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies, which is based in San Francisco. Dr. Valise works with parents of difficult children to help them understand the source of their children's behavioral, learning, social, and emotional challenges. This understanding is then used to adjust their parenting interventions to downregulate their children's sensitive nervous system. Dr. Valise has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, a master's in business administration, and a master's in counseling psychology. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, he held positions in engineering design and financial management at Energy and Technology Company. So welcome, Teddy, and thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Thank you for having me, Jules. Looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I know we've been talking about it for a while, and I'm really excited to find out more about your work and what you have to share with us today.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So it would be great to start with your story. What is your passion in relation to this topic of high sensitivity and also your construct of non-formularity?

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Yeah. So when I went to when I was doing my master's in counseling, um the teachers that I gravitated towards um were all about the relationship. So it's kind of like this attachment-focused um psychotherapy, parenting. And it really spoke to me. I really um took their classes, their advanced classes, and and pretty much their training was about um uh the idea that our jobs as therapists was to connect, to understand the child, to try to put ourselves in the child's shoes rather than coming up from a hierarchical position and telling the child how they should be and that their behavior was bad. Um, that's unusual because the medical model is um that that governs psychotherapy and mental health services is about I'm the expert, you're messed up in some way, and I'm here to heal you, to help you. Um so I proceeded with this approach where I really believed that there was nothing really wrong with the child, and that the the the problem that the child was exhibiting, was was communicating, was that there was something wrong with their relationships. And so I started to work with clients uh uh as I was doing my internship to gather my hours to become licensed, and I was really bothered by the way that the system um talked about the clients. Uh, they could only see the what was wrong. But when I sat down with these kids and engaged with them, I saw I saw a lot of positive traits. I enjoyed um our conversations. They were deep, they were very philosophical. I remember that they really enjoyed analogies and metaphors. They, their thinking was meta, like thinking about thinking. And they would actually comment about my thinking strategies that I have used to connect with them. They had this sense of awareness that I had not seen, you know, before this, I had worked in the corporate world. Um, and so I was puzzled. And so I would then go and ask my peers, hey, have you noticed, you know, sometimes uh I would inherit a client that's that another therapist might have worked with. Um and or I would talk to uh their teachers or ask their parents, hey, like Johnny's very creative. And what what what what happened was that their badness was eclipsed by their assets. People could not see the goodness. But I felt that it was through the goodness, through connecting with the goodness, right? I mean, this is not just kids, just anybody. We want, we want to be seen, you know, and we want people to talk to us about, hey, good to see you. You you did a good job, right? Like it's really hard to connect with somebody's like, hey, you're messing up, you're a mess here, you have all F's, you're failing. And but what I realized is that I think these kids were open to me in the way that I perceived them because I was pulling that out of them in the way that I was leading my conversation with them. So because I refused to see the bad in them, they felt comfortable opening up and being vulnerable with me and showing the true all colors of their personality. Um, this is when I started to realize that there was something not right about the way that these kids were being conceptualized. And I don't think this pertained to any one person. This was a way of understanding. It's what I call a paradigm. There is a tradition, what I call a traditional paradigm, that governs pretty much the way that we make sense of the world in all fields, not just parenting. And that that gets that's in the water, in the air, in the way we we just as little babies that grow up, we become socialized into that paradigm. And I think that my differences, uh, which now I've realized that this what I call differences, um, is what I'm eventually started to call non-familiarity, which meant that um there are certain people that don't fit the traditional assumptions of how you should be, how you should develop. And the reason for that is because they they have genes that respond to the environment. That's the key. That the way that they're wired is different from the beginning. And then because we're not treating them the way that they should be treated, because they're wired differently, we're treating them the way the average child uh uh should be treated. Per the traditional paradigm, where we normalize and we average everybody out into one way. That is what I realized that was happening. That was the disconnect that was causing their challenges.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Fantastic. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. And I really appreciate what you are sharing in the sense of questioning the traditional paradigm. And you're speaking about difference, but in a non-pathologizing way, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yes, yes. And and I tried to find a term that was that was neutral. Um, and it was really hard to find that and still try to communicate something with the term. Um and and what I'm saying here is that these kids can be, can be, can thrive or they can wither away. But it depends on the environment, it doesn't it doesn't depend on them because their genes are not gonna change. The only variable that can change is the environment. But the traditional medical model focuses on changing the person. Makes sense, right? If we have cancer, if we have a cavity, the one that's gonna be changed is the patient. That might work for most people in the context of psychotherapy and mental health. It doesn't work with these kids because they need a different approach. And I actually believe that they, their experiences that first led them to be born with this very sensitive nervous system that reacts to things that most people can't detect. And the pain that goes from realizing that they're different leads them to grabbing on to the alternative paradigm that I refer to as the relational paradigm. So it's almost like they're not able to drink the Kool-Aid, they're not able to be socialized into adhering to the traditional paradigm in the way that most people are.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Right. It's profound. What you're sharing is profound, and I can really hear how it goes against so much of what we've been conditioned to believe as practitioners as well as therapists or coaches, this sense of it's not about fixing or changing the person, it's about looking at the environment and how one relates to the environment. Is the environment supportive of that person, that child or not, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Absolutely, absolutely. And and unfortunately, it it not only does trying to change the child doesn't work, this is the worst part, it makes it worse. Because the child feels um that they're so bad that they're the attempts of all these well-meaning people, right? Because when we're little, um, all the adults around us, whether it's a uh a parent, a teacher, a school principal, a therapist, you know, these are people that hierarchically they should be, they should know a lot, they should know more than us. And when their techniques don't work on us, it communicates to that child that I am so messed up that not even the experts can fix me. Um in addition to that, um, they part of that uh personality that I've described in my work um is very um, it's uh it doesn't take much for them to get defensive. And uh and so the more you try to manage them, the more reactive they will get.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

The more they will push back, the more they'll self-destruct, which is really my concern. My concern is really, you know, parents come to me because you know, a kid might be disrespectful or or or um too emotional. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about that kid not being understood and eventually finding substances or behaviors that become self-medication that eventually might lead them to more potent drugs, um uh overdoses, fentanyl overdoses that are becomes so common because it's it's in this, you know, it's in in in in all sorts of drugs, and the kids a lot of times are not intending to overdose, they just want to get a Xanax to feel better. And little do they know that there is fentanyl in that Xanax. Um, so that is what I'm thinking uh when I when I start working with with a client, because it it it's the the it's a process that um layers of stress, of pain, get added and added and added to one another.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Absolutely, yeah. And you're really speaking to the unfortunate worst-case scenario in terms of what the outcome is for many of these children when they are not understood and and seen in the way you're speaking about. So just to backtrack for a moment for any listeners who are coming across you in this term for the first time, you've already started to answer the question, but how would you define non-formularity? Um, and as you know, this podcast is about high sensitivity. And I'm sure there's many listeners wondering well, how is this similar or different to the construct of the highly sensitive person? So how do you see that?

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yeah. So we are doing this podcast, and you're doing the work that you do, and I'm doing the work that I do because of the pioneering work of Elaine Aaron. She is the one that introduced and most importantly made this this uh concept readily available to the mass audience. And um she, as a pioneer, identified this uh personality trait of sensitivity and uh and went ahead and attempted to describe it. Um I think that you and me are to continue to do this work because the traditional paradigm still labels sensitivity as a as a bad thing. And and some sensitive people might even, a part of them might feel like their sensitivity is a bad thing. And they have a lot of help because the traditional paradigm pathologizes. And and sensitivity is associated. Uh, you know, I I work with with a lot of of males, little boys, uh, adolescents, um, young adult males, and it doesn't feel very good to a parent when I tell them that they're that their boy is sensitive. And so that puzzled me. I understand the validity of the trait and what it communicates, but for my work, I felt a friction. So I continued to research and I found an article uh that introduced me to uh what I call uh neurobiological susceptibility. It's a two big words, but in a nutshell, what it's saying is that uh this this trait um affects our our entire um being because if if it accepts our accepts or uh affects our brain, it's affecting all of us. But the key word here is also susceptibility. Susceptibility is not good or bad. And it directly ties, what's susceptibility about, it directly ties um that susceptibility to the environment. So we're not only uh describing a trait sensitivity which can be uh interpreted as negative, we have moved forward, call it sensitivity 2.0, and we've double-clicked on it, and now we know that what we're calling sensitivity, which I'm referring to as susceptibility, can have good implications if the environment is supportive, and it can have bad implications if the environment is not supportive. That's the that's a major um distinction that non-formularity attempts to highlight. In addition, um when we're talking about the environment, I think it's really important. So there might be a client uh a parent that is listening to this podcast, and they're saying, wait a minute, Teddy, my kid is struggling, he's having all these issues that you're that you're referring to. Are you saying that my my house is toxic? Not at all. And this is this is what's challenging. You can have two children in the same household. One of them perceives, perceives, personally perceives the environment to be too much, uh too dysregulating, too overwhelming. And the kid right next to him or her uh might be totally fine. So this you know, sensitivity, stress is in the eye of the beholder. It's in the way that that stress response perceives it. Now I'll just give you a quick example. I cannot go to a busy coffee shop. It's extremely dysregulating to me because I can hear 15 conversations that are going around me at the same time, and I cannot turn that off. And that's what sensitivity is. The world encroaches on our nervous system, and we have very little barriers to protect against that, whereas most people have that just automatically, so they don't perceive as much stimuli. So that's what's important. So that's why it's important to connect instead of correct. Because if a kid, if a kid is screaming, punching, throwing things, there is a reason why they're doing that. And it might not be something that happened two minutes ago. It might have been something that happened maybe at school, and now they're at home and they feel they feel safe enough to fall apart.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

So there's no like like like immediate cause and effect, which is something that the traditional paradigm is really uh uh uh built around. That if I if I poke you, you scream. Not necessarily. Somebody can poke a little kid at school. The kid holds it together to say face, and when they go home, mom says, uh go put your books away, and the kid screams.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

And the and the paradigm, where did this come from? You're grounded, you don't talk to me like that. If you do that, you're missing what's really happening to the kid. And what because we want to understand why the kid said that to me. That's what the relational paradigm is focused on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, just to share, I can really relate to that experience from uh my previous career where I used to be a primary school teacher, and I would often get this feedback from parents that the child was completely different during the school day as to how they were when they got home. So that a lot of the children would hold it together during the school day, feeling this pressure to just be okay and uh socially acceptable, and then they would get home and they would just break down or fall apart, and they would see the anger, the frustration, the tears coming out, and the parents would feel very confused by that, and the teachers as well. So I think it's really significant what you're saying. It's not a cause and effect, it doesn't happen immediately, it might be an accumulation of experiences throughout the day or even the week, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Absolutely. And it this makes me think of a part uh of a TED talk um that I uh watched. Um this was uh Thomas Insell. He is a former director of the Institutes of Mental Health in the United States. And he said that in the world of emotional and psychological challenges, the last thing that shows up when there is an issue is the behavioral manifestation. So first is the the dysregulation, the internal physiological dysregulation. Then there is the psychological effect. I'm dumb, I feel bad. And the third final thing is the screaming, the punching. So by the time, and this is a progression, the reason for that is because our body, the physiology, tries to regulate. And our psychology also tries to regulate. No, I can't do that, I have to stay face. I can't. Blow up here, and then all the kids are going to make fun of me. And when when the kid is not able, when the nervous system and the psychology is not able to keep it together, these are defensive mechanisms, and it explodes out into the world, what Tom Ensell was saying is that that kid has been suffering for a long time for that. Because there's been several safety valves that have not held the pressure of what's going on. That's important. We just don't know. There are invisible processes. And when we see the behavior, the traditional paradigm right away goes into bad kid, you're not doing this in front of me. How dare you? I work so hard and you treat me like this, you know, like, but no, we're not seeing what's really happening, and the kid can't speak this. So I find that I speak for the child. That's my primary job, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, and I know that you work now as um a parent coach rather than a child therapist. So you are a psychotherapist with many years of experience, but your focus is primarily now on parenting, uh coaching the parents. So could you speak a bit more about that? Why why that emphasis?

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Yeah, um, this was also something that took me some time to uh wonder about. Um, so when I was doing my training, um what I realized, um so as I mentioned, you know, I was having really good experiences with these kids. I really enjoyed um my sessions with them. And so an unintended consequence of my ability to connect with them was that they would start saying things like, you're better than my parents. Can you can I go live with you? Can you adopt me? Um, or they would uh when they would get mad at their parents, they would say things like, if you could only treat me the way Teddy treats me. Now that wasn't the intention, you know, create that uh, first of all, you know, um, as I said, the the goal, the way that I was trained is like it's the relationship, but not the relationship with the therapist. Yes, that's important, but the primary relationship is with the parent. And um this is when I started to realize, you know, everybody will be best served if I teach the parent what I've been taught. That way, the kid seeks out the parent. That's my job. Um and so I started to do that. Um and I found that it was more economical, meaning that it took less time because if I met with a parent for one week, I'm sorry, for one hour a week, they could take that one hour and use it in many hours of parenting interactions with their child throughout that week. Um and also at the end of the day, um, they would be really understanding, you know, this understanding that I had about the kid, I wanted to provide that psychoeducation to the parent for them to counteract that traditional paradigm and actually be able to see the child's assets and their gifts. Um, so little by little, as time went by, I started to default to working um with the parent. So um for most of my younger clients, I've never met them. I just work directly with the with the parent. Um if there is a, and I've had a couple of these, if there's an eight-year-old, six-year-old that wants to talk to a therapist because they want to know, because the parent says you must go to a therapist, which is unfortunately what happens. Um, but I've I've met, I've had these kids who's like they want to talk to the therapist and they have the intellectual and emotional capacity to express their feelings. I'll talk to them. Of course, I'll also, the primary um uh people that I'm working with is the parent. Um, so it's not that I haven't I don't I I don't have anything against meaning with a child. It's just that um I want to work with kids that are able to express and that are not feeling that are that they're being sent, that it's it's it's because the kid wants to share. And then that information helps me uh because a lot of times either they share that with the parent, the parent didn't get it, or they don't feel comfortable sharing with the parent. Um in the case of a teenager that is really struggling just for safety reasons, you know, if a kid is like being uh you know uh very sexually promiscuous or uh smoking a lot of marijuana or you know, maybe escaping in the middle of the night, then um then I will meet with both because I feel that that kid needs to have some uh some mental health practitioner that is that is kind of watching over them. Um but the the purpose of parent coaching is is to be proactive, to be preventive. Um I feel that a lot of times by the time the the parent arrives in the world of psychotherapy, so many bad things have happened and there is so much bad blood, so much resentment from consequences. This is something that uh if you're listening, uh if there's one thing that you can remember about this uh podcast, is um consequences are really bad for the for the relationship. And um because it dysregulates the stress response system of the child. And when that happens, your consequences are supposed to teach the child something so they don't do it again. But here's the thing: if you are dysregulated, there is no learning, it's all reactivity in the middle brain. So the prefrontal cortex is not connected when you are stressed out. So this idea that you put a kid on timeout so that they can think about what they did so that they don't do it again, it was that was concocted before neuroscience came into the picture. Right. And now we know better, but those old ideas don't die very easily. Right. Yeah, so it's counteractive, it's counterproductive, and then the kid doesn't trust you, and they won't tell you what's really happening, and they're being bullied. Um, and but they won't tell you so as much, and so so the parent will tell me what he doesn't tell me, or she doesn't tell me, like, and I don't say this, but like I'm thinking, well, I wonder who who how did that come about? So there was a sequence of events for years and years and years that resulted in the kid not trusting the parent. So that's what I want to avoid. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

And for any parents listening, what would you suggest is an alternative to those consequences? What I'm assuming what you're gonna say, but what what is the alternative instead of those um more traditional punishments? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Okay, yeah. So I'll say a couple of things. Uh, if if we're talking about consequences, I'll I'll give I'll just give um um a uh uh an example. Um and this is something that um it was a story that was told to me by uh one of uh one of my professors, um one of my mentors, um and he had arrived to his house um after a long day of work. And his, I think he had a five-year-old, and the five-year-old ran around the house in circles and circles and circles. Now the kid was excited because his dad was home, right? He's five. That's the way that he expressed that happiness. But what happened is that he um uh bumped into a vase, face vase, I don't know how you say that word, uh, very, you know, uh precious uh ornament. And my professor held the child and said, I am so sorry. You were so excited because I hadn't been here. I've been working a lot of hours and you've missed me. And because of that, you were excited when you saw me and you started running around, and you broke the vase, and now you're scared that we are gonna be mad at you. But I'm sorry, we should have never had that vase close to an area where you could break it, and that's on us. You are not in trouble. So that that I'm giving an example of that's a narrative that the parent narrated to the child what happened, why they had this crazy behavior in quotation marks running around and and taking responsibility for something that the parent should have known. Right, well, because they know their kid, most likely this was not the first time that this kid expressed uh emotion in a hyperkinetic way, yeah. Right? And so I call that a relational consequence, meaning that when something happens to the child, uh it's on the parent to realize what could I have done different for this to not have happened? What can I do different for this to not happen again? So again, it it focuses on the environment, and the parent is the chief executive of that environment. So that's a very specific thing, but more broadly, I think that if if a parent takes this connect instead of correct approach, the the consequences will disappear because organically, because we can't do both. We can't connect and correct at the same time. And when endowed, the the the more it's gonna default. If you don't work really hard to connect, you're gonna default to the traditional paradigm and you're gonna correct. That's what we see on TV shows, that's what we see at the grocery store. Kids misbehaving and parents raising their boys or yanking the kid, or you know, uh, that's what we are um learning, whether we are aware of that or not.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:28

It's so profound the example you gave because it really moved me actually, because so tender, so loving, so compassionate, so you know, it's almost like the parent came down to the level of the child and predicted what the child, how the child would feel, and saved the child from feeling horrible. Because something that parents don't realize about this population of sensitive kids is that we don't need to punish them. They will punish themselves because they are very quickly to feel inadequate, less than, not worthy. I don't want to live. They themselves will punish themselves. We don't need to join that party.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Right. Yeah, the shame that they have yes, shame.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

Yes. Yeah. I want to say it's important, and I continue to repeat this when I work with parents you're not a bad parent for having given consequences to your child. You're not a bad parent to uh having been uh uh obsessed by the traditional paradigm. If you are a human being walking this modern society world, that's where we're gonna gravitate, all of us. And so I have no judgment. This is not about being good or bad, this is about the fact that many parents will never have to deal with what we're talking about here. Because most kids don't have these sensitive uh genes that are susceptible to the environment. Most kids are born with genes that are um uh what let's call them more like the more traditional or normal kind, and um they're less susceptible to the environment. Um it's more about that genetic programming and less about what happens to them. We call those people resilient. I I have a problem with that because resilience assumes that the person struggled, and that's why they've arrived or they're not they're untouched. I actually think that sensitive kids that are able to learn how to embrace their sensitivity, work with their sensitivity, and choose environments that work best for them, those are the real resilient ones because that takes a lot. You need to have experience a lot of pain in order to arrive there. And most importantly, uh a kid cannot do this alone. The parent needs to start doing this with the child so that the child eventually can do this on their own.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Yeah, so they feel empowered enough to make the choices that are right for them.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Yes. Otherwise, um, if this doesn't happen early enough, and I've had these clients, uh, no, Teddy, I I I am I'm messed up. I deserve. I deserve that my life has gotten amounted to nothing. Because they they really internalize that feeling of inadequacy, and they'll fight you if you say otherwise. They'll get angry at you at you if you say something positive about them. Because it doesn't, it it feels like I'm gaslighting them.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

It's because it's yes, yes. And that is really, really difficult. That's longer therapy, more expensive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yeah, and for that reason, I really understand why you're so passionate about the preventative psychoeducational piece of this getting to the children before it's got to that point, right? Helps parents. Like you said, it's not the parents' fault, but knowing They don't know.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

They don't know. A lot of them, you know, will start crying. I didn't know this. Nobody told me this. Yes, it because it's uh it's the minority, right? Like we in any product, any knowledge is going to be disseminated for the majority of the people. Um, and this is the minority. So yeah, it's the reality. And it it it it really touches me. I really I really feel their pain. I really suffer through these through these experiences of these cases because I totally can relate.

unknown 38:06

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

And I know so much of what you're speaking about has come from your PhD in transformative studies. And I'm really curious to hear a bit more about that journey. First of all, why transformative studies? Uh, and what did you discover from this this journey you've been on of um researching and having your PhD recently published?

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Yeah, yeah. So um so uh I ever since I was doing my master's in counseling, I had an itch for um for advanced education. Um I didn't I decided that I wanted to uh go into the mental health field as a practitioner first before going and becoming a scholar. I wanted to lead with with my knowledge of understanding people. And as I started to focus more and more and develop a niche of working with this um type of difficult, non-formulaic kids, it became very clear to me that there were so many layers of complexity. And these kids were not one thing, they were many things at the same time, and that pertains to the field of complexity systems thinking, um, nonlinear studies, and traditional PhD programs or just master's programs or any type of program, they're disciplinary. And we needed the disciplines initially to organize information. Uh, the challenge is that a person is not a psychological being or a sociological being or an anthropological being or a religious being or a molecular being or a biological being or a being that is affected by their immune system. They're all of those things, or a genetic being. And so uh the this this transformative studies PhD program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, by the way, I think that more and more, if it I think this is happening already, that as the world becomes more complex, more um, and with changes in AI and education, more and more programs are going this way, and they're structuring uh especially advanced degrees uh in a way that it's it's uh goes beyond the disciplines so that the inquirer, the scholar, has the freedom to venture into any field of study that they deem useful to make their case. There's less limitations. Um you don't have to, you know, usually traditional schools, you're under uh an advisor that is the one that is funding your scholarship. And so a lot of people will do something related to what the advisor is studying. That limits, you know, your your insight, what you're bringing to the table. Um uh transformative studies in order for your topic to make a transformation in society, it it requires to be to go beyond the disciplines. Of course, I couldn't do my transdisciplinary uh work without those disciplines. But again, it's a 2.0. You know, like the discipline the disciplines were there for a reason, but we evolved now. And now instead of just getting a degree, a PhD in psychology, which have really limited me. By the way, I couldn't have done it, I wouldn't have gotten a PhD, um it has allowed me to uh understand these kids in a more uh the complexity of them. In addition, this this this program um indirectly works on our own personal transformation because we can't transform society or attempt to transform society without uh better understanding ourselves. And so it was through this program that I realized that I was like my clients. And I'm gonna be very honest, there is there is some of that traditional paradigm inside of me, just like it's inside of everybody, even though I worked really hard to embrace the relational paradigm, but there was a part of me is like, no, I can't be like my clients. I have to be above them. If I'm like them, I'm I'm you know, like I'm I'm quote, messed up like them, right? And so I it was very interesting. And and one, uh, a couple of of my clients in different ways would suggest, you know, like you understand me because you're like me, uh, would say things like that directly or indirectly. And initially I was very bothered by that, but when I was able to accept that, uh it it I was able, uh, it was a blessing. I don't think my work would have been uh I think as powerful as as as it was, as it, and when I say as it was, I'm talking about the process, my process. This is separate from the actual content.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

uh that was published uh but i changed i i got more in touch with my humanity um in ways that um i hadn't before uh it's almost like my tentacles to perceive other people's pain uh uh enhanced grew um that wasn't expected that wasn't you know i didn't know that that was gonna happen but it was part of uh uh uh uh embedding the inquirer the scholar into the the research which is something that traditional programs don't want you to do right but but this program at CIIS is all about that and it's because of that you can't pretend that you want to change a contribute to society if you yourself are not doing it first absolutely yeah yeah it reminds me of even traditional therapy or coaching where many paradigms of uh therapy teach you to be a blank slate or not involved in the process right and that's what you're speaking to that we can't be separate from it's we are its and it's we are it yeah we're using like my tool when I'm in front of somebody is me my humanity I hold this their space their vulnerability I decide even if I know that this technical thing that I know would solve their problems if I don't share that in a way that they can receive it it doesn't matter how right my insight is it's useless because the person wasn't ready to receive it exactly it might have they might have even been threatened by it yeah that's an art yeah that is a dance and that dance is different uh with with with a with different clients yeah it goes far beyond the intellectual understanding right and that's absolutely sounds like that's what came through for you in your your studies the embodiment of it for yourself but also how you engage in your with your clients and and the parents you'll be working with yes it it's very easy to understand intellectually but for that intellectual understanding to come to the heart now it's yours now it's part of and you don't it's like breathing it becomes part of you you don't have to think about breathing right it it you just are you are breathing right and so it's it's kind of like that um yeah yeah so if there were any big nuggets that you would like to share with the listeners today from your uh research uh I know there will be many and we can't cover all of them today that might be episode two of this podcast but what would you want them to walk away with today though any key insights that you've mentioned a few already uh in the of course yeah um yeah and I I'll repeat a couple of them the the child the relationship with the child is the most important thing um nothing should get in the way of that um connect with your child instead of correct them um uh stress anything that stresses the child if you have a kid that is struggling with uh emotional and behavioral challenges anything that stresses the child is actually setting them up to escalate the the behavior um the same genes that create this hyperreactive um emotional highly perceptive sensitive uh neurobiology are the same genes that are associated with higher abilities this is also part of the non-formulai child conceptualization these things go together um parents are usually surprised when I sometimes ask them when they tell me all the bad things about Johnny I said tell me Johnny must be creative how do you know that well do you know Johnny do you work at his school I don't I just know that if you're saying A, B is connected to A.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

It's that simple. For some kids it's more obvious for others it's not very obvious. If you have a kid that is uh opinionated independent constantly arguing with you see a lot of parents think that creativity is about drawing but creativity can also be about argumentation. So some parents would say he's like an attorney a six year old right there's a certain level of sophistication but because the parent is annoyed at the fact that they have to deal with the kid putting them in checkmate literally right then they can't see past their anger and they don't they're not realizing that this kid has some really great traits that can be used against society if they're not nurtured right because if you if this kid becomes angry and they can manipulate those are the future problematic children. These are not the ones for those type of kids I'm not worried about them overdosing or committing suicide. These are the kids that will go blow up the school yeah so creativity can go both ways right uh there's the you know the the unfortunately the most well known concept of creativity in mental health is the malevolent creativity. But that's the minority of the cases the majority of the cases is this this very loving empathic kids that um they're all about social justice. This is a something that I haven't uh expressively stated. This is another quality that goes along with these with these uh behaviors is that these kids have that immense sense of what's right and they become uh stewards for the underprivileged for the underdog um uh I'll say one last thing um uh there is a stance that that uh some parents have found helpful it's called pace P-A-C-E Playfulness P for playfulness A for acceptance uh C for curiosity and E for empathy that's like a like a parenting stance like that's how you show up every time you engage with your kid you give them the benefit of the doubt you're curious not in a way that you're trying to ask questions to then use the questions against the kid but like okay so you got in trouble and you hit um Peter in the face what was going on in your mind when you hit Peter can you think about that you're like here's the thing no you we can talk more about the fact that that was a bad thing right like the kid knows that but that I encourage parents to not go there first because the kid is freaked out he's scared right and so when you start to ask questions in this way the kid you you literally like downregulate it's almost like you are holding them you're like rocking them right and then they're able to talk about what happened they might have been bullied before this happening you know some other kid might have bullied you know and then they go take it out on somebody else you know and so we don't know this we don't want to now is is it Teddy is it is are you saying that it's okay that he punched a kid because he was bullied no I'm not saying that both things can be true. The behavior could have been bad and also um it can be it can be also true that there might be a dynamic in in the classroom that is setting up this kid to fail. Both can be true. That's complexity but be we usually the fall to the bad yeah yeah yeah and what I really hear in what you're saying is it's not about not having boundaries right or containment like you said there are moral values and consequences to um our actions right but yes that's not the first place you go the first place is the understanding the trying to understand the cause of the child's behavior the the connection the empathy right and there's been a couple of situations where the kid will actually put themselves in timeout mom I know I misbehaved I'm gonna give myself a timeout you know like and and you know if if if if if if I if I was a parent in that situation I mean that's enough for him to have realized that you know and so what I'm saying is that when when when when the kid is understood when the kid is not stressed out when the kid trusts the parent everything is going to be okay and and the things that we want which is for the kid to realize that what they've done was not good that they've learned from their mistakes all of that is going to happen and that's what we want there is no need for these consequences um it's just that we don't know how to do it any other way. So we do what our great parents great grandparents and grandparents did.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

Yeah what was modeled to us right yeah what was modeled to us yes yeah thank you so much for everything you have shared today I feel like I could just keep talking to you and asking you more questions but I'm really aware that we need to wrap up today's episode and I'd like to ask you where listeners can go to find out more about your work and and what you've spoken about today.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yeah so I've uh as I as I transition to uh being more of a parent coach I've created uh the Institute for nonformulaic youth and the website is nonformularity.com and um I will um I will also uh soon here start creating some content short videos on on I'm probably gonna be posting them on YouTube uh but this is gonna be a slow process of kind of building uh uh translating uh my research into little nuggets of easily digestible uh uh pieces of information for people to apply for them to be easily applicable to um your parenting experience with your children thank you so much and I'll drop the links in the show notes for people to check out your website and I know you've got a free parenting guide that people can download as well from your website yes yes so yeah going to that website you will find a link um where you will be able to download and it's kind of like it gives you a start a place to start something tangible that you can then um there's some references that I put that I put down um I am one of these uh non-formulaic people which means that uh I'm an anxious person I'm an insecure person so I like research and research like is this really right am I saying the right thing by the way this is the way that creative and high you know high achieving people are they're usually driven by their insecurities so this is an example what I just said here what I just shared about me is something that came from my transformation of self-transformation from my process where I'm more open about my vulnerabilities because we all have them absolutely we all have them and people can trust more people that are vulnerable yes so yeah thank you so much and I think that's a great note to end on so it's been really inspiring and yeah I look forward to staying in touch and having some more conversations with you very soon. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Thank you so much Jules thanks for joining me today on Highly Sensitive Humans. If you'd like to go deeper head to the Highly Sensitive Human Academy where I offer one-to-one coaching for highly sensitive people alongside a range of trainings and programs. These include our professional HSP coach training an accredited course for those who want to learn how to coach highly sensitive people as well as our HSP Foundation program for anyone beginning their own journey. We also run live retreats throughout the year you'll find all the details including upcoming cohorts and dates over on the website. And if you found value in the show today I'd really appreciate a rating or review. And if you're able to you can also support the podcast with a donation which is what keeps the show running and episodes coming. Thanks for being here