Why Young Adults Struggle Today: From Childhood Trauma to Healthy Relationships

How much of our adult relationships are shaped by the families we grew up in?

Fiona Yassin, psychotherapist and Founder of The Wave Clinic, joins Abdullah Boulad, Founder and CEO of THE BALANCE Rehab Clinic, for a grounded conversation on how early family experiences continue to influence the way we relate, communicate, and navigate relationships later in life.

In this episode, Fiona shares personal reflections on childhood trauma, family secrecy, and the path that led her to psychotherapy. Together, they explore how trauma shapes family dynamics, the role of recovery in therapeutic work, and the model of Family Emotional Governance she developed to better understand complex family systems.

The conversation moves into the realities couples and families face today; communication breakdowns, cultural differences, expectations in relationships, and the pressures of modern life. They also discuss practical tools such as reflective listening, the role of transparency in families, and how individuals can build healthier, more conscious relationships over time.

This episode offers a thoughtful perspective on family systems, emotional patterns, and the work required to create lasting change.

About Fiona: She is the founder and clinical director at The Wave Clinic. She is a U.K. and internationally registered Psychotherapist and Accredited Clinical Supervisor (U.K. and UNCG). Fiona is EMDR trained (EMDRIA) and a practicing Trauma therapist.

00:00:00 - Childhood Trauma, Family Secrets & Early Life 
00:01:11 - Motivation to Become a Therapist & Path to Healing 
00:07:07 - Trauma’s Impact on Family Dynamics & Secrecy 
00:09:23 - Entering Recovery & Early Therapeutic Work 
00:10:52 - Recovery’s Influence on Therapy Practice & Approach 
00:12:57 - Developing a Unique Model: Family Emotional Governance 
00:15:56 - Case Study: Cultural Clashes, Loneliness & Infidelity 
00:19:18 - High-Stakes Family Crises & Intensive Interventions 
00:22:23 - Communication Breakdowns & Emotional Disconnection 
00:24:29 - Premarital Preparation & Understanding Family Backgrounds 
00:27:51 - Cultural Differences & Equality in Relationships 
00:30:07 - Individual vs Joint Therapy Approaches in Couples Work 
00:31:38 - Transparency, Secrets & Family Constellation Work 
00:36:14 - Gender Differences in Communication & Misunderstandings 
00:38:13 - Reflective Listening & Practical Communication Skills 
00:42:43 - Validation, Attention & Pressures of Modern Family Life 
00:45:04 - Swipe Culture vs Commitment & Value of Relationships 
00:47:49 - Managing Expectations & Embracing Imperfection 
00:51:21 - Self-Reflection, Growth & Lifelong Personal Development 
00:56:49 - Healthy vs Unhealthy Relationships & When to Walk Away

Follow Abdullah Boulad: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdullahboulad/  
https://www.instagram.com/abdullahboulad/  

Follow Fiona Yassin:
https://fionayassin.com/ 

You can order Abdullah’s books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BC9S5TCF?ccs_id=c64f2588-7eb1-4592-b4d1-647a0f379b51

Follow THE BALANCE Rehab Clinic: 
https://www.linkedin.com/company/thebalancerehabclinic/   
https://www.instagram.com/thebalancerehabclinic/  

#LivingALifeInBalance #podcast #porn #communication #mentalhealthpodcast #wellness #wellnessjourney #health #healing #wellbeing #traumainformed #love #mentalhealth #recovery #support #addictionrecovery #interview #relationship #couple #families

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:00  When I was 18 and my grandfather was 70. He ended his life on his 70th birthday. Sometimes people do tell you what they're going to do before they do it. I got validation and praise for getting it right, for being a good girl, for being a clever girl, for being a performative girl. Being able to come first. Well, I had to work an awful lot in therapy. On reversing being a good girl who was performative. We are seeing an increase in unsettled ness in young people. Eating disorders presenting earlier, depression, anxiety presenting earlier. Young people are more anxious than ever. Restrictive eating disorders have the highest rate of mortality of any psychiatric condition. So why are some children more affected than others? It's really complicated to be a kid today. There's no instruction on how to navigate the online world. For me, the very best. Psychotherapy and psychiatry and anything to do with people is delivered by people.

Fiona Yasin 00:01:06  Welcome to the Living a Life and balanced podcast. My guest today is Fiona Yasin, a UK registered psychotherapist with the Masters in Neuroscience and Psychiatry who specialises in child and adolescent mental health.

Fiona Yasin 00:01:20  I hope you will enjoy. See you now. What motivated you to do what you do today?

Speaker 1 00:01:28  It wasn't my first choice, so my first choice was medicine. And I wanted to be a gynecologist and obstetrician. And I wanted to deliver babies and look after women and and kind of this whole concept of looking after more than one person at one time really was really interesting. As a little girl, my family a law. So there was nothing about mental health in in the family that was sort of encouraging me in that direction. But as a very small child, I think I was about five. My grandfather used to look after me on a Saturday night, and my grandmother would have that as her night out with her, her friends sort of early evening. She had difficulty parking her car, and she used to have to put the car in garage. And that meant that my grandfather had to always be present when the car was put in the garage. So he would do the kind of guiding in and the stop and this side.

Speaker 1 00:02:30  And so we'd wait for her and we'd wait for her just sort of on the road to guide her in with a little torch. She'd have her driving gloves on and her driving shoes and she'd change. So my grandfather, was waiting with me on this particular night, and he said the game we played was how many red cars? Blue cars. Green cars do you think you'll see before grandma comes and that was a weekly game. But this night he said to me, you know, if you lived to three score years and ten every day after that is a bonus. And I was like, what's the score? Yeah. And he said, well, a score is 20, so you work it out. And I was like, okay, so three scores, that's three 20s plus 1070. And he was like, yay! Well done, well done. You. So every day after 70, as a bonus, I was like, oh, okay. That's a bit different from our normal game of counting cars.

Speaker 1 00:03:31  13 years later, when I was 18 and my grandfather was 70, he ended his life on his 70th birthday, and that was the first time that I realized, actually, sometimes people do tell you what they're going to do before they do it. So I was about five, and this happened when I was 18. And there's no coincidence to that, and I. I think I'd always remembered that conversation, but then was flooded with that conversation. So it became like a that was the first time I sort of realized that the brain was a really kind of powerful thing, and that we shouldn't always hide from the information that's given to us. Maybe we can't make meaning of it in that moment, but there might be some point that we can make meaning of that. I don't even know whether. And I guess I'll never know whether my grandfather actually intended to tell me that on that day, or what prompted him to tell me that on that day. But I know that from being 18 to now, I've been able to use meaning making and my memories of what was happening in that house and what was happening in his relationships in order to kind of make sense of what he told me.

Fiona Yasin 00:04:49  As a child. I mean, you must be shocked also seeing that, realizing that not meaning to it. How did they shape you at that age?

Speaker 1 00:04:59  Well, I think it I think the shaping probably happened post 18 and post kind of my grandfather ending, choosing to end his life and recognizing the immediate ramifications in the family. And the first thing I really remember is this, you know, 18 year old with not a lot of experience in the world was this is not a usual way, and the grieving is not going to be usual. And I remember early conversations about life insurance. Well, life insurance doesn't pay out if you choose to end your life. And so what does that mean? And me not really being part of these conversations, but still hearing the two generations of, in my view, very powerful women above me talking about this and and what was going to happen and I'd already touched on, you know, having a legal element in my family or law and, I think my grandfather's death ended up in a coroner's court.

Speaker 1 00:06:02  And my, my mother, who's a lawyer, then kind of standing up in the coroner's court to say, actually, I don't believe he did end his life. I believe that he may have been physically unwell. And then, you know, this happened by mishap rather than said death by misadventure rather than suicide, which I think years ago was a big kind of standpoint of things were one or the other. So I can just remember things coming from all different, all different avenues. And then the possibility of, you know, was your grandfather, potentially having an affair or was he doing this or was so it opened up a whole load of new stories that my grandfather was just my grandfather, who was a lovely, you know, lovely, kind, generous man from Newcastle. So then to think, oh, maybe there was more to this story. It I think in the early days that grief, grief takes over and, and I think you grieve around somebody who's ended that chosen to end their life in a very different way than you grieve around somebody who has died through illness or died through an accident or something else.

Speaker 1 00:07:14  There's a there's a whole different process, I think, isn't there? So I experienced that early on. my grandmother then lived for 25 years without him. And I think in that I, I heard a lot of regret of the things that perhaps she wishes she'd done differently. So that was my first experience then wanting to do medicine and, my, My mum then had an opportunity to go to Hong Kong, and I felt like I shouldn't be left alone here with what would be seven years plus one, because I had to do a pre-clinical year to convert my arts A-levels into a science based year. So I felt that wasn't very fair. So in protest, I said, well, I'll go and do dance and drama instead, which I did and protest did very well in a very silly way, I think later on. So, dance and drama then led me to this more, more creativity, more, dance, dance and kind of as an expressive art form, using that to access this thing that I just found.

Speaker 1 00:08:29  So my first therapist or the first therapist that I really connected with on a deep level was Psycho Dramatist. And I found this love of psychodrama. I found this love of gestalt. I found this love of to so then abandoned my protest drew of I'm going to do dance and drama only and went often and trained in to and transactional analysis and at the time very aligned to get out very aligned to creative arts, very aligned to parts work I think to has incredible similarity to IFS that's, you know, really fashionable and in vogue right now until New York Post wrote a horrible article about it last week. But we know things come and go in fashion. And I think probably you and I have been around long enough to know everything or have its day, and then there'll be something new. So I think my original training, at the Iron Mill in Devon and then metanoia and then in Granada, has kind of played into my original Interests in the creative arts.

Fiona Yasin 00:09:43  Yeah, it's fascinating how life happens. And and then you, you you you get shaped at.

Fiona Yasin 00:09:50  At the age. What what I want to say is in mental health, age doesn't matter. We never know what's happening in someone's mind. You know, it can be 70 as. As your grandfather. But it can be also affecting you at the age of 18. Or age of five? Yeah. What I would like to know, how was your time when you were like, in your, during your childhoods and getting into adolescence? How can you. Can you explain to me how did you live your childhood and and. Adolescence. And until the age of 18. And then compared also to how people live. Today, how children grow up today.

Speaker 1 00:10:37  I think the the very big difference that that we weren't available as kids 24 hours a day. I can remember, going out to play. I was very much into dancing and gymnastics, and my grandparents had this very high, very thin wall that looked a bit like a beam that you'd have in in gymnastics training or in events. And but it was brick and concrete.

Speaker 1 00:11:04  And I used to do cartwheels and handstands and, and all sorts of things and, and have all the grown ups in the house saying, oh my goodness me. Like she's like, she's really dangerous. She's doing all these things but danger in this sort of outdoorsy, playful way. but it did earn me the nickname of Topsy Turvy with my aunts, who said that you saw more of my underwear upside down than you ever saw of my face as I was moving along this wall? I think I was, I was an only child. and that really affected who I was and how I was shaped. I was always with grown ups. and I guess in today's today's kids build these things that they call online communities and online friendships. And, you know, whilst maybe you and I differ about with them of whether that's always appropriate or not, it was different, I think. so my only child, very young mum, my mum was only 17 when she had me, which was very, very unusual and she was sort of packed off to a mother and baby home.

Speaker 1 00:12:15  Wow. so my early experiences were very unusual. My mum then kind of went on and, and and went off to build up her education and career. And I was left in the care of my grandparents and a nanny. So I had a nanny from, I think I was three weeks old, a wonderful woman from Cardiff who was mum to six children, two sets of twins and looked after me phenomenally until I was 15. And so I think my my early experiences were perhaps a little bit unusual, but were perhaps, you know, more kind of disconnected from other children and more connected to adults, whether that's sort of played into the way that I understand experience. But I, I didn't have a straightforward childhood, and I think that really increased my curiosity and my desire to be very available for children and young people, and also to understand that families are not always straightforward and they're not always made of 2.2 children and, you know, parents who are both doing 9 to 5 jobs. It can be a lot more complex than that.

Fiona Yasin 00:13:33  Absolutely. What did you do in your free time? As a, say, between 10 and 15?

Speaker 1 00:13:40  Dancing. I was a I was a competitive dancer. I went on to, do pantomimes. You know, I, I still love pantomimes. I love Christmas, but I still love pantomimes, and I, I auditioned a lot. I spent a lot of time dancing competitively and then kind of, musical theatre. And that was really my, my world, but a little bit kind of off kilter because it was very showy. It was very much it was very performative. I think I was a very good girl who learned to, probably, please others from, from this performative stance. So a lot of work in therapy after that to understand that actually everything you see doesn't have to be on the outside that what's going on on the inside is also really important. I learned that, probably one of the only ways that I could connect with my mother was around, being a winner, being successful, being academic, being, being able to come first.

Speaker 1 00:14:52  And that was very important in that relationship. So lots of experience around that.

Fiona Yasin 00:14:57  How was this pressure you put on yourself from your side or you you I think was it also.

Speaker 1 00:15:04  By both ways, I felt, I felt relatively invisible in, in the family system apart from with my nanny. But I had this very early kind of understanding that that was a paid for relationship because it was articulated in our family that that was a paid for relationship. So, love wasn't a currency that seemed to come around freely. And I guess I learned to navigate that through this perfectionism. And I'm sure if I know absolutely no. If you ask my team today, they will talk to you about perfectionism. Perfectionism, I feel, is not always a it's not a terrible thing. There's obviously a continuum. There's this kind of gap where it provides some sort of protection. And if that's what you need to hang on to for a while, that's yeah, that's what you need to hang on to. But I definitely learn these perfectionist qualities back then.

Speaker 1 00:16:01  My grandmother, she's now affectionately known as Nanny Peggy, and she's known to lots of the families I work with and definitely all of our clinical team, because quite often, I'll quote Nanny Peggy in moments of crisis and I'll say, you know what Nanny Peggy would have said about this? But she had some hard and fast ways of dealing with the world. She was, Glaswegian. And, she was asked to leave Glasgow by her mother. So. Intergenerational trauma. She was put on a train from Glasgow to King's Cross, with five younger siblings and £5, and told to go and make a better life. When she was 15 and she got off in Finsbury Park because it said London, Finsbury Park and she thought she'd got to the end of the line, got off with her five younger siblings, found a small flat to rent over a shop and got herself a job in the shop. So that's why kind of my family ended up where they were. And then life sort of got built from Nanny Peggy onwards.

Speaker 1 00:17:05  And I think in some of our our panels over the last few days, we've been talking about intergenerational trauma. And you realise it's actually not this thing that's hundreds of years back. It's just then she's my mother's mother and she's responsible for five siblings. As a child, I imagine what would happen if if we heard that the other side of the road today, we'd. We'd feel that we had to intervene on so many levels.

Fiona Yasin 00:17:33  We had this intergenerational trauma. I mean, it's it shows us again how we passively are affected, who we are today and how we grow up with with everything we experience. Yeah. And, and the difference. Like decades ago compared to, to now is maybe information, information available, talking about it, media and so on. How what's your how do you see that.

Speaker 1 00:18:00  Yeah. It's very it's a very different position isn't it. Where we're in a space where there's perhaps an oversharing of information. And also I think we're in a space where it feels like people are moving away from really kind of clarifying the sources of their information.

Speaker 1 00:18:21  And I know that we see a lot of fake news, a lot of it. But going back to Nanny Peggy's generation and what was happening for them and you know, nobody's sharing information and shame was had a very different quality I think back then. Shame in single parent families. My mum being 17 when she had me and not married, and not disclosing who my father was and not disclosing I. That's very different to now the shame that that was considered that she would bring on the family saw her being packed off. Fortunately, that's not something that we experience now to such a degree. So the sort of shapeshifting of of shame and what it means within family systems, where where does shame lie? Today? We've touched upon, those people who end their life that still carries a certain degree of shame. We, you know, we think about, Intergenerational trauma and what it brings into the family system. We know that, the use or overuse or misuse of substances or addiction or whatever terminology we want to use can bring a degree of shame.

Speaker 1 00:19:33  And yet there's a pecking order within that as well. So alcohol use disorder doesn't carry as much shame as, sexual behaviors on a compulsive level or addictive level or deceptive level. So this sort of pecking order of shame, I guess, has been going on across all these generations and we just sort of see it morphing and changing, and we're very fortunate now that there is more help available and we're not going to be going through, hopefully in many of our cultures, what Nanny Pegi went through then, but not in all cultures. You know, I think we're also very polarized when we talk about mental health. We talk about the UK, the US, Australia, perhaps even the UAE. But we're not we're not really talking about many of the cultures that that we see people coming to us from where actually mental health isn't talked about and physical symptoms are still talked about. So I'm presenting with horrible gastric issues. I've seen many gastroenterologists, I've had scopes, I've had this, I've had that. We're talking about my tummy looking from the inside like it's, you know, made of shards of glass.

Speaker 1 00:20:50  But nobody's talking about eating disorders because actually, culturally, it's not acceptable. So I guess in some ways we've come on leaps and bounds from Nanny Peggy and her train ride. And in other ways, we're still standing where we were. Yeah.

Fiona Yasin 00:21:05  What what issues? What problems do you see in today's world with with the young, young ones growing up and what struggles, do you see?

Speaker 1 00:21:17  I think we are seeing an increase in, unsettled ness in, in young people and in young people. I'm talking about the developmental period from early childhood all the way, you know, into emerging adulthood and really kind of seeing emerging adulthood sort of ending at around 26 ish when we're looking at that part of the brain taking on and a newly matured sort of form and shape. So it's a very vast developmental period. And the the things that we're seeing coming up in that are, eating disorders, presenting earlier, depression, anxiety, presenting earlier, really want to think about the way that our very young children are experiencing parenting.

Speaker 1 00:22:10  I don't know about you, but I, I love watching people in restaurants, on the train station. In airports where I spend an inordinate amount of time and looking at, perhaps mums breastfeeding babies and I that always catches my attention in its beauty and its diversity and in its sort of yumminess of being together. But I'm seeing more of babies, babies, gays, newborn babies, gays, little babies. Gays is only designed to see as far as they're to hear. So their their eyesight isn't powerful enough to see what's behind us or what's going on over here. They're designed to look at mum's eyes, and that's there to bring down the oxytocin and all the lovely kind of feel good factor of of this gentle, nurturing, nursing position. But what I'm noticing is baby is here and mum is here. So where, you know, we know that that feeding, cluster feeding, you know, all the things that can be really difficult in the early days, but the connection is beginning to miss from that as, as mum, you know, perhaps checks her emails or takes a little picture to post her nursing post on her social media account.

Speaker 1 00:23:28  It's not done with malice, but connection is missing. So if we have that missing early on, what is going to be happening? The next thing is we see babies who were mum facing in their chariots being pushed along the road, now kind of facing the other way with a wonderful pram gadget that allows you to position your iPad. Yeah. So rather than looking at mum walking down the street doing kushikatsu coo and making little pit, you know, dangling bracelets and things that we used to see, we've got an iPad doing that. So this is becoming the way that we We're kind of not only entertaining, but we're parenting. And then we bring AI in. And now, rather than going to the midwife or the health visitor and saying, I'm not really sure why my baby won't sleep in its crib. It will only sleep next to me. Well, that might feel like that's an awkward question for mum, and she might feel a bit uncomfortable about reaching out, but she can reach out to AI on that.

Speaker 1 00:24:39  Who gives her whatever answer. So is our parenting now being sort of slightly skewed by yes. And are we seeing the results of that sort of feeding through later on? So anxiety, it feels to me like our young people are more anxious than ever. Lots of them talking about a position in here that they describe as emptiness. And we know that emptiness historically we would link towards really high levels of emotional dysregulation. but I'm hearing it described all the way through now. So there's this I feel this emptiness inside. It sort of feels a bit angry. It sort of feels a bit bored. It sort of feels a bit itchy. It sort of feels like it can't be settled. It might last for a minute, or it might last for days. And if I could take it out and give it a really good scratch and put it back in, I feel like it might settle. Now, that kind of picture, in their own words, is what's being described so frequently.

Fiona Yasin 00:25:43  And where is this emptiness coming from?

Speaker 1 00:25:47  Is it coming from lack of connection? Is it coming from right back there? And this thing of not being there, I don't I don't know for sure, but I know that I'm hearing it all the time.

Speaker 1 00:25:59  Rejection, abandonment, those words coming out frequently, frequently from little kids, eating disorders more prevalent and eating disorders. We heard the old thing that our granny said. Families who eat together stay together. Yes. And is there something in that that children who present with problems related to food and nutrition, bring that to the attention of their families more quickly and do. Traditional treatment methods, for example, FBT, which aims to put the family back in charge of providing nutrition for their kids. So rather than mental health professionals jumping in, we've got families, you know, really be encouraged, encouraged to take control of that and take control of the nutrition. But in some ways, if the injury is in the connection with the child in the family and we're prescribing FBT, which is the connection attention, are we not sort of propping up the position of wellness in some way? Is that why we're seeing eating disorder treatment not particularly successful. And it's not. You know, it's really not. It's reoccurring.

Speaker 1 00:27:12  We have an unacceptable rate of early mortality. it is eating disorders. Restrictive eating disorders have the highest rate of mortality of any psychiatric condition. So is if this is potentially a disorder of connection and we're prescribing connection in this sort of faulty prescribing, could we be playing into.

Fiona Yasin 00:27:38  Yeah. Connection is is certainly key. But probably also expectations you know expectations on on the mother which has to perform which has to be there for her job, her families, but also also for her own needs. Yeah. So so this, this attention is not, not controlled by by her, but also by By the expectations she has to fulfill in her life, but also the child growing up. The comparison with others. You know, I asked you before, how did you grow up and how was your childhood? Probably you had fewer people you were comparing yourself with and maybe, maybe similar ages and and within your neighborhood, the environment. But today's people in this social media vast of information and connection and comparison. And it's 24 over seven available in their pocket.

Fiona Yasin 00:28:38  Yeah. this puts a lot of expectations on them. Expectation to perform, expectation to be something they are not now or something probably they can never be also.

Speaker 1 00:28:53  That's I think that's completely true that 24 over seven connectivity I hear from young people that I work with the Instagram, which feels, I don't know as a parent and as, a mental health professional. Up until very recently, Instagram to me was just this sort of nothing photo website thingy. You know, just it was just pictures. But I understand from looking more at it with kids that it's not, you know, the instant messaging component, the instant video component. The comparison that you talked about, the, the rise and not yet fall of influencers, the rise and not yet fall of of kind of using bodies as a medium on Instagram. Very scary.

Fiona Yasin 00:29:40  And recognition. You know, I'm here I see me, yeah. Look at me.

Speaker 1 00:29:44  Yeah I'm fast culture on in that fast sort of speedy culture on Instagram. The the financial aspects of Instagram.

Speaker 1 00:29:54  Super scary. I love that you brought in mums there and what is expected of a mum. Today it's very different. Is parenting easier today than it was 50 years ago? I don't think so. And I don't think not. I think it's different, isn't it? At the expectations. Mum, then, may not have been as likely to be in the workforce. Mum may have been more likely to cook all food from scratch. Mum may have had more of a support network around her in a in a positive stance. She may have had neighbours, they may have swapped baking cakes in the week. They may have got together for afternoon coffee. Those things don't happen as much anymore. So I guess there's some great things. There's some not. Yeah. in terms of the where research is at around that, Janet, Tricia and her wonderful team at King's in London have looked at maintaining factors around restrictive eating, and we're seeing so much of that appear. And I think in terms of stigma, it's much easier for professionals to get in early with a diagnosis of anorexia on a restrictive pattern than it is for them to wait and see whether that's related to interpersonal or character traits.

Speaker 1 00:31:17  And in my experience and my opinion now, there is a lot of that in there. Janet's team have, looked at young people and looked at the diagnostic criteria around anorexia. And in fact, only 2% of young people identify body shape and size as a maintaining factor in their restrictive eating patterns. So I was going to use the word anorexia, but I won't bring that in. I think restrictive is more about what we're talking about here, but a really large group, 47% of those same young people Describe interpersonal relationships as the maintaining factor for their restrictive eating. Now, that to me means that that thing is questionable as to whether it reaches the diagnostic criteria point in DSM five, which does look at body shape and size, along with an indication of whether they're aware of the severity of what they're doing. Actually, they're telling us it's not that thing I don't identify with that I identify with interpersonal relationships, and I identify with understanding the severity of what I'm doing in order to sometimes connect within that relationship.

Fiona Yasin 00:32:37  Do they mean the connection with parents and caregivers, or the connection also with, with friends at school and, classes?

Speaker 1 00:32:46  I think both I think both I think we learn to do what we do within our family systems. Right. There are there are greatest teachers. There are greatest fans, our greatest advocates. And not some of the time we learn, what's acceptable, what's not. What are the rules around here? And we copy. I think some of that is about families. Some of that is undoubtedly about peer networks and, our friendships, bullying, bullying at school. Now, bullying is not new, is it? I mean, I know certainly I had my fair share of not very nice things at school. I wouldn't say that I was bullied to the degree that I hear, kids have been bullied and are bullied now, but I certainly had some things that weren't very nice. I went to all girls schools, and I think in that there's a certain type of sort of interaction or was then I could go home and I think that's different.

Speaker 1 00:33:52  Yeah. These kids like you really kind of beautifully brought in. Home is not safe because that phone is still here. Your iPad still here. This is still here. And I hear of kids who are awake all night. Insomnia. You and I know insomnia is not a diagnostic across all of these things, like eating disorders or borderline personality disorder. But we know that it's really frequently there. Is anybody talking to them about that? They're up all night watching their likes if they're being bullied. They're watching it to see if those messages are still coming in. If they get any sleep, they're looking first thing in the morning. They wake up in the night. They don't reach for their glow worm like we used to, that if you snuggled it, its tail would go this lovely luminous green. They reach for their phone and they check, oh, Instagram, Facebook. They don't have Facebook, Instagram, discord. And what's happening on that? They're looking at how many likes they got on their last picture.

Speaker 1 00:34:50  They're looking at, you know, the, the, the kids that are bullying them in to us, largely nonsensical speak. What does that actually mean? These things that are coming through and it's there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that's a massive difference from what I experienced when I was doing cartwheels on the wall at Nanny Becky's house. I didn't have that.

Fiona Yasin 00:35:13  No you didn't. And it's also very individualized, I assume, because, two people could experience the same, the same situation, but the one is not impacted and the other is impacted. Yeah, because of multiple reasons. Could be the safety at home. Or it could be that the parents, speak to what's happening and, and they feel they feel that safety, that it's, it's much more complex. But what I've seen is also probably is if someone is more sensitive to the world, sensory wise, they are more affected by by what other think and what what other may or may not like them and and and they probably lack also of it comes down to the emotional regulation.

Fiona Yasin 00:36:01  You mentioned that. Yeah. why do they lack that?

Speaker 1 00:36:06  I love the fact that you brought in the word protective and the protective factors that we see for kids. And why are some children more affected than others? Why do some children, seem to have a tougher time continually at school, at home than, than others? I think protective factors are so important. And we talk about intergenerational trauma. We also talk about intergenerational healing. So I think some children may have had, environments to grow up in. So the goldfish bowl has, has done, you know, lots of things to protect itself and to heal. And, you know, perhaps Mum and Dad have been in therapy for a long time, and they've passed on their new ways of dealing with this little person that they've learned with their therapists or they've learnt skill sets, and that becomes a protective factor. I think having community becomes protective factor. We know that for some people, faith is a protective factor. We know that, there is a there is a genetic component to the things that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 00:37:15  I think the chicken and egg conversation has long since been replaced of we may have this genetic piece, but our environment is so, so, so important. What do we need to protect kids to have them not blown around so much? It's almost like a steel pole going through you that anchors you to the ground. And that being kind of my sort of integrated self, my the part of me that feels like it's on solid ground, but unfortunately some kids, you know, don't have the benefit of having being able to feel that so often. So if we've got a rock and the waves are coming in and they're going over the top of the rock, we want the rock to be able to stay still. But you have to have a sort of environment around you that allows you to feel that safety underneath you. And that's about what what are the what are the components of safety that we need to have in place for a child to feel that they can weather some storms? Because let's face it, there are going to be some storms.

Speaker 1 00:38:20  There's nobody that's going to have plain sailing. If a vase is dropped and we kind of use the right glue to fix it and we stick it together and we do a really good job, it may be able to hold a little bit of water, and maybe we could put some daisies in there. But what we wouldn't try and do is to fill it right up to the top and put some really heavy flowers, like peace lilies in the top, and expect that it was going to be okay. We'd expect that something was going to happen to it. And the same goes with kind of learning new skills, building resilience, having protective factors. We put our glue in, we wait for our glue to dry. We might need tomorrow to put in acrylic over it. We might then choose to do what the Japanese do, and put the beautiful gold over the top and display it to say, actually, I'm really proud of where I've been and how I do it. And you know, now I can probably have some water up to my waterline and maybe you could put some roses in me today, but I think it's about me, that really cliched thing of meeting people where they're at, which I don't like very much.

Speaker 1 00:39:31  But there's also some truth in that. Let's not overload systems. Let's kind of work with the protective factors and growth skills. Kids need skills, and I think that might be one of the key elements to parenting and society that we're forgetting.

Fiona Yasin 00:39:47  Yes, it's it comes back to what is then the ideal environment to grow up children and and at what age? What is expected. Because also, I mean, becoming a parent is sudden and no one teaches you how to be a parent. Yeah. So it's hard to maneuver. being a parent, it's a big challenge. It really you know, it's also a big challenge if you have sleepless nights and you have to perform during the day. And and, I mean, I'm a father of three. We've we've we've experienced a lot. I, we manage well but still and we, we are a couple and we are equal. We assist each other. So if only one parent, the mother or the father is the caregiver here. In that case, it adds up.

Fiona Yasin 00:40:42  Just more problems. Yeah, financial problems eventually, etc. and so on. So what is the ideal environment for children to grow up and age wise?

Speaker 1 00:40:55  I think the starting point is a is the beautiful word ideal. And and what's in that. And that goes back to lovely Winnicott and the concept of good enough parenting. Right. We don't need to be perfect parents. We don't need to have this thing where we are present 24 over seven and they've done ballet and football and basketball, and we've perfected their homework and they've learned 300 words of French today. Not necessary. We need to be available.

Fiona Yasin 00:41:26  Yes, I think it's the opposite. I believe we should show vulnerability, not to show them. You need to be perfect as well to put that pressure on them. So to show vulnerability and show, okay, I'm I can struggle as well. I'm not perfect. I can do this but do this not that great and and make fun about oneself as well. Yeah. Sometimes.

Speaker 1 00:41:52  Definitely. I can model life.

Speaker 1 00:41:54  Things aren't always going to be plain sailing. And you know, today's been a really busy day and I've been grumpy. And I snapped at you when perhaps in my parenting hat, I wish I had had a little bit more patience in that moment. I can also come back to you and say, you know what? I'm really sorry I snapped at you. Then I didn't snap at you because of you. I snapped at you because of me, because my document just got lost. That I've been typing for the last six days. And that wasn't about you. And I'm truly sorry I did that.

Fiona Yasin 00:42:30  That's correcting. That's the correct thing. That's probably the best thing you could do. Because if I, if I think about when, when my children were, were still smaller, you know, you could be stressed in a moment and react in a moment. But then the best moment to reflect on yourself is when when you watch them sleeping and then, okay, they are quiet. So what is it? I said, well, how could I have reacted differently because they are just innocent and and lying here in front of me.

Fiona Yasin 00:43:01  That's what I told myself.

Speaker 1 00:43:03  Yes. And then the other side of that would be that some parents go into the room and see that child sleeping and feel massive relief that today is over. And I think that's the looking at the same picture and seeing something so very different, you know, the mum or the dad that perhaps has had a really tough day with that child. In parenting that child has been exhausting. They don't feel like they've got it right. They're parenting through anxiety. There's perhaps been problems at school. Perhaps they've got, you know, something going on with the young person. They don't understand and they're not able to access help. And they go into that same room that you've just described where you described, you know, real flowing love and gratitude. And they're standing there feeling. Thank goodness for that. Thank goodness you're asleep. Thank goodness you're alive. Thank goodness you're not doing what you were doing yesterday. And then having the push and pull of resentment, of dislike, of questioning their love, questioning their ability, the myriad of emotions in parenting.

Speaker 1 00:44:09  It's just feels like it's never ending. I think when you kind of opened that and saying it doesn't come with a rule book like we wish it did. If there was the the 101 of parenting, I'm sure we would all have signed up of how to produce these remarkable little people. The fact is, it doesn't. But we can go all the way back to the delivery room and the hopes and the dreams and the sparkle and the love and the. And sometimes not and sometimes not. Yeah, but if we think what society believes happens in that delivery room is that this new life or lives, this goes back to me wanting to be a gynecologist, doesn't it? I've done full circle there. and we believe that that young person is brought into a room where we have a blank canvas. That's what we talk about. New life as a blank canvas. You can be and do whatever you want. And how true is that, really? Is this baby really brought into this delivery room, this operating theatre where, you know, this wonderful birthing pool, this beautiful beach in Australia? Is it brought with this blank canvas or is it brought with this intergenerational trauma? In fact, are the walls already full of graffiti? And you used the word expectation and expectations and rulebooks and do's and don'ts.

Speaker 1 00:45:33  And so actually mum and dad are not coming into this from this neutral position. The walls are already covered in writing, and then we go through life, and we're sometimes not in the role of parent that we want to be. I think often people forget people will talk about kids going through traumatic experiences, being bullied. You know, the the normal ones, the routine ones. I'm not talking about the far end ones that you and I hear the day to day stuff. But what we forget as a society is that every time you parent a child who is in crisis, you are parenting in crisis. Now, none of us make our best decisions in crisis. Our brain doesn't work well in crisis. We don't even hear the same way in crisis. In crisis, the center of our ear starts to close down. It stops hearing things in the same way. We don't take information in in the same way, so we can't react to it in the same way. Parenting in crisis parenting anxiety is really difficult, but we don't, as a society, really give enough credence, or as mental health professionals give enough credence to the bidirectional nature of parenting a child who is not doing so well today and and that we may, as a parent, have been wearing the role of psychiatrist or clinician or nutritionist or driver for a whole day when all we wanted was to go back to this and hold our role as loving parent that you saw in your sleeping children.

Speaker 1 00:47:12  And actually, sometimes we need to step in and help parents get back to the role of parents and in that, let children get back to the role of child. So many children in that confused system end up taking the role of CEO in the family. And parents are being held to ransom with big weapons in the family system.

Fiona Yasin 00:47:37  Yeah. If the environment is so unsecure. I mean, your mother was 17. My mother was 16 when I. When she got me.

Speaker 1 00:47:47  Wow.

Fiona Yasin 00:47:48  And she got me in the middle of a civil war in Lebanon. So imagine, you know, if I put myself in her shoes and at that age, getting a child, having, I mean, still being a child yourself and then outside bombs coming down. Yeah. And and this is a different way of how I, how I, how my children came to life. My wife was like almost 30. She was in Switzerland, in Zurich, somewhere near the lakeside. It's beautiful, calm, but still doesn't mean this is the the how can I say it, the blueprint to a successful childhood or life? Yeah.

Fiona Yasin 00:48:32  So parents still need to work on themselves, work with the new situations, adjust to what's happening, new, a new friend, a new environment, every age. That's why I was mentioning, you know, at what age happens? What? Because we have to adapt. We have to be flexible enough as parents to adapt to these new situations. It's, it's a constant learning and personal development within within ourself.

Speaker 1 00:49:01  And you're right, the development of a child throughout that time, you know, we can kind of broadly say where things are going to change and how things are going to change. But again, it's really different for each each child and family and each cultural situation. And I'm as I'm listening to you talking about Lebanon, I recently was assessing a family and a young person who was 15 or 16 and a bomb went off behind them, and I could see the destruction through the glass there on zoom to me. And there's devastation happening to apartment blocks just behind them and, and me saying, you know, would you like to stop? Do we need to regroup? Can we go and get mum? And she's like, oh no, we just we just continue.

Speaker 1 00:49:48  well, I don't like,

Fiona Yasin 00:49:51  Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:49:51  It hasn't featured in my world, so I, I've had to remain in a place where she knows best about what's going on and what's normal for her, in her, in her world, as sad, hurtful, harmful as I might think that is to her, there was some predictability and normality in what she just experienced different age groups. I think we hear different, different concerns from parents. Different worries, different anxieties, different developmental periods. You know, we I might get an inquiry coming through from a parent saying, my child won't sit still. I'm really sure they have ADHD. They won't sit still at the dinner table, but actually understanding where this dinner table was, you know, it's in the sink. It's in the sink restaurant. They're sitting there. They wanted to do their coloring after six minutes and they're five. Well, if you've got a five year old, you sit for six minutes. You've done really well, actually. You've done really well.

Speaker 1 00:50:49  Do I need a label or a diagnosis, or do I need to name that on the basis of the information you've just given me? And that's not a clinical kind of exploration of that. But I think parents have expectations now about what is right and what is wrong. Does this need to be labeled? Does this need to be named, or does the child just need to be a child? How useless do we feel when we stop being number one in their world? So parents are number one. I believe everything you do and everything you say. Now suddenly I've got friends. And actually, you can just jog along, dad, because I don't need you. And that's great to see.

Fiona Yasin 00:51:27  They still need.

Speaker 1 00:51:28  You. They need you, but not in the way that they did. Yeah, not in the way they did. And that's a developmental piece. So parents, stop becoming the center and the apple of the eye and friends and friends values and friends information and what friends are doing. And belonging becomes really, really important.

Speaker 1 00:51:47  So yes, I still belong to my family of origin. And hopefully there was a safe enough environment that I can keep going back to that which is very similar to the two pieces in childhood that people, parents most remember, which is the one at the terrible twos where they'll all say, oh my goodness, you're not going to try and potty train at two and terrible twos. And then the one in early adolescence when we get this regrouping and we've sort of touched on a little bit that the brain massively reorganizes itself at those in those spaces, and there's an essential pruning of areas of the brain at around two that didn't happen in utero and didn't happen through early childhood, but then happens there regroups, gives us more space, gives us more we can take on new experiences. We're becoming more vocal, we're becoming more mobile. And then nothing really happens very much again until early adolescence, when the same sort of pruning takes place. And that is why we can often hear parents say things that are similar there to they said they're here.

Speaker 1 00:52:57  The baby crawls off for the first time, not sitting so close to mum. Sticks both fingers in a plug socket. Hello. I need to cover my plug sockets here. Teenagers developing a little bit of space from the family. Trying things from the first time. Essentially, what they do is they wander off and they go and stick their fingers in another, slightly different plug socket and come back, and then mum and dad realise or mum realises or dad realises or the family realises or care is realise I need to cover the plug socket. I wasn't aware the plug socket was there. I think it's, it's super important that, that our parenting is curious and flexible and ever changing. And in an ideal world, we have so much support in this concept of villages. Bringing up children is evoked. Going back to connection, we can see that actually that doesn't look like it's panning out right now.

Fiona Yasin 00:53:56  Which age part is the most important part in growing up with.

Speaker 1 00:54:02  All of them? And that's difficult, isn't it?

Fiona Yasin 00:54:06  It's difficult because you can hear a lot like the first three years of a child's life are the most important part.

Fiona Yasin 00:54:13  You know, how how would they grow up? And if they've received a love or any traumatic experiencing for the affecting the rest of their lives?

Speaker 1 00:54:23  And I think they're every, every different developmental period is equally and beautifully important. And across them, this concept of safety, security good enough. Attachments. I think in some ways we're led to believe that if things went wrong early on, they can never go right, because the attachment sort of skewed and there's nothing there that isn't, in fact, correct. We know that with reparative good relationships, our attachment style waxes and wanes and morphs and and relationships in themselves. Individual relationships can move from being particularly secure to not secure at all and working on the anxiety around a relationship, changing its attachment pattern and attachment style. And you know me, I changing my attachment style, for good or for bad is is really important. Early years. What do we need? We need emotional availability. But then I'm going to say to you, actually, in adolescence when I'm at, you know, my most confronting, I need you to be emotionally available for me.

Speaker 1 00:55:35  I don't need you to shut me down because I've said something that doesn't fit with what perhaps Mum and Dad have said. I need to be seen and heard for building my own value system and using my own intuitive kind of way in the world. If making it right. I need you to love me when I get it really, really wrong. I need you to guide me. But guiding me doesn't mean saying yes. Guiding me often means saying not on my watch. No, we can validate as long as we pop a boundary behind it. So I hear you. I absolutely hear that. That's what you want to do. And I can actually see the really clever ways that you've tried to work that out. You've done a great job in trying to make sense of that. And I'm going to tell you if that for my parting that my part in that is. No.

Fiona Yasin 00:56:29  What do you think about. Do children expect parents to fix everything for them, or just to be there for them to process? You know, how is this relationship.

Speaker 1 00:56:41  And how similar that is to going into the therapy room, isn't it, that, you know, it's it's a faulty position, really, to think that we have the power to fix that makes our relationship very kind of skewed.

Fiona Yasin 00:56:55  We grew up or being a young, young parent, and your children are 2 or 3, for you are used to fix everything for them. You help them go to the toilet. You help them change. You are kind of this person, but at some point it has to change. Yeah, you have to give them more authority. You have to let them make their own experiences.

Speaker 1 00:57:16  And that kind of skills building can happen from really early on and in a really gentle and loving way. So we're not overloading them. We're not giving them jobs to do. We're not making them do something, but we're collaborating with them. So this collaborative parenting style of, you know, from, from really early days, helping helping mum to, to do something. I, I don't know whether you were in, in the presentation that I gave yesterday, my, my daughter, came to the stage and she read two slides for me on the UN convention on the rights of the child.

Speaker 1 00:57:55  Now, my theory in that wasn't. Oh, well, actually, that saves me from reading two slides. It's, she's a child. It's relevant to her. This is about the voice of the child. This is about our duty as humans, as people, as as beings together in the world to protect the rights of the child. I think the voice of the child reading about the voice of the right with the child has a certain potency that's lost in me reading that. collaborating with her. Of talking to her about what I was going to read before I, I, I got into the presentation. And. Do you want to do this? Do you know, do you want to be part of this, being able to send those slides to school, who very kindly let her join me this weekend and say, like, you know, actually she was able to deliver this really well. So I think we can give age appropriate, skills and responsibilities that are not about chores in the house.

Speaker 1 00:58:52  You know, we see these horrible lists in women's magazines that say that by seven, your child should be able to cook a simple meal, put the bins out, do this. Well, that just sounds horrendous to me.

Fiona Yasin 00:59:02  Really functional, really horrible.

Speaker 1 00:59:04  But actually we can give love and care skills and nurturing skills and give opportunity. So collaboration, opportunity being available to them, whether they get it right or not so right. I think moving away from positions as parents where things are good or bad, we heard in my childhood, I got validation and praise for getting it right, for being a good girl, for being a clever girl, for being a performative girl. Well, I had to work an awful lot in therapy. On reversing being a good girl who was performative.

Fiona Yasin 00:59:41  I mean, again, if I put myself in the shoes of the parents, they want the best for their children. Yes. Yeah. I mean, which parent wouldn't want that? So that's where that's their way of coping with it.

Fiona Yasin 00:59:55  So to put on their expectations of having the best child are probably also sometimes what they have not achieved for themselves in their life. Yeah, so they wanted for their children and they want them. And this pressure leads to, over expectations probably, and not letting them live their life, experience their life and make the choices for themselves.

Speaker 1 01:00:21  Yes. And I think you're right. I think there are very few parents that approach parenting with malice or with the intention to cause harm. And. We can also acknowledge that for some young people, that is their reality and that they have been subject to parenting where there was an intention to cause harm. So I think being very careful here and now to validate that for some people that that is an experience for the greatest majority. Parents try to do the right thing and until things are in their awareness, they can do nothing different. And we go back to there was no parenting 101. There was no rulebook. So I'm learning through essentially trial and error. I think the really kind of beautiful thing about parenting, when we talk flexibility and curiosity, is that when you are able to understand that you don't know best all the time, like that's that's not your role.

Speaker 1 01:01:28  When you're able to understand that you don't actually know the inside workings of your child better than they know themselves, even at a very young age, they can. You remember the thing with grandmas where they'll tell you, put a jumper on, you're cold, and you say, But I'm not cold. And they say, yes, you are, but a jumper on your cold, it's 15 degrees, you are cold. You are going to get a cold. You'll be in bed for the next two weeks, but you're busy running around playing like you don't want the jumper on that thing about taking away your agency and change. That's minuscule, but it happens to some children in so many ways. My A-levels. Who chose your A-levels? My parents did well. Who told you what career to choose? My parents did. Those parents aren't doing that through malice. They want you to be an accountant. They want you to be an architect. But you'll go and do the degree, get some agency, get some change, and then go off and do something else.

Speaker 1 01:02:25  And it is eroding after a while and it is damaging to relationships. So what can parents do in that availability is I think there's a beautiful saying about God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we could listen twice as much as we speak. I think that that's a that's a beauty to throw into parenting just to be there.

Fiona Yasin 01:02:45  Yeah. I think it's so difficult. It's a very difficult topic. I just had this week a conversation with my daughter. She's been choosing her topics for her IB and so. So and and of course I'm. I consult her give my opinion, but ask her also what you want. And so it's a collaboration. But don't we miss out also a bit of guidance if we leave them to themselves choosing everything by themselves. Yeah. So they need some sort of guidance also to to know what, what what what we think is good for them, but at the same time balancing it out by giving them authority to make the final decision.

Speaker 1 01:03:34  Yes. And as you're speaking, I'm I've got this visual coming up and you've used the word balance and balancing in that.

Speaker 1 01:03:42  And I'm thinking about our children from whatever age, from day one, all through life, walking this tightrope of life.

Fiona Yasin 01:03:51  Yes.

Speaker 1 01:03:52  And it is like this a lot of the time. And I think our role as parents is to be the safety net underneath. You know, when you go to Cirque du Soleil or you, you, you're sort of in a beautiful show and you've got this amazing fine weave safety net underneath because we've got someone on top who's not only on the tightrope of life, but they're balancing hoops of fire, and they're cartwheeling like I was on the wall. And my parenting system and my security system, my social network system is my security net. That is the that is the metaphor that most beautifully describes attachment and then ties into our neuroscience that we talked about with parenting that, the right brain processes metaphors. And when we're looking for this right left brain integration through trauma work, through parenting, through distress. You very beautifully just brought it all together for us with that picture.

Fiona Yasin 01:04:47  Coming here also to growing up children when they are babies.

Fiona Yasin 01:04:52  We we used it's natural. We know we have to hold them. We choose them. There is a there's a physical connection. Not just not just a verbal connection. Yeah we are, we are. I mean, we connect with each other physically much better than than individually. So for how long do we need that and what is it giving to us always.

Speaker 1 01:05:15  I think we always need physical connection. I don't know if you can remember the early studies about the children who had all basic needs met, so their nappies, diapers were changed, they were fed on time to a clock routine. They had adequate warmth. They had adequate stimulation. The only difference between the control group and other was the human touch was the connection through bonding and holding the holding environment through physical holding, and the results of the and the published literature shows that there was a reduction in spine volume. So the spinal cord actually having some changes to that, which is I can't even remember where I heard about that study or how long ago, but I know that, we benefit from, from being held.

Speaker 1 01:06:03  So right back to this, this thing, don't we? I think there are also skills that we can build in holding as we move through life. So we talked about how do we how do we use the golden thread of parenting to interweave this skills, building through every developmental stage so that we can pull our golden thread through to the other end with holding and touching and and being held, perhaps through periods where they're not regularly asking for it as much as they may have done at an earlier stage, I think we can model consent. So at that point we can be talking about, is it okay if I give you a hug?

Fiona Yasin 01:06:41  Yeah.

Speaker 1 01:06:42  Is it okay if I hold your hand when we go shopping today, and we're also having to be prepared as parents for the time that they say, can you not do that today? Because you know what? All the boys from year ten also happened to shop in this shop. And I don't want to hold your hand, but you know that when you're walking down the road with the final steps to home, the hand comes out.

Speaker 1 01:07:05  and I think consent is another skill in the many long list of jobs of skills that we have to give them. Just a beautiful one that we can sort of bring into our natural parenting.

Fiona Yasin 01:07:16  Yes, I like that. So because I have children age 12, 14 and 16 and you can see also, girls, you know, when, when they go through puberty and, and, I'm getting into adolescence, at some point with the change of body, then also the hugging gets a bit different. and or I felt like there was a time it was a bit more reserved, but then they get used to it and, and and the connection was, was being has been established again I think.

Speaker 1 01:07:54  So I think when it's so new, when my body feels unusual to me and it feels so new, I'm not really sure how that new body, new me feels when connected to someone else. And and that's a skill and that's a practice that I'm going to have. I see that coming up with, with kids in really basic skills again, and something else that I think, as we expand our viewpoint as, as, as connected parents, I listen to kids, young people, young adults talking about going to the shower, and the simple job of sort of lathering up in the shower and feeling that changing body underneath their own fingertips, bringing up feelings of disgust and shame and hate, self-loathing.

Speaker 1 01:08:46  And that can sometimes come into kids with, you know, sort of extra layers of conversation to happen around body and food and gender and sexuality and all of those bits that adolescence kind of has a horrible way of throwing at us all in one go. But understanding that a young person who's just experienced this simple thing of touch of self in the shower and then coming out in a furious, furious mood, and we talk about like, super moody teenagers and we've got no idea what's going on. There are conversations to be had. And same thing happens when you walk past the high street shops and they catch a glimmer of their reflection in the shops, and they notice their changing body or slightly older, early 20s mid 20s, when they catch a reflection that looks a little bit like their own mum in the window, and they say this image can stay with me for microseconds, or it can stay with me for days, and it's impacted my mood and it's impacted who I am today. So kind of tying it all together that, you know, this this moodiness.

Speaker 1 01:10:04  Yes. There are physical changes in the brain. Yes, there are physical changes everywhere, but we're also trying to integrate them into our reality and integrate them into the psychological changes, meaning making narrative storytelling that we're bringing together across our lives.

Fiona Yasin 01:10:21  Has this something also to do with with the change of age, of puberty?

Speaker 1 01:10:27  Yeah.

Fiona Yasin 01:10:28  That this becoming younger and younger.

Speaker 1 01:10:32  Yes. I think you and I caught up about that earlier and talked about, we understand to some degree that the onset of puberty is is getting earlier. are the parenting skills catching up with that? Know, as with anything new, it's taking us a bit of time. Grand parenting skills. We focused a bit on parents today, but there's also grandparents, aunts and uncles. We're seeing something called precocious puberty, and that is puberty at the onset of puberty that's happening much earlier than we were expecting it to. We are now regularly seeing girls in higher levels of care. Now, we know that young people who come to higher levels of care, there's a reason for that.

Speaker 1 01:11:13  There's something about, the lower levels of care that hasn't been able to provide enough of a safety net underneath the tight rope of life to hold them adequately. And we're seeing with that, you know, perhaps eight and nine year old girls who are being told things like, you are now a woman. It's really confusing to be eight. To be in a class of other eight year olds who were playing hopscotch. Probably not anymore. They might be playing roadblocks we've talked about or, you know, they're doing something that is about essentially being a child, and you're being told that you have the responsibility of a woman. And let's face it, having a monthly cycle is a responsibility, is a particular responsibility. When you're eight and you're in a group of other eight and nine year olds who are not experiencing that. What does that open you up to? Questions. Bullying. Are you being asked to give information to other children that perhaps their parents haven't thought was appropriate to give them yet? Or have you become the parent in that group of other eight year olds? Are you able to adequately look after the self care that it needs to Pakistan.

Speaker 1 01:12:23  A bag that takes to school to you. Does your classroom that has bathrooms attached even have the right facilities to be able to dispose of your sanitary wear. And is that available to you, or is that something else that's going to be really shame provoking today, that I don't now know what to do with this thing? Do I have the ability to stay private in what's happening for me? Are my teachers understanding enough? There's there's so many layers of of kind of understanding needed here that could essentially become a traumatic incident.

Fiona Yasin 01:13:00  Yeah.

Speaker 1 01:13:00  Yes. And what comes along with the message of you are now a woman. Well my body I've now been told and I've had my Babette Cole book given to me. That's all about mummy makes babies. So I now understand I have the same capability as a mummy to make this baby. Wow. And then what does that say about sex? And what does that say about the availability of online sexual materials? What does that say about the availability of platforms on perhaps discord, where we know that discord is.

Speaker 1 01:13:36  Aimed at children aged between 8 and 15. But actually the average age of a user is a male at 47. What does that say to us? What does that say about the online persona? That may be a safer place for that kid young person to be them, than the offline reality of what is happening for them. It's really complicated to be a kid today.

Fiona Yasin 01:13:59  It is. And and I assume, you know, when the younger we, the younger they get to puberty, the more the bigger the discrepancy is for our brain to be developed properly and emotional regulation to be established in a way that we can deal with it. Yeah. And and many other problems come with it. You mentioned online safety. It's also a big topic, online information. I mean, we have also AI. I've been reading articles about especially young young kids and adolescents also getting addicted to AI. Yeah. or having access to information. Like what? Porn stars. And like, Bonnie Blue. Yeah. Has achieved and thousands of people in a day.

Fiona Yasin 01:14:55  And, to have interaction with. So what does this make with this young women and and and, boys.

Speaker 1 01:15:04  It's scary stuff, isn't it? I mean, when you're summarizing that for me, I'm sitting here thinking, gosh, to be a parent of an eight year old today and understanding that they have access. So if you've just had that really quite difficult situation to deal with in the family, parents not prepared for this young person, not prepared for this precocious puberty, something similar, and you're trying to do your best as a family to navigate that. And now the world is going to throw all these additional bombs at you. Really doesn't seem very fair, does it? It's it's something that parents are having to to learn and navigate without any instruction. Again, there's no instruction on how to navigate the online world. Yes. Sexual information is vastly available online. And again, 24 over seven making decisions, making decisions in an adult world about how to access, use sexual information and in fact, my body in a sexual way, potentially when the part of the brain that makes a multitasking, good, multi-layered decisions for that child is not going to develop for nearly 20 more years.

Speaker 1 01:16:18  Wow. Like, if we think that that part of the brain is really going to be finished in doing all of its super clever stuff at around 25, 26, 27. And we're talking about an eight year old wanting or needing to make super clever decisions that require huge amounts of capacity. How is there a move to to restrict some of the information that's online? We didn't have that to deal with. And it's you know, it is it is very scary. I think, we've got a lot of sexual content online now. And from what I can see, it's increasing by the week. And I understand one of the AI platforms most used is about to bring out, you know, bring its filters down to allow ChatGPT is going to be able to allow adults to be adults and bring pornographic content into the chat, which it hasn't done up to now. Children are already finding solace in ChatGPT and similar as a friend who will give advice on really tricky subjects. If I was going to go to my mum and ask her, you know, the, what the mechanics are like in having my first kiss, I would have to word and reword and find the right time and not interrupt her when she was cooking spaghetti bolognese.

Speaker 1 01:17:44  And all of these, like, things I'd have to work out, and I'd have to use my words really carefully. And I'd have to listen in return. Where now, my best friend ChatGPT doesn't require any of that social nicety from me. I just say it as it is. I can use the rawest, the most undignified phrases and expressions in order to get the information that I want. there's no stigma, is there, to asking this to. Yes, to my friend here. And he keeps the conversation going. She keeps the conversation going. And no holds barred, no filter.

Fiona Yasin 01:18:23  How do we protect our children? Is it. Do we expect the government's, politicians to do that work, or is it the parents? And how can they do it?

Speaker 1 01:18:35  I think it's, AI is not going away. Is that the doorway to this world is not going away. It's something we have now. So I think that is really, that does come down to good enough parenting to be able to say, that there are some things that actually do need this base and core of connection, you know, what are our family values? Do we have time every week to sit together as a family? One of the really basic tools that I give to my families is to go and buy one of those enormous pasta jars where your store spaghetti, and give it to the young person in the family to decorate with beautiful glass panes, turn it into something pretty, and then just have it always on the side in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 01:19:21  And big conversations, little conversations, changes to our normal structure and routine. Write them on a piece of paper, pop them in the pasta jar, and then it may be that both parents or the one parent who's available, but we're available, truly present in our full self. On Saturday mornings at 1130 after we've cooked brunch. Now, at that time, we're going to empty our family pasta jar. And it might say things in there like, would anybody like the Christmas tree this year to be tickets for Paddington, which I really want to see? Or it may be, would it be possible that I could extend my, my evening return time from 1030 to 1130 at a weekend? But it allows everybody in the family to be truly present. You're not catching mom or dad on the hop. There's no way of splitting parents. You're getting a unified, family based decision. That is the sort of time to be imparting this kind of thing of. We can talk to each other about anything. We can talk about anything.

Speaker 1 01:20:32  Some of it's going to be really tricky and maybe a bit embarrassing, and we'll want the floor to open up. But guess what? It's within our value system to be available for each other. We don't need to ask these questions there. We need to ask questions about relationship. In relationship.

Fiona Yasin 01:20:50  Just maybe you can tell us a bit about the type of issues problems your your patients come to your facility for, and what type of treatment modalities do you offer there to to to help them and help the family system?

Speaker 1 01:21:10  absolutely. So we take young people into this nurturing, Lovely, warm, creative, funny, friendly, sparkly. If I can make anything sparkle, then I'll definitely try. environment from all over the world. So we've got a complete kind of mishmash of cultures, experiences, rule books, parenting styles, and, young people come to us from 12 right across that developmental piece we've just been talking about. So our upper kind of age range being more flexible because depending on your environment, depending on your culture, depending on what life has thrown at you, when you were a vase and you got stuck back together, the number of candles on your birthday cake is not always as relevant as the experiences you've had.

Speaker 1 01:22:01  And we look after young people where there is high degrees of emotional injury, dysregulation. And in that pocket they may come to us with the name on the piece of paper as anorexia or bulimia, or borderline personality disorder, or bipolar disorder, or a mood disorder of sorts, or depression and anxiety. I've also learned that acceptable diagnosis are geographical. So, for example, when I have families come to us with referrals, perhaps from Mumbai, OCD is a much more acceptable diagnostic than others. from the US will have a higher number of young people coming to us using the pronouns they, them, and, experiencing a wish to work on, identity, with particular look on gender that we might not get from somewhere else. So the whole thing bases for me on relationship, on interpersonal relationships. Some of the common things I hear. Are. Relationships are intense. They go boom. There might be self-loathing, self-hatred, self-harm. There might be multiple suicide attempts. I tend to work with the families and young people who have possibly been excluded from other treatment settings.

Speaker 1 01:23:36  They hit the exclusion criteria. it may be that there has been too many frequent attempts to end their life. It may be that the horrible concept of BMI is too low for this facility. It may be, and I hate the word facility. I also really don't like the word program when people talk about writing programs or bringing children in programs. As a parent, would you ever want your child programmed like it's something that I just really, really, really wish that we could lose as a as a community that we don't need anyone to be programmed.

Fiona Yasin 01:24:14  It also starts with the labeling of the disorder itself because it's it's not helpful very often.

Speaker 1 01:24:21  Yeah. And that goes I think we've we've really talked a lot about being in relationship for the sake of being in relationship and exploring what's in the relationship. So, lots of those things that, potentially come to come to my first zoom meeting with, she has a diagnosis of anorexia, but nothing's working. She's had, multiple diagnosis of mood disorder, of personality disorder.

Speaker 1 01:24:49  We can't diagnose borderline personality disorder under 18, which is not true. By the way, DSM does not tell us that DSM tells us to actually make some changes and name the thing in order that we know where we're going if we're seeing that behavior is not fitting a normal developmental pattern in a teenager under the age of 18, and has been going on for six months or longer. Harvard and McLean very reliably tell us that we can see these things from age seven in a family system, because it's not a it's not identifying this person and popping all blame on them. It's looking at, hey, can we be in relationship together and find out what's going on around here in terms of what works, I love everything, I love being in the sweetest shop of modalities. We love, we love DBT as a skills build. Now, I know that all my colleagues in the in New York are going to be really cross with me right now. I love you all very much, but I do not believe it's a complete psychotherapy.

Speaker 1 01:25:56  I believe it's a skills build. I also believe that it's really difficult for young people at their most activated to reach for skills and tools. I believe that, it takes a little bit more than that. Evidence based practice. What does that mean? That means that under research conditions, we've trialed X modality. Against what? We can't compete it against another modality. So what we trial it against is waiting list as usual or routine supportive care. Well, surely we'd hope that if the best person in the world at this modality is delivering it against routine waiting list, as usual, this one's going to come out best. So even then, you know what does evidence based actually mean? For me, the very best psychotherapy and psychiatry and anything to do with people is delivered by people. If we are in relationship and that doesn't mean wishy washy. What's the therapeutic alliance? It means deeply invested in expanding and exploring with curiosity and dignity. We will have better outcomes than somebody who's trying to deliver something annualized.

Fiona Yasin 01:27:20  Annualized, and just focusing on one modality. Yeah.

Speaker 1 01:27:23  The how? How. So I believe that everything has its place. If it works for you, then I'm interested in that. I'm also interested in what it's like to be in relationship with me right now. I'm also interested in clinicians making themselves vulnerable in the room to be able to say, hey, what has it been like right in the second for you and I to share this space? What are we both experiencing right here and right now? Because we never stop growing, and the person in the room with us is teaching us far more than any training is going to teach us.

Fiona Yasin 01:28:02  What are the biggest challenges at the moment for you being a mother?

Speaker 1 01:28:07  The biggest challenge is for the moment for me. Was my daughter this weekend. Took her first flight on her own for the first time. I was parenting through the lens of anxiety and. And I've got to do it going back the other way in just a couple of days. Time to get her back.

Speaker 1 01:28:28  so I think that parenting throws up so many micro challenges. We're not always talking about the big ones. I really want to hear and validate the big ones that parents are experiencing alongside the normal day to day ones. What's there for me is, I'm going to have to do the same things that everybody else has to do with that parenting hat on. She's going to find her first boyfriend. I'm probably not going to like him very much. She's already told me that she's got these little eyes that have opened at school, and I'm already listening to the stories that she's told about the young boy, who is not her boyfriend, but has featured far too many times in conversation recently. For me to understand that it's just a passing sort of somebody that she walks to this particular group with. I'm going to have to go through all of the same things. Clothes. we had a situation where I've always kind of bought her her clothes, and I've loved doing that. Three weekends ago, she decided that she was going to go out, and she was going to go and choose her own clothes from a shop that I've never, I've never been into.

Speaker 1 01:29:39  So she brought all this new set of clothes. We went out in Dubai Mall on that day. The skirt was way too short. She spent the whole time trying to wriggle the skirt down. The skirt wasn't going to wriggle down. It was denim. It had no pull in it. So we sat down to have coffee and she said to me, my skirt is too short. And I said, well, you know, that's a matter of opinion. I have a question. She said. Why didn't you tell me? My skirt was too short before I came out. And I said, because if I had told you the skirt that you chose for yourself for the first time with your money on your shopping experience was too short. You wouldn't have believed me. You wanted to try that yourself, and now you've tried it.

Fiona Yasin 01:30:23  That's again the right balance between, you know, giving the right guidance, but also give autonomy.

Speaker 1 01:30:28  And it's not too short. The skirt might be experienced by you as being too short for this setting.

Speaker 1 01:30:35  But if we walk down to the beach this afternoon, the same skirt won't cause you the same problem. So what you're learning about is a skill, which is appropriateness of how we need to present ourselves in different settings. I'm really happy you learned and perhaps all that stuff you bought wearing it all together, might give off one sort of image. If you were to wear some of your usual jeans with one of those high fashion tops, you'll get something completely different. So this is about you learning to pull together some of what you've learned within the family value system with some of what you've just experienced. Mix and match it. See what fits you, see what doesn't, and then you'll have your version. And I guess those clothes shopping things are what we talked about earlier of that. That developmental piece of I want to be with my friends. And I don't know if I believe you anymore, mum and dad. Okay, fine. Go try it. But the reality is mum and dad don't think they're going to throw everything away you've ever taught them.

Speaker 1 01:31:37  Because just like my daughter, she'll go back to the nice quality jeans and she'll stick it with a high fashion top and you'll get this sort of bit that works.

Fiona Yasin 01:31:46  What do you do in your personal life to stay in balance?

Speaker 1 01:31:50  I thought I would absolutely hate boats, but I found that I. I took a sailing boat over the recent holiday and I found I absolutely loved sailing. So that's something that I don't do and I'm not good at, but I would really like to be more interested in. I really love reading. I don't like watching TV, and I can't, I just something will lose my attention within the first few seconds. Can you remember when, movies used to have that lion that came up? I think he was MGM, or he was something, or he was universal. But really, by the time the lion came up, I would normally have left the room. Okay, so I'm not I don't know anything about kind of movies or shows or anything like that. I love music, I love creativity, I really just like being around, sort of experimenting with stuff.

Speaker 1 01:32:45  I like buying old pieces of furniture and painting them and changing the handles. And so I think I'm I'm really creative at heart and anything that I do will be like, I love interior design. I love moving stuff around. So recently I've got a new house and I've been kind of enjoying really making that work into a beautiful space. So I think I'm, I think I'm a creative. I'm not very settled with numbers and technology. I'm much happier with people, you know.

Fiona Yasin 01:33:21  Thank you very much for the conversation today. Thank you also for the work you do with the with the young ones, because they are at the age where they are vulnerable. certainly the families need the help. They need the support. And from my experience, there is not enough support out there for for that age group. So, keep on doing what you do. And thank you very much.

Speaker 1 01:33:46  Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure to spend some time with you. Thank you.