Could your life benefit from stronger emotional and mental foundations? This week, we welcome back Deana Tanner, a healthy human expert and the brain behind the BRACE method, and we discuss how to reinforce our foundation without having to reprocess the past.
Deana talks about setting healthy boundaries in relationships and protecting ourselves while fostering connection, and navigating relationships where boundaries were already set before you could influence them. We touch on discerning between trauma, conditioning, and other elements when deciding how to interact with others, and also touch on the emotional challenges that can surface when revisiting our childhood through the lenses of adulthood.
But this conversation isn’t just about personal relationships. We dive into parenting, self-discovery, and the emotional trials that come with them. It's a wonderful conversation on bracing ourselves for a healthier future.
Guest Bio:
Deana Tanner is a queer, polyamorous, healthy humaning expert. The adultier adult all adults go looking for.
Connect with Deana:
www.healthyhumaning.com
https://www.facebook.com/DeanaTannerHHI
https://www.instagram.com/healthyhumaninginstitute
Want to connect with us?
On the web:
On social:
By email:
Loving the show? Send us some love back by supporting us https://www.buzzsprout.com/1522051/support
Could your life benefit from stronger emotional and mental foundations? This week, we welcome back Deana Tanner, a healthy human expert and the brain behind the BRACE method, and we discuss how to reinforce our foundation without having to reprocess the past.
Deana talks about setting healthy boundaries in relationships and protecting ourselves while fostering connection, and navigating relationships where boundaries were already set before you could influence them. We touch on discerning between trauma, conditioning, and other elements when deciding how to interact with others, and also touch on the emotional challenges that can surface when revisiting our childhood through the lenses of adulthood.
But this conversation isn’t just about personal relationships. We dive into parenting, self-discovery, and the emotional trials that come with them. It's a wonderful conversation on bracing ourselves for a healthier future.
Guest Bio:
Deana Tanner is a queer, polyamorous, healthy humaning expert. The adultier adult all adults go looking for.
Connect with Deana:
www.healthyhumaning.com
https://www.facebook.com/DeanaTannerHHI
https://www.instagram.com/healthyhumaninginstitute
Want to connect with us?
On the web:
On social:
By email:
Loving the show? Send us some love back by supporting us https://www.buzzsprout.com/1522051/support
Hi and welcome to the Becoming Trauma-Informed podcast where we help you understand how your past painful experiences are affecting your current reality and how you can shift those so you can create your desired future. I'm Dr Lee, and both myself and our team at the Institute for Trauma and Psychological Safety are excited to support you on your journey. We talk about all the things on this podcast. No topic gets left uncovered. So extending a content warning to you before we get started if you notice yourself getting activated while listening, invitation to take care of yourself and to pause, skip ahead a bit or just check out another episode. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Hi, wonderful listeners, welcome our viewers. If you're watching on YouTube, now that we're doing that, that's a fun thing we're doing. If you're watching, I'm really dressed up for absolutely well. I did go to an event, but I'm dressed up for this podcast for no reason other than I was too lazy to change out of my business networking clothes and I showed up on a hoodie and Diana showed up the way that I normally would, which is in a hoodie, but that's cool because we're I mean, you can see, we're in my bedroom.
Speaker 2:Who cares? It's fine, we're being ourselves, we're all being ourselves. I have a really special guest back on the show. I called it the show. Are we going to start calling it the show Maybe, who knows? Okay, on the podcast, on the YouTube, on whatever we're going to call this Diana's back.
Speaker 2:So Diana was on a couple episodes ago. We were talking about how you kind of figure out your bio, like how you tell people what you do in the world and also like who you are, because I think a lot of people care more about who you are than what you do right, and like how you help them be who they want to be. So that was a really fun episode where it was kind of like I was coaching a little and Diana came back and was like hey, there's this topic around. You know the thing that I do and the person that I am. That I think would be really helpful for your audience, and I was like oh yes, this is, we got to talk about this. So for those who didn't listen to the episode before. Diana, please tell us who you are. What lights you up while you're here?
Speaker 1:So I'm Diana. Like, I spent the day on a farm.
Speaker 2:That has helped me so much since we did this. Like I always have that in my head and I've not said your name wrong since, so I appreciate when people do things like that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's made my life easier. I don't have to correct people as often, so I'm a healthy human expert and I run the healthy human Institute. And well, we figured out I'm the adult. You know adult, that other adults go looking for for one.
Speaker 2:It's perfect I'm the more adult. You know adults that other adults go looking for. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, so my main areas of focus I guess the main components that I work with are boundaries, personal responsibility, autonomy, communication and emotional intelligence and like how they all go together and how to put those things into like fortify your foundation Because the way I say it is like your lived experience up to this point is your foundation and there's no changing it. You can't go back and undo it, you can't anything. But what you can do is take those elements and do like an underpinning. So in construction, when they're trying to strengthen a foundation, they do an underpinning, and so you use those components to strengthen your foundations.
Speaker 2:Your braces. Oh my gosh, I just got this on a whole new level. Okay, okay, so much more makes sense. Yay, I'm obsessed. Okay, so this, because the five things you said spell brace.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's my brace method? Yes, part of it.
Speaker 2:So this makes I love, okay, this. I'm sorry y'all I'm having a moment over here, but but this is actually really important, right? Right, because I thought I got it. You explained it again. I got it so much better. Yes, my brain didn't know underpinning and so I understood it. But when you think about this too, this is so beautiful from a trauma perspective because a lot of people think that they need to like go back and fix the things that happened, and one of the really cool things about trauma work is that if you do forward facing trauma practices, you can feel significantly better. You could have significantly less impact like residue in your daily life, moving forward without ever having to go back and be like, oh, let me dredge up this memory and this memory and this memory and like, yeah, sometimes we do need to go back and reprocess stuff, and for some things we don't need to do that. We just need to come back and add some bracing, to add some places where we hold up that foundation so that it's stronger. Oh, okay, obsessed.
Speaker 1:Yay, that's what I was going for, like this, thank you. This is the effect that I want, so clearly. Speaking it out loud verbally is much more effective than writing it. So now I know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, honestly, this is one of those things where I think a lot of people assume trauma, work and healthy human, like people assume human is complicated. By the way, when we say human, we just mean like existing, existing. In today's occasional dumpster fire of a world right Like there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of personal stuff that's happening to you, there's a lot of like big stuff that's happening. And how do you, how do you human through that, how do you adult through that, especially when you have people that rely on you, like they're, like you're the adult.
Speaker 1:So I want to point out, though, that this is one thing that I tell people all the time. The only reason that it's hard is because nobody taught you this during your formative years, where it would be second nature, like walking, talking, breathing yes.
Speaker 2:And thank you for that, because that's where I want to take this is like people assume that this is going to be really hard and I'm like it's actually really not, because it's more of a remembrance process. To use your foundation thing, right, sometimes there's like a lot of crap that's been placed on top of this foundation that really can't hold. It wasn't designed to hold. This stuff, you know, is bending, faltering under the weight of this stuff. So like part of it is like well, let's get that stuff off top, right, that's like all the shoulds, all the cants, all the like well, I'm not allowed to do that. Or like that's not okay. Or you know all the places that that stuff's really looking at your programming, your conditioning around all that, that's the crap. We're lacking a better term, right.
Speaker 2:And then you're adding in these pieces. But you add in those pieces of honestly, every single word you said of that was so sexy Like boundaries, responsibility I think I missed a, but I got autonomy. Oh yes, communication or connection, communication, communication. And then what was he? Emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's all right, but like if you had been doing this, if you had been setting boundaries since you were two or three years old, you wouldn't think twice about setting a boundary with someone else. The only reason it's hard is because you're just now learning how to do it, and it takes practice.
Speaker 2:Yes, Practice and remembering that you know you've practiced it the other way thousands of times. So you practicing it way, this way, three times doesn't mean that it's going to be like okay, I've got it Right, Like there's that yeah.
Speaker 1:And the other thing, too, is that. So one of the things that, like I'm working, I'm flushing out how to better explain this to people yeah, and the components of brace their skills, but they're also values. So you have to understand how you value those things in your life in order to communicate and establish them with the other people that you're in connection with, and you also have to practice them as skills in order to have that healthy human experience for yourself and in connection with others. Yeah, they all kind of interweave, don't they? Yes, it's like a brain A brain a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and then you pick up this and yeah, and I mean I get why people think it's hard.
Speaker 2:I always think of the L woods, like what. Like it's hard? Yes, it feel like it's simple. It's not easy. That's the difference. It's practice.
Speaker 1:It takes so much practice. That's why one of the skills that I teach my clients really early on is taking low risk opportunities to practice this. So like, if you're not really comfortable talking about your emotions, if you're not really comfortable sharing how you're feeling, well, guess what? If you're going around slamming cabinets in the kitchens and throwing things down, everybody knows you're angry. So so say I'm angry out loud, say I'm frustrated out loud. That is a low risk opportunity because it's not going to be a surprise to anybody.
Speaker 2:I like that too, because so we actually have like a practice in our house that if you're like slamming stuff around or you seem really upset, that we don't make assumptions about what you're feeling. We wait for you to tell us now as parents or as loved ones. Sometimes we'll be like okay, it's okay, it looks like you're feeling some feelings. Right, to give people that moment of awareness of oh yeah, I'm feeling some feelings right, and we're not going to force you to talk about them. If you want to slam stuff around, that's fine. And if you're trying to get us to pay attention to your feelings by slamming things around, we're not going to make each other go into the responsibility.
Speaker 2:I'm not responsible for helping you identify your emotions. I can communicate to you. Hey, I feel a little anxious here because there's some. You know, you keep slamming stuff. So I'm going to communicate my feelings to you, but I'm not going to take it on as my responsibility to like oh my gosh, he slammed that cabinet just a little bit. Or like his steps are just slightly louder, oh, that means he's upset. Okay, what do I need to do to do different Like how do I? No, we're not doing that right.
Speaker 1:There's like balance and nuance too, because like, okay, somebody is slamming doors and stuff in our kitchen, it could be disturbing One of the two people who work in the room. It's an open concept, whatever. So like sometimes we have to call each other out and be like, hey, you're making your feelings whatever, they are somebody else's problem and like we need to reign that back in.
Speaker 2:And we've had that conversation and that was your post that went viral, which I loved, your meme that went viral of what was it? Your emotions are valid. Your actions what was it?
Speaker 1:Well, I have to look it up exactly, but like I know, but it was like your feelings. Your feelings are always gonna be valid. But also you can feel your feelings without making it somebody else's responsible for your problem, like you don't need to make it somebody else's problem.
Speaker 2:And that's the conversation. Right Is if you have learned that the only way that you get your feelings noticed is you slamming stuff around and somebody being like what's wrong? Right, Well, it makes sense. That's you actually trying to connect. So we don't wanna punish you for that.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna pretend to my kids and I'm not noticing that they're in distress and part of it's like you good, Like, what's like? I'm not gonna assume what the feeling is, because you might be showing up in anger and in reality it's sadness or it's confusion. And so if I'm like, oh my gosh, like why are you mad? Right, that's what we don't do. We do not assume what you are feeling and why you are feeling it. Now, if I notice that with somebody that I know sometimes is looking for connection, I'll be like what's going on? You wanna talk about it with me or you wanna keep talking about it with that cabinet? Right, Like, we'll do something like that and that's my personality, right?
Speaker 2:I'm really short of time. Yeah, I'm like. I tell my husband that all the time I'm like I need to go talk to some weights about this, because I need to go to the gym, because I don't wanna talk. I don't wanna talk and sometimes you don't wanna talk, and so it's that piece of like when our kids have what we call emotional fevers, where they get really dysregulated, it's. I'm gonna create a safe container for you to have those feelings and we're also gonna set some boundaries around if those feelings are hurting or harming someone else. Yes, 100%. So like you get to be mad at me, you don't get to be mean to me, right? And I don't mean that in a barrier. If you are mean, I'm going to say, hey, that doesn't feel good, and then, if you're mean again, I'm gonna leave.
Speaker 1:Yes, and going back just slightly is like a couple of things that we say is you seem, this is the appearance, this is the perspective, this is what it's coming across as, and also please share more if it feels good for you to like, fill me in.
Speaker 2:Yes, one of my favorite things is the story. My brain is telling me yes.
Speaker 1:Just listen to that episode yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. The story my brain is telling me is that you're mad, and my brain is telling me you're mad at me, but I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 1:So actually I want to tell you this so I put on podcasts to sleep and I don't know who does this thing where it automatically plays I guess the newest episode, and I didn't even know that it did that. But as soon as the music for your podcast came on, I felt like this, like instant, like relax, like I listened to so many episodes that my body intuitively is just like oh cool, this is a good one.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. Oh, that's such a good compliment. I received that. And coming back to like a little out, because the conversation you and I were talking about was relationship, right, connection and connecting in a way, I like to use a cute little rhyme Like how do I set boundaries in a way that both protects me and connects me?
Speaker 2:Yes, so protection and connection and those aren't opposites, those aren't flip sides of a coin. Those can happen, those can occur simultaneously. So I can feel protected, I can keep what I'd like to keep private or autonomous separate and I can connect with you in specific ways. And one of the places that I think this shows up a lot is with our families and, in particular, with our caregivers. So I wanted to hear you talk more about that. And especially for people who have these foundations that really are a little shaky or built on unsteady ground, where they really are like I can feel how wobbly this feels, this doesn't feel safe, this doesn't feel secure. And also, how the heck do I brace this up using these tools that you've set? And so I think it would be kind of cool if we could go through your brace method and kind of look at these types of relationships where it's like the boundaries were set before. I had the ability to set that like, have an impact or input in how they were set.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, so yeah. So part of the reason this conversation is so important to me to have is because people talk about how you go through the process of cutting people out of your life all the time, like it is all over, especially TikTok. People are like it's valid to cut people out of your life and it 1,000% is valid to cut people out of your life. And not everybody is there, not everybody wants that, not everybody feels like they are yet capable of that, even if that's ultimately where they want to end up.
Speaker 1:And so, like, we need to talk about the space in between of how you can exist in there, where there's been harm done, there's been hurt done, and either you can't talk about it yet, you're not ready to talk about it, or you've tried to talk about it and you've been shut down or invalidated, or whatever the case may be. Sometimes people want to cut their parents out for their own purposes, but they don't want to cut off the relationship with their kids because something has shifted and the relationship is not the same. And so, like, there's this big old space where nobody tells you how to exist, and that's where the elements of race come in and that's where being able to recognize, like what's trauma, what's conditioning, what's whatever, is important, so that you can make fully informed decisions about how you want to relate to this person, what that's gonna look like Okay, yeah, this is like really timely for me too.
Speaker 2:I was like really excited coming into this episode just beforehand, but I always love how the episodes always hit right when they're supposed to.
Speaker 2:Because, I'm gonna be honest here, I am an open book in a lot of places and there's still a couple of places where, you know, I protect myself and my kids and my family because that is important to me.
Speaker 2:And I've had people say well, if you tell a story about somebody and they don't like the way that they look in it, like maybe they shouldn't have done it, and I think that that's very valid. And I'm gonna say a thing that people who get the nuance here will get, and some people this might not feel great and like both of your experiences are valid here, whichever one you have, but like there are always two sides or three sides or four sides to every story and like my reality is not your reality, is not the reality, and so what I'm speaking as my truth may be true for me and it may not be true for you, and so I'm always really careful with that, because I don't wanna say careful, but I'm really intentional about that, because if I'm gonna share a story I'm gonna share it from my side and I'm gonna make that very clear of, like, this may not actually be the way it happened, or this may not be the full thing, and also this was my experience.
Speaker 1:Yes, so a huge part of why this is like super valid in my own life right now is because this relationship existed in several places for me, but most largely with my mother, and I'm in a place like it's always been valid for me to talk about it, but I had to like get through it to understand a lot more of like how I wanted to show up with the story, because it is always perfect.
Speaker 1:I just made a post about this the other day. It's perfectly valid to talk about my experience all of the time, and also I didn't have all of the information that I needed personally to be able to go through that, and so my mom and I have been going through this restorative process and, like one of the examples that we talked about, she was asking me about the situation and she was telling me her perspective on it and I was like cool. So it's really great to know this now and also this solidified as a traumatic event in my mind when I was 10 years old. I was never not going to have the perspective of a 10 year old and also I can go back and appreciate the role and the choices that you did make as an adult, and it's still trauma because it happened when I was 10 years old and there was no way I couldn't feel that and see that as a 10 year old.
Speaker 2:I'm having a lot of feelings. I can see that. No, because you're really you're speaking to something that I recently went through I've spoken about. I'm going to put a content warning here childhood sexual abuse. My big dark night of the soul was around having memories of being molested as a child, and part of that memory was I remembered telling my parents, and I have this memory of me being in the middle of my mom and my dad and looking up at these people who hurt me in their dining room. I can see it clear as day and saying, yeah, this person was touching me inappropriately, and I can hear my parents being like, asking them, and then being like, no, that's not what happened, and my parents being like see, that's not what happened. I have this memory.
Speaker 2:Now, fascinatingly enough, when I finally was able to talk to my parents about this, they were like that didn't happen. So I was like, oh, was this a fantasy? I had Like, was this a dream? Now the molestation happened, that happened, but that memory of my parents I tried to talk to somebody and nobody listened. Whatever that was was not confirmed from people who were adults at the time. So I have to think.
Speaker 2:You know, I know trauma messes with your brain, it messes with your memories, and so what was really fascinating about that is the traumatic piece for me for a really long time was how can nobody notice this? How did nobody see this? How did nobody notice? Like I've been having panic attacks since I was eight. Like I've been in therapy since I was 10. I stopped eating because I needed to know why my stomach hurt. Like I have been on antidepressants for the better part of 25 years. Like how, how did nobody see this, especially with a mom who was a social worker in child abuse and neglect? I was like how did this get missed?
Speaker 2:And when I said that, right when I finally was like hey, I need to share my experience with you, not so you validate it, but so, like I've just said it, I just really, really beautiful, unexpected experience where my mom was like hey, we, we thought something was going on. I took you to the doctor twice. I asked them to do like a head to toe. I had them look like. I was like something is not right with this kid and you swore up and down.
Speaker 2:Nobody was hurting you and we had no idea where it was coming from. So we were like okay, well, it must be something different. But I was having night terrors. That was a huge healing moment, right when I was like, oh, my parents did try to protect me, they did care about me, they did want that, and that doesn't erase the 25 years that my brain thought I wasn't protected. You know what I'm saying. So, like it's a, it's a both and like does that, is that a balm to that wound? Absolutely, but is there extra work on my part that gets to be put in around that wound?
Speaker 1:Absolutely 100% the same. In the exact same situation that we were talking about Wow, 100%. With my mom, when you were talking about like you're not, I'm not telling you this for validation. I'm not telling you. She was apologizing to me, which I accept an apology, but that doesn't mean I need repeated apologies over and over and you don't need to beat yourself up for it and I was like I'm not sharing this with you to hurt you. I'm not sharing this because I have an expectation of repair or validation or whatever. We have built the safety and trust into our communication now that I am allowing you to see me in ways that I have never let you see me before, because I didn't feel safe, and now I do.
Speaker 2:What we're talking about here, too, is part of if you look at the trauma and recovery model that third part of the third stage, because there's three stages. We're talking about that reconnection stage, where you've worked through stuff on your own, which is how I got to the point that, like I had this memory, I had these feelings, like I recognized where I was hurting and where the wounds were, and that third stage is okay, I'm going to speak the unspeakable. I'm going to speak what's been unspeakable forever since it happened, and I don't need you to validate it. That's not the need. The need is for me to say it. In fact, I don't want you to respond like, oh, I'm so sorry, or oh, it's this, or oh, it's that. I like, I don't want your excuses, I don't want any of that. That's not what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2:The thing that my mom told me was a gift to be like.
Speaker 2:Actually, this was my experience and had that part not even been there.
Speaker 2:It's just the me being able to say this happened, this was real, this is valid, this is my experience, whether you validated or not, and I think that this is a big piece of communication and boundaries and humaning that a lot of people don't get, because I think people think, okay, well, once I've worked through this, I'm going to have the language to be able to share this with who hurt me, or share this with my people, and then they're going to understand and they're going to be sorry and it's almost retribution, right.
Speaker 2:They're going to validate it. They're going to be like, oh, I didn't know that happened to you and like that is a bonus if that happens and we can't go into those experiences expecting that, because you will be disappointed 100%. Yes, and that was a hard pill to swallow and it, I think, brings me back to you know, before we started this, I was like I'm so excited because I get to bring one of my favorite resource books into here. You know there's a book called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, and I think the title is harsh, it's true, and it's harsh. It says how to heal from distant, rejecting or self-involved parents, self-absorbed parents, aka how to heal from a traumatized parent.
Speaker 1:That's exactly the conversation we had, because I literally told my mom point like I was like these parts that I've shared with you about my childhood sucked, they, sucked ass. There's no, there's no two ways about it, right? And also I can see in this conversation that we've had how I got the light version, how it's still better than what you got, and what you got is still better than what your parents got. And I was like and my children are getting better than what I got. I was like that's exactly what it means to heal generational trauma. That is what we are doing here.
Speaker 2:Healing generational trauma takes generations, but I think people don't know that it takes you generations to heal generational trauma, even if the trauma gets completely cleared from your body. If you have kids, if you already have kids, guess what? Your trauma lives in them because, both from a nurture perspective, because you've raised them for however many years until you healed, and also if you've got girls or kids born with ovaries that are going to reproduce, it's in their ovaries, it's in their eggs. So at minimum, three generations minimum, and I think a lot of people hear that and it feels really depressing because they're like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I'm like, yeah, but also, if you think about that, the journey that we've been on with our families, I've watched my parents and their siblings heal. I've watched my sister and us heal. I've seen our kids heal and I'm like, okay, my parents are in their mid-60s, we are in our mid-30s, our kids are in their early. You know, my sister has younger kids, so my kids are tweens, her kids are elementary. That is a rapid shift In three generations. We went from okay, we are going to be trauma sensitive at age 65 to we are going to be trauma sensitive at age five. Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1:My only thing was like I hope this is a gift that you get to see that things are healing, and like you can release some of that guilt because you see that, yes, these conversations were hard. We've cried so much together and we've talked about things that have never been talked about before, and also, you can already see the fruit of that emotional labor in your grandkids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's been really fascinating. You know, I think a lot of adults get frustrated when they watch their parents treat the grandkids, aka their kids right so much differently than they treated you. And you're like, why are they getting that version of you? And I'm like, well, number one, they've grown a lot. Number two, the level of responsibility they feel is different.
Speaker 2:It is my responsibility to have fun with you, to nurture you, to play with you, to spoil you, to get to do all those things. Like, yeah, occasionally my job is to keep you alive, sure, yes, right, but like that's primarily your parents or your parents job. And this is why, honestly, when we see humans because not everyone's raised by their biological parents or their whoever birth them this is why sometimes we see trauma, get kind of weird and wonky. When you're raised by people who are not those immediate genetic humans that you got all your genes from right, like if you were raised by grandparents, you were raised by an aunt, or maybe you're raised by a much older sibling the trauma becomes. We see different trauma there.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the other things that I think a more Gabor mate says this is every child has a difference out of parents, even if it's the same parents 100% true. Right, if I'm 15 and my parents have another baby, that baby is getting the benefit of 15 years of experience and wisdom and mistakes my husband is 12 years older than his brother and that is 1000% true.
Speaker 2:It really is TLC, and I joke about this. I'm like if we had another kid right now, I think they would need significantly less therapy when they get older, just because of how emotionally regulated and trauma-sensitive we've really set things up. We're much better with boundaries. We're much better with responsibility. We're much better with communication. We've learned all these skills. Also. It's like okay, well, that's 15 years, but there's also a difference between a year. There's a difference between two years. We had three kids in two years.
Speaker 1:I promise you that affected the older one I have apologized profusely to my oldest child that I raised, because with the blended family, the oldest child is not the one that I primarily parented in the early years. I have apologized for all of the ways that I talked to them because I didn't know any better.
Speaker 2:You touched on a key piece there, because I think our generation and the generation is coming we are so much more likely to apologize to our kids.
Speaker 1:Yes, Mama Kus is on TikTok. I made a TikTok about that, about talking with I don't follow her super close so I don't know if that's her oldest or one of her oldest about having a conversation about how she's a better parent. Now Her kid basically responding you had to be the parent that you were with me so that you can be the parent that you are with them. I was like my heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we see that a lot with oldest. I'm an oldest, I am too. Yeah, we see that a lot with oldest. I joke with Ray. I'm like we did not know what we were doing, and then your siblings actually got a short end of a stick too, because they both came at the same time and we hadn't done that either. But we at least had an idea of what to do. We hadn't had to do it times three. But one of the things I love with my kids yesterday one of the kids was in a mood two days ago in a mood, and we were going back and forth and I'm trying to stay regulated.
Speaker 1:It's the hardest.
Speaker 2:And they said something so sassy Like that is there's another word I want to use there but like sassy. And I looked at them and they looked at me and I look back at them and they were like y'all in the podcast can't see my face. But they were like and this is the moment that I realized that I messed up and before I would have gone off, and I feel like for generations before me that that's what would have happened and that's what I said to my husband later on that night I was like it took everything within me to not punish the crap out of that kid and instead be like hey, do I talk to you like that? And they're like no. And I was like does it feel good to talk to me like that? And they're like well, I'm really mad. I said I know I know you're mad. Does it feel good in your body to say that to me? And they were like no, it's like okay, can we try to not do that? And they're like yeah, right, but I'm thinking about how both of my parents, if they had said something like that, would have gone in the backyard to get their own switch.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it was. I was like wow, I am the transition between that to. You know I didn't get physically hurt but I got punished. You know I had to write a thousand word paper on not using the word crap. Right, like I got punished for doing those things. And to be able to look at my kid and be like, hey, let's feel into that. Is that the way you want to show up right here?
Speaker 1:Be like aren't you glad that you have me as a parent right now?
Speaker 2:But you can't even say that to them because they're like my oldest is like stop comparing my experience to yours. I'm like I know you're in that phase where you need to be autonomous and separate completely from me and I can't tell you any similar experiences that I have, because you don't want to hear it, and I do Sometimes. I just want to be like do you have any idea how lucky you are?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's definitely a thought and not a set out loud. Yeah, it's real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, later when we're together alone, hubby and I, I'm like oh, he's like I know, I know.
Speaker 1:Like one of my kids the other day was like I'm really upset that you told me that and assumed that I didn't already know that instead of asking me. And that was one of those moments where I'm like I am so glad I am your parent right now.
Speaker 2:I'm proud of you and also like I am having to, like I'm not taking my earrings off, I'm not having a reaction, but I want to.
Speaker 1:But like, if I had said the same thing I would have been in trouble. And I'm like but wait, that's that's standing up for yourselves, Accepting responsibility and asking to be seen as a human. And I'm like but I'm glad I'm your parent, because now you're not being punished for that, because it's what you should be doing and you bring up such a great point.
Speaker 2:Because, again, this is why I have a really hard time when we label our parents as narcissists and we label our parents as whatever or anybody really, without knowing the true pieces behind it. Because, having gotten to know more of my generational stuff, now I'm like, oh, I totally get why my parents parented me the way they did and I get why their parents parented them the way they did and, like I can look back and be like this all makes so much sense. I can understand it and I can validate their experience. And also duality right, I can set boundaries around how it feels for me to relate to people who maybe don't like they don't parent the way that I would parent. They don't respond the way that I would respond. They don't set boundaries the way that I would set boundaries. They don't communicate the way that I would communicate.
Speaker 2:And I think with our parents it's the hardest because we're still their kid but now we're adults and that's the thing I have to remind myself of is like it's not my job to parent my parents. It's not my job to parent my parents. As an adult, I can figure out how it feels best for me to relate to them, or any adult that is an elder in my family. I can figure out how it feels best for me to relate to them and I can honor it if, when I say that they're like, well, that's not what I want, okay, cool, great, I can make an informed decision. Like you said, I can make an informed decision because I've expressed my needs and my desires for protection and connection. And if you go, yeah, that's not what I'm doing, or well, I'm willing to do that, but, like, here's some strings around it.
Speaker 1:You can look at the strings and decide okay, yes, I will accept this one, or no, I will not accept this one Exactly. And that's what healthy human is. When you're talking about it in connection with other people, there is no my way or the highway when it comes to healthy human is hey, this is my way and this is how I prefer to have things done, and this is my way and this is how I prefer to have things done. And also, let's look at it and decide what pieces we're willing to take, and in the end, we might have to just say this is not a good connection for either one of us, because there is no negotiation or compromise that we're happy with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, honestly, I think that this is one of the most complicated places that you can human is in connection with people who have either been responsible for your meeting your needs and helping you grow, or you're responsible for their needs and helping them grow, and people who are with you through it all you know, or connected to you intimately through it all as you grow and as you change, because we become different people as we grow and as we change. And that boundary conversation, that communication conversation, that responsibility conversation, all of that just has to keep happening.
Speaker 1:That's the other place where I found myself stuck in the in between is with my husband. My husband and I met and got married and then things got really, really hard. We call it the dark times in our relationship and like we went through a lot of changes and a lot of huge growth and we made a lot of like is this going to be the end of our marriage? Decisions, and we moved through it. We made the conscious choice, we made the informed decision to continue with our relationship and there was still a huge chunk of time where we were choosing to be connected and the past wasn't healed yet.
Speaker 1:So we were still stuck in that in between and I was like I literally had to tell him at one point. I really am not even sure how to relate to you anymore, because I still feel so much of this hurt and I want to move forward, I want to be happy, I want things to be good, and all I can think about is how much you hurt me and like you still haven't apologized for this or things are still awkward here and we just kind of shoved it aside and didn't actually deal with it or like whatever, and that in between is so hard to exist in.
Speaker 2:That's a whole another episode, the relationship piece, because we've been there too. When you're with somebody for almost 20 years, where we're at like shit happens and not always in the way you think it's going to, and not it's not even necessarily in these. Sometimes it's in these massive ways, but sometimes it's just in these little ways, and I actually heard somebody say this. I honestly think it's the same with your kids. Right the day you marry or you commit yourself to this person, the day you birth this person, you know them. Every day after that you wake up with a stranger and they wake up next to a stranger because you are a different person than you were the day before.
Speaker 1:I mean, my husband knows that as well as anybody. I literally told him the other day. I said I'm sorry, I didn't know I was a lesbian when you married me.
Speaker 2:Right Like that would have been helpful to know. Yes, I wish I would have known that.
Speaker 2:But that is so huge. And that also comes back to what was I allowed to explore, like what was my foundation built on? You know one of our popular TikToks, like way back when was I was like, did anybody else just like never question the fact that you were gonna grow up and get married and have kids? Like that was never something in my brain that I questioned. I was like I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna marry a man and we're gonna have babies and like that's it. And I don't think I asked myself that question until last year of like, if I had had a choice, would I have gotten married to a man? Would I have had babies? Now, my answer now is yes, but like I never consciously chose that I didn't either.
Speaker 1:So like that's one of the things that I well, I shared that with my mom too. It was like the religion that you raised me in brainwashed me into believing that this was the only viable option for my life. And so, guess what? I took that viable option and now I'm looking at my life going so this isn't what I would have chosen at all. And the hard part is, too having kids and raising kids. However you choose to, have the kids and raising kids is the only job in the world that you can't find out that you're not good at or you don't like, until it's too late. Then what do you do with those feelings? That's another in-between space to be, because by the time you figured that out, you're already committed to having these kids and raising these kids.
Speaker 1:I fall into the place of. I know now I never should have been a parent. I'm really good at being a parent. I am really amazing. My kids will tell you it's not just me, but I'm really really good at parenting. And also I recognize that I shouldn't have been a parent. It is not the path that I should have chosen, and also, I am still raising these children to the very best of my ability. I love them, I care about them. I am trying to help them to become healthy humans so that they can go out into the world and be healthy humans. It sucks because I get vilified. People are like oh, you can't say that I've talked to my kids. I've talked to my kids about this because I want them to make informed decisions.
Speaker 2:Well, and here's the thing, you can't talk about that. Well, first of all, it's not a boundary, that's a barrier, so let's just talk about that. But that violates so much of that brace method. I was like that and we're not getting underpinning in there at all. But the other piece to this is you owning that. How many parents don't own that and their kids still know it? Oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:I actually had this conversation with a new contact a couple of weeks ago and I said you know, the number one trauma that I think comes through our institute that is subtle is feeling unwanted by the people who raised you, Feeling like you are burdened to the people who raised you, feeling like they would have been better off if they hadn't had you, or outright your parents or caregivers saying you know, parents leaving, abandoning, or their parents outright saying you were an accident, you were unwanted, Right, and I don't know that I want to take that conversation any like.
Speaker 2:We could also have an hour long conversation about that and lots of like socio political things that are happening right now and that is a deeply traumatic experience. It is deeply traumatic to hear you were an accident, you weren't wanted, and it is deeply traumatic to also experience like your parents saying like oh yeah, like no, we love you and also watch them parent a kid that's consciously planned. 10 years later, with like all these emotional intelligence and like regulation skills, You're like wow, OK, I know that you're saying you want me, but like also, this is what it looks like when you plan it.
Speaker 1:And it's also traumatizing to be the person who realizes too late that you did not want to be a parent or that you are not equipped to be a parent, like all of these people hello, bridging the gap yeah, all of these people and there's another layer of nuance to that and like maybe you would be well equipped for that if you had a partner who was doing their part. To feel so alone, like that's one of the things that I learned from you really early on is like it's not necessarily what happened to you, it's how alone you feel in it. Well, if you can't admit that, you realize now that you shouldn't have been a parent or you don't enjoy being a parent, then like you're alone in that, because you say that out loud and people are immediately like at your throat with swords and daggers.
Speaker 2:And that to like bring this full circle back to that underpinning analogy If we can't acknowledge that the foundation is cracked and we just keep like building on it, we can't fix it. Like, what is the point of remodeling a home that is built on a cracked foundation? You know, and a lot of those cracks are not. They're not from actual brokenness, they're from thinking you're broken, right. It's from feeling the shame of like, wow, I feel like I should have never had kids. And also, if I say that people are going to vilify me, or like, wow, I'm thinking of the opposite, right, I don't want to have kids. And every time I try to talk to people about that, they tell me I'm a horrible human and oh, like, you just need to find the right person to like to have them with. Or like, oh, that'll change once you have them.
Speaker 2:Like that, why would we try to convince people that are saying I don't want to make the biggest decision of my life like to bring another human into this world? Why would we be like, oh, no, no, no, it's fine, just like, go ahead and do it, right, like I think some people, yeah, like, sometimes the cracks in the foundation are, there is something that is like fundamental to my truth of who I am, and every time I've tried to communicate that to someone I've felt shame, which is disconnection and isolation. So sometimes the cracks aren't even cracks Like, it's just like the way that that crack gets braced up is just going like. Actually there's nothing wrong with me for feeling this way. There's nothing wrong with me for looking back in my past and going you know what, if I had made a different choice, I probably could have been really happy in that.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's not to say like, just in case, like, yeah, I am still happy in my life now, like it's not that I'm not happy, it's not that I regret my children. I love the humans that they are and like learning about them. And also, if I didn't have this healthy human perspective, if I didn't have this, I would be a terrible fucking parent. That is why I'm a good parent, because I have this healthy human that allows me to make the informed decision to parent them in a healthy, happy, communicative, connected way, even though that's not what I was raised to do and also that's not what I should have done. That's not where I should have been in life if I had been making an informed decision.
Speaker 2:OK, so where can people go find your race method? Because, again, you and I could talk about this for probably 10 hours. If people want to learn about this underpinning, like, where do they go, what do they do?
Speaker 1:My website healthyhumaningcom, working on some resources to kind of fortify what's there. Now I just rebranded and everything, so it's a work in progress but I've got more coming and for just general healthy human stuff. Honestly, facebook, that's where I post everything Like that's where I'm most active. You can learn about all kinds of things as I post it, because I just kind of go with the flow and whatever happens happens, but it's usually pretty good stuff.
Speaker 2:OK, yeah, no, I love your stuff on Facebook. I think people, if they're on that platform, should absolutely follow you, and I love that you snagged that URL. That's phenomenal. I always get excited when people get like the good URL. We're at that point in life where it's like I remember when you could pick your own cell phone number, like, I picked my cell phone number and now my kids are like you can't, like just give them digits, like they're they're assigning new area codes out here because there's enough cell phone numbers. It reminds me of like URLs, you know.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we'll make sure that your link is in the show notes and I'll also link the book that I talked about, and I think the the last message around this is like, as you are bracing, like be gentle with yourself too, because I think sometimes people look at bracing as tension and the way you're using the word is like support, right, it's. I'm going to provide structure and support to this so that you can Reef like you can re pour the concrete, like you can do what you need to do to strengthen your foundation. Yeah, yeah, you know, we were talking about that isolation piece, because isolation and shame oftentimes tells you you're not worthy and you're not deserving and like you are super, super special human and also you are not so special that you are the only human on the planet that doesn't deserve compassion or love or like re looking at your foundation and going what do I need here, versus what is everyone telling me I need Exactly.
Speaker 1:I have to physically restrain myself from keeping talking because I know I love you and your insights and and what you pull.
Speaker 2:I love what you pull out of me too, because it's I was like I didn't think I was going to talk about that today, but I really appreciate that. I appreciate having you on and your work in the world and you're you're definitely making a difference and we're really starting to see all the all the signs of that. So, yeah, go follow, because Diana is going to do big things. So go follow. Ok, I love you all. I hope you have a phenomenal week. We will see you next episode and, in the meantime, if there's anything that Diana or I can do for you, send us a note. All right, bye, y'all Bye. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Invitation to head to our show notes to check out the offers and connections we mentioned, or you can just head straight over to Institute for Trauma dot com and hop in our email list so that you never miss any of the cool things that we're doing over at the Institute. Invitation to be well and to take care of yourself this week and we'll see you next time.