How To Manage Parental Overwhelm with Special Guest Dr. Kiki Felhling

Parenting is an overwhelming job with endless meals, cleanups, and activities. But on top of that, there’s the general overwhelm we're all feeling in our current world, and there are skills you can learn to help manage that daily overwhelm. In this episode Leslie speaks with special guest, Dr. Kiki Fehling. Dr. Kiki Fehling, a licensed psychologist, DBT expert, author and speaker, discusses the transformative impact of DBT on her life and the lives of her clients. Together Leslie and Kiki focus on specific DBT skills that can directly help parents who feel overwhelmed, including Mindfulness, TIPP, and Opposite Action Skills which can help both you and your children. 

Time Stamps

3:05 Why Kiki is committed to getting DBT resources out to the public

5:13 Distinguishing between DBT Therapy and DBT Skills

• The four Modules of DBT
• These are life skills to help you deal with the hard parts of life

7:15 How do we talk to parents about the overwhelm

• Start with mindfulness
• Definition of mindfulness
• Increasing one’s awareness of the Overwhelm

11:10 Jon Kabat Zinn’s Quote:  “if our lives depended on our awareness of our breathing we’d all be dead

12:48 Mindfulness is the foundation of DBT

13:00 TIPP Skills to help us regulate our nervous system

• 13:25 Paced Breathing Skill
• 14:48 Tip your Temperature - mammalian Dive Reflex
• 16:48 Intense Exercise
• 17:47 Progressive Muscle Relaxation

19:46 Opposite Action Skill

24:50 Dealing with Overwhelm

• Using your TIPP Skills IS Opposite Action

25:25 Start with yourself: Model it and that teaches your child to cope

• Co-regulation is when the parent calms themselves down

27:06 Kids are growing up with Mindfulness as an everyday word

28:55 “ Living Therapeutically” is Leslie’s term for a way of living without therapy that continues to help you learn and grow (a newsletter will be coming soon on this)

Leslie-ism: Practice Naming Your Emotions

Resources:

Dr. Kiki Fehling’s Website

• Self-Directed DBT Skills: 3 Month DBT Workbook
• DBT Cards for Coping Skills
• Kiki Fehlings Tik Tok @dbtkiki
• Kiki Fehling Instagram.

TIPP Skills from DBT Therapy Handout

• Tip your Temperature Video
• Intense Exercise Video

Opposit Action Skills Video from DBT Therapy

Jon Kabat Zinn’s Website

For a full transcript of this episode and more information about the host visit https://lesliecohenrubury.com/podcasts/ . You can also follow Leslie’s work on Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Join the conversation with your own questions and parenting experiences.

Credits: Is My Child a Monster? is produced by Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and 

Transcript

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]

0:02  Kiki Fehling: If you can say out loud, “Oh, I'm feeling stressed; oh, I'm anxious; oh, I'm feeling frustrated,” that's not only teaching your child, but when we name emotions and use emotion work, it inherently helps us regulate them and cope with them.

0:22  Leslie Cohen-Rubury: Welcome to Is My Child A Monster?, a parenting skills podcast where you get to listen in as real parents and caregivers share their trials and tribulations. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. And no, your child is not a monster, just misunderstood. 

My guest today is Dr. Kiki Fehling, a licensed psychologist, author, speaker, and Linehan-Board-Certified therapist in Dialectic Behavior Therapy, or DBT, as we call it. She's worked directly with hundreds of clients, helping them use DBT to overcome emotional suffering and build meaningful lives. She has also personally experienced the power of DBT skills in getting through the toughest parts of her life, including emotionally recovering from a heart attack. 

She's passionate about sharing DBT skills and other mental health information with the world through social media; her book, Self-Directed DBT Skills; her deck of DBT cards for coping skills; and other writing. 

As a reminder, though I'm a licensed clinical social worker, this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapeutic intervention. 

1:41  Leslie: Hi, Kiki. Thanks so much for joining me. 

1:43  Kiki: Hi, Leslie. Thank you for having me. 

1:48  Leslie: So, in your bio, you said DBT changed your life. So if you want, can you start with how DBT changed your life? 

1:57  Kiki: I just I grew up always feeling like a highly sensitive person, feeling emotions very intensely. And I have struggled with depression and other mental health difficulties myself. And when I learned DBT in graduate school and started teaching the DBT skills to my clients, they just helped me so much that just with my general life, the various stress of grad school, and then, as you mentioned, recovering from a heart attack that I had at the end of my graduate school career, having DBT skills was incredibly useful, and continue to be useful for helping me with my own emotions, my relationships, and navigating the chaos of today's world, really.

2:40  Leslie: Yes, navigating the chaos of today's world—we're going to put a big pin in that. We're going to talk about that. But one thing that I just want to say is it was only recently that I met you at a conference where I heard you speaking, and it was such a pleasure. I got so excited, because you talk about the resiliency of a person and how these skills could help. But also, what I heard is a mission or a belief that you have that it's very important to you and—tell me if I'm wrong—very important to you to get mental health resources, and specifically these DBT resources out and accessible to as many people as possible.

3:19  Kiki: Absolutely, that's correct. I mean, it's just because I personally have noticed the impact in my own life, but also in the lives of my clients. And then, as an expert in DBT, I'm familiar with the research showing that these skills—that this knowledge, these principles, this wisdom—can help so many different people with various mental health difficulties. I go to a dinner party and I tell someone what I do, and they're like, “DBT. I've never heard of that.” And I want people to know it. So, yes, it's a big part of my my current mission to get this out there,

3:51  Leslie: Well, I share that with you, and that's why I lit up when I heard you speaking. You have a book, you have your deck, you have social media, Tiktok…You have a huge following, which is so exciting because you make these skills accessible. As I said, that's something I'm passionate about. That's why I'm doing this podcast and helping parents specifically raise their children. But raising a child is stressful. On top of all of us regulating our own emotions and living as an individual, it's also about dealing with the overwhelm of being a parent. But you just said, it's also the chaos of being a person in the world today. So we have a lot going on around us.

4:36  Kiki: Absolutely. I am not yet a parent. But I have a lovely nephew, and every time that I visit him and my brother and sister-in-law, I am overwhelmed by the chaos of their lives. And I can only imagine how it is for them. So, yes, it's a stressful world for parents. 

4:52  Leslie: There's another part of it, which you do, which is this idea of giving people the skills themselves so that they can live a life worth living, as Marsha Linehan has coined so beautifully. And the idea that we can do it on our own. So there's this wonderful DBT therapy, and then there's DBT skills. Would you talk a little bit about the difference between these two?

5:17  Kiki: I love that you're bringing that up, because I do think that Dialectical Behavior Therapy as a comprehensive psychotherapy is often conflated and misunderstood to be just DBT skills, and it's not. So, DBT, as you mentioned, Marsha Linehan, a psychologist who created DBT to help individuals struggling with extreme emotions, suicidal behaviors, and often folks struggling with a mental health diagnosis called Borderline Personality Disorder. 

But then, as I said, DBT has been shown to be helpful for depression, anxiety, a variety of mental health difficulties. 

And the full therapy is normally made up of individual therapy sessions, the way that your typical psychotherapy would have, although there's some special DBT things about it. And then a DBT skills group where, in addition to individual therapy, clients attend a weekly skills group for an hour and a half, two hours a week, where they learn the DBT skills. 

And so the DBT skills are literally dozens of different types of coping skills in four main areas: mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. And for anyone paying attention or understanding those words, hopefully you can tell these are life skills that, really, I wish people learned in schools. And some people are starting to do that. But it's really basic, concrete advice and guidance for how to deal with the hard parts of life.

6:51  Leslie: So again, going back to this idea that there's this feeling of overwhelm, because whether it's the kids’ behaviors or the way the parents are feeling, we have stressful situations in the environment—environmental issues, political issues, and just the utter exhaustion of daily life. So how would we talk to parents about dealing with the overwhelm? Can we start there? And where do you want to start in terms of bringing some of these DBT skills that you just mentioned to help parents with the overwhelm of it?

7:28  Kiki: Easy, right? [Laughter] Easy problem. No, very much not. And I make light about it because I do think for different people, there will be different solutions that are going to be most helpful. So let me just say that up front. And, basically, all mental health interventions and all DBT skills start with mindfulness. 

And before people tune out—because you might have preconceived notions about mindfulness, and maybe you hate meditation, and all sorts of negative connotations about mindfulness in today's world—in DBT, we define mindfulness as just being in the present moment exactly as it is, non-judgmentally. And so yes, meditation is a form of mindfulness, but it's so much bigger. You can bring mindfulness into your daily life in a lot of ways.

8:18  Leslie: I was just going to say, we’re necessarily telling you, when we mention the word mindfulness, that we're going to sit and meditate for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, or anything like that.

8:27  Kiki: Exactly, yes, especially when we're talking about parenthood in today's world. I know there are meditators out there who make it a priority and make sure they get those twenty minutes on the mat, but that is often not realistic, especially for folks who don't already have a regular meditation practice. So that is not what we're talking about here.

8:44  Leslie: Do you want to describe what we are talking about, and what would that look like for some parents who feel overwhelmed?

8:51  Kiki: What I would mention about mindfulness is it's that broad idea of being here in the present moment. And that can look a lot of ways, but the first step of knowing how to cope with overwhelm, for example, is recognizing that you are overwhelmed. So increasing your awareness and trying to bring your attention, maybe in little moments throughout the day. How am I feeling? What's happening in my body right now? What's going on around me? Even just taking five seconds to really pay attention versus being on autopilot. In DBT language, we might call this observing and describing skills, but really it's just about what is happening, and being really concrete about it, and giving yourself that pause.

9:34  Leslie: Yes, and I just said it about 15 minutes ago, I was walking up the stairs, and my husband was in front of me, and his hands were clenched, and I said, I noticed your hands are clenched. And then he goes into the bedroom and goes, “Thanks, that was helpful.”

9:48  Kiki: Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, little moments like that,

9:52  Leslie: And so he wasn't aware of it. And you're suggesting that we try to become aware of it ourselves. And the only reason why I know, noticing him, because it's been years of me noticing when I am actually sitting with clenched hands, because that told me right away I'm holding stress. I love that you bring that up, becoming aware of these very subtle things, taking five seconds to notice. Are you breathing? Are you holding your breath? Any other ideas that you want to throw out there?

10:22  Kiki: I just want to highlight what you did for your husband and say, I've actually had a similar experience with my partner, where when I get anxious, I start breathing in a certain way, and it was through his help that I actually started to become more aware of that. So I would say that for the parents out there who have co-parents, help each other. Even just a tap on the shoulder, or set alarms or take time at the start of the day, at the end of the day, at lunch, whatever. Even through text message, like, How are you doing right now? Take a breath. This type of thing.

10:55  Leslie: That's beautiful. I think we can go through our day, as Jon Kabat Zinn has actually said in his mindfulness teachings, he said, if our life was dependent on our awareness of breathing, we'd all be dead. 

11:10  Kiki: I haven't heard that, but it's very true. 

11:12  Leslie: So true. Yes, it's in one of his trainings. How many, if I said to someone right now, how many times have you noticed you took a breath today, probably they’d say zero. And so if we can slow down just milliseconds. And what a beautiful idea that we don't need, again, twenty minutes on the mat in order to gain some awareness of where we are as we go through the day. 

Now that we're admitting about how our partners have helped us; many, many years ago, my husband said to me, “Do you notice when you get angry that you flare your nostrils?” And I was like, well, That's a brilliant notice, because that's how he knew I was angry. He would look at my face even if I wasn't saying anything, and he knew I was angry if I was flaring my nostrils. So it's funny that we are laughing about these things, but small body sensations, body actions, whether it's fist, hands, or smile—a smile communicates to everyone. So all of this is communicating, and this is where we want to start. What do we do with this mindfulness next?

12:24  Kiki: And I think you're also hitting on why mindfulness is so important. It's not just about awareness, because all of a sudden, Oh, I noticed my nostrils flare. Oh, I notice I'm breathing in a certain way. And then I get to identify Oh, I'm angry or Oh, I'm anxious. And then in that step, we get to decide to do other coping skills. So this is where I mentioned mindfulness first, that it's the foundation of everything else, essentially. 

So for example, actually, for both anger and anxiety, we might use a similar type of skill from the Stress Tolerance Module. There's a set of skills called the TIPP skills. TIPP, as in T.I.P.P It's a set of four skills designed to help us regulate our nervous systems, deactivate the stress response and get back into a state of calm and relaxation, or at least tolerate the stress a little bit more easily while we're there. 

And so one of the TIPP skills, the first P, is paced breathing. And this skill has a few specific techniques. But at its core, it's about breathing into your belly and making your exhale slow as a way to slow your heart rate down, slow your breathing, and get into that relaxation state. So when you notice your nostrils flaring, or I notice my anxious style of breathing, we use that as a cue—when we notice it, to take a deep breath. And even that small thing—taking a deep breath versus diving into whatever you might do in anger or diving into continuing the anxious breathing—suddenly changes how we're feeling, changes our body's response, and opens up more flexibility for then acting or doing things that we actually want to do, and feeling less overwhelmed by them.

14:09  Leslie: So paying attention to our breathing, and specifically learning this thing called paced breathing, because research shows it does change our nervous system. It actually has an impact on how we're feeling. So, beautiful, that's a great one. The other TIPP skills, which we can either go into them or we could go on to another skill.

14:34  Kiki: I mean, if you think the TIPP skills would be useful to talk about…I'm always down to talk about the TIPP skills. They're some of my favorites, honestly.

14:41  Leslie: Let's go through those four skills for everyone right now.

14:45  Kiki: Sure. Okay, so going back to the start of TIPP, T stands for trick your temperature, and this skill is using something called the mammalian dive reflex, that all mammals have, including humans, that when we are underwater, our heart rate slows down. That sympathetic stress response is deactivated in order to help us conserve oxygen underwater. So yes, you could jump in a pool or a bath or something like that, but this skill asks you simply to trick your body into thinking it's underwater by placing your face in cold, like a bowl of cold water, or putting an ice pack over your face to mimic that cold water feeling. You have to be careful if you have cardiac or health issues, but for most people, it can be an incredibly amazing and safe way to decrease that physical agitation that you can feel when you're feeling super stressed or overwhelmed.

15:43  Leslie: Yes, and what I often do…and now I've changed what I do. I used to send my DBT skills homework, go home and try this. Now because we're virtual, we do it all together, and we all practice. And what I want to say is, it's a really, really good idea to practice when you are not emotionally aroused, because the first time you do it, you want to get a sense of, Okay, this is a strange sensation. 

So go ahead and practice it at least once or twice, or even three times, when you're not in that high emotional state, and you get a chance to see the effect. And then when you really are dysregulated, you probably will be pretty amazed. 

16:28  Kiki: It really is. What I will say for folks out there who don't have a therapist, or maybe don't feel comfortable practicing with a therapist, one of my resources is a YouTube video that walks through the TIPP skills with you, including the temperature skills. So I go ahead and dunk my face in cold water. So if you're interested, check that out.

16:43  Leslie: Excellent. Yours are great videos. Okay, so we've got the “I.”

16:48  Kiki: Yes, so that stands for intense exercise. When we exercise intensely, when anyone exercises, it activates our stress response. Actually, our hearts race. It makes us get physically agitated and send blood to our limbs, such that when we stop and relax and stretch after exercising, our bodies think, Oh, okay, the stress is over. 

And the idea is, it's using that body-mind connection to help us calm down and feel less overwhelmed in that moment. This one is also so helpful, because when we feel emotions intensely, we want to do things, we want to act, we want to move. And so this skill also lets us just do what our bodies want to do.

17:33  Leslie: Yes, a lot of people learn to run when they are going through tough times. And it makes sense. This is why it makes sense. Okay, you did one of the P's. The second P…

17:44  Kiki: …stands for paired muscle relaxation. You can find lots of videos and scripts and meditation audio for this skill. It's also sometimes called progressive muscle relaxation. But the basic idea is that when we're stressed, our muscles get very tense. And again, we're using the mind-body connection by purposely tensing our muscles going through the body, muscle group by muscle group, and then relaxing the muscles afterwards, while breathing deeply, too. So this lets us purposely go into tension, then let go into relaxation, which can be incredibly helpful for calming down when we're stressed.

18:24  Leslie: So these are our TIPP skills after we realize, like you said, through our awareness of mindfulness, where we're noticing that we're agitated. We're noticing the anxiety, the anger, whatever it is. We can use our TIPP skills when our emotions get hig. This is where we're just trying to say: there's a way to put a little bit of punctuation in the life that's full of stress and chaos. These are little moments where you can really…and yes, it sounds like you have to go run five miles. No: you can actually run around your house three times, or go up and down the stairs really fast five times. It takes five minutes, and you will get that same effect. So we're trying to respect the fact that parents don't have all day and hours of free time, and so it's changing what you're already doing and tweaking it a little bit.

19:22 Kiki: Absolutely.

[Music: In the Forest by Music for Videos]

19:37  Leslie: Moving from the TIPP skills…As you said, there are so many DBT skills, but I'm going to pick one called opposite action and ask you if you could talk about that one.

19:48  Kiki: Opposite action is one of my favorites. It's one of the emotion regulation skills that I've just found to be so transformative for my own mental health. And the basic idea of opposite action is that emotions often make you feel like doing things, as I described before. They often make you feel like moving your body or saying certain things or acting in certain ways, doing things. 

So for example, when we are depressed or when we're feeling very sad or when we're in grief, we often have urges to isolate, to rest, to go under the blankets and binge watch NetFlix or not call our friends and cancel dinner—that kind of thing. And a lot of times, when we're in grief, acting on those emotional urges is helpful. Resting and asking for help in grief is incredibly effective. 

But other times, like when we're depressed, acting on those urges, staying in bed, avoiding our friends, not doing daily life, it makes our depression, it makes our emotion, worse. So, opposite action asks us to come in and act opposite to our emotion’s urges in order to interrupt that self-reinforcing cycle and help us get out of it. So opposite action, essentially, is a skill for reducing emotions that we don't want to be feeling because they're not helpful for us to act on, in that moment.

21:15  Leslie: So when people say they're overwhelmed with reading the news or they are overwhelmed with whatever it is; but let's take that example of reading the news. And a parent is trying to stay abreast of what's going on and reading news. And we wouldn't say that that's wrong. Of course it makes sense. It's totally understandable that you may get overwhelmed by reading the news. 

But the trick here is, if it's not effective in your life, if it's not helping, meaning you get so overwhelmed that you can't focus on cooking dinner, or you get agitated, and you're so angry about things that you start taking it out on the kids. It may be really justified why you're so upset, but if the emotion is not helping you, this is also when we would want to use opposite action.

22:11  Kiki: Yes, exactly. I think that's a great example. And I'm glad that you validate reading the news is often effective for people. So we're not saying stop reading that. Well, you might decide to stop reading the news, we're not saying you must, right? And so that's where, as you're saying, it comes into the mindfulness of checking in with yourself. Is acting on this emotion helpful for me right now? Is reading the news for the tenth time in half an hour helpful? Is scrolling on whatever social media of choice is, is that helping me? Is that helping me feel better right now and then? If not, that's the cue to act opposite. 

So the middle path, if you will, for opposite action for something like overwhelm from news can look like, Okay, I am feeling a lot of anxiety about the world right now. Part of me knows that reading the news is helpful for staying informed, that I can talk to people, that I can problem solve, that I can join activism as I see appropriate, et cetera. And I know that all of those things can be met if I read the news once a day versus checking every hour or getting push notifications from your news source of choice on your phone. 

So opposite action might be setting off those notifications. Acting opposite to the anxiety of feeling that tension, that anxiety about, like, I must stay informed. Acting opposite by that, by taking deep breaths, turning off the notifications, setting a time each day to read the news, versus constantly checking. So that's kind of the in-between. Meanwhile, when you're overwhelmed, you're probably going to need the TIPP skills in order to act opposite, because it's very hard. So I will say that too,

23:58  Leslie: And we do weave all these DBT skills together. It's the awareness with our mindfulness. It's the TIPP skills to bring down some of the emotion and then maybe going to opposite action or problem solving, whatever skills we may then go into. So yes, there's a lot of weaving of skills together, which is so beautiful. 

So let's say a parent is getting overwhelmed by their day. It's five o'clock, tough hour for parents. We've got to have dinner, we have homework, we have bedtime. Everyone's exhausted from their day. Would you use opposite action? Would you just use mindfulness?

24:36  Kiki: Well, that's interesting. It would depend on what specific emotions I'm feeling and what is in that moment. What I will say is, when people are overwhelmed, it's usually a stress response that may be related to anxiety or anger or other kinds of overwhelming emotions. And so inherently, when you're overwhelmed, using TIPP skills is opposite action. Taking the moment to breathe and breathe deeply; versus fast to calm down and cool and take care of yourself; versus go, go, go, go—that is opposite action. So I will say that.

25:14  Leslie: And let me point out, because I know my listeners have heard me say this before, but I'm going to say it again. Parents say, “Well, how do I deal with my kids?” What we're saying here is, you're starting with yourself, and you're modeling it. And in the modeling of it, you can teach, and there's so much learning that happens as a result of modeling. So here we are focusing on what you can do, because it's so understandable that parents are very, very overwhelmed. So we want to honor the fact that it's understandable and that if you start with yourself, you are doing an incredible benefit to your child. They really do imitate what parents do. So they're learning.

25:57  Kiki: Absolutely. Not only are you modeling and teaching your child how to cope with stress in the moment by doing it yourself, you…There is something that I have to assume you've talked about in previous episodes, of this idea of co-regulation. Just being around someone else who is calm can help you de-stress and overcome your own overwhelmed when you are stressed out in that moment. So, I do think it's funny when parents are taking deep breaths when their child is upset as a way to show the child how to do it. That's awesome. Keep teaching. And in that moment, those deep breaths are helping you, which inherently is going to help your child. It's just the way our physiology works,

26:40  Leslie:  If you're doing it just for your child, okay; but we'd like to let you know that you can get a benefit from it, too. 

29:49  Kiki: Yes, exactly.

29:51  Leslie:  And we're using a lot of names. We're using DBT, and the names of mindfulness. But this generation is growing up, we're also worried about them growing up with technology and the impact of it. But they're also growing up with mindfulness as an everyday household word. My grandchildren knew at the age of five or even younger, what mindfulness was. So, when we were painting the porch, my little grandson was three years old, and he was helping me paint the porch. So, here they are with dripping…And I'd say, “Okay, let's take your paint brush and count to three, and then we're mindfully going to let the paint drip and go on to painting.” So use the words as everyday words, so that they become part of our everyday lexicon.

27:43  Kiki: That's even more important when it comes to emotion words, too. If you can own and say out loud, “Oh, I'm feeling stressed. Oh, I'm anxious. Oh, I'm feeling frustrated.” That's also, again, not only teaching your child, but there's research to suggest that when we name emotions and use emotion work, it inherently helps us regulate them and cope with them. So getting into the mode of using emotion words for describing your own experiences in front of your child and just for yourself, again, will be very helpful.

28:16  Leslie: Great. I want to add one more thing. Parents who are overwhelmed with life, with what they're doing, there's one more thing that we could talk about, which is: identify your values. Because living by your values is really, really important. And I’d just love to hear you speak on that a little bit.

28:41  Kiki: Yes, I love that you bring that up because I think values are a thing to consider that can provide a framework for how you make so many decisions that can improve your mental health and your life in general, in really profound ways. So first, let me just define value, how I think about it, how we talk about it. In DBT, I would say a value is a principle or a belief that is what matters most to you in life. So these are things like justice or family or equity or nature—kind of broader things that give your life meaning, that provide you joy and fulfillment, that means something important to you. And so values, knowing what matters most to us, allows us to pay attention to, Am I actually living my life in a way that feels in alignment with those values? How am I spending my time? How am I acting as a parent, as a partner, as a co parent, as a coworker, as a friend, community member? All of these things. and letting you say, All of these things might be important to me, but my core, most important values are X. And then that lets re-evaluate my life: Okay, how can I set up my life in a way that lets me live within that specific value that's most important to me? 

Doesn't mean other values aren't important to me, but that we can only do so much in any given moment and in today's world. So really, getting a handle on: What kind of parent do I want to be, what kind of person, how do I want to be remembered? And using that as a mindfulness prompt of looking at your life and seeing if it aligns with that.

30:29  Leslie: Beautiful. And to parents who are listening to this, I don't want you to say, “Okay, now that's overwhelming me. If I'm not living according to my values, how do I do it?” So again, sitting down and talking about family values, that could be a dinner conversation. You can easily Google a few and bring them to the table. And people can say, “Oh, this one's really important to me right now.” Or just have some conversations. And then find small ways. 

Again, you don't have to pick up and change everything, but you can almost find ways that you're living today according to your values. So, I actually homeschooled my kids many, many years ago, when they were younger. And in homeschooling, we were doing something called unschooling. It was very unstructured, but I did have to show the State of Florida that I was teaching my children something. So I had a curriculum of the alphabet or learning to read or whatever, and then I’d fit our life into the curriculum. And it's like the values. Because I do this with clients. I say, “Okay, list your values, and then fit your life into it.” Because it really feels good when you say…I'm going to do real simple: When I brush my teeth and take a shower and fold my clothes, I'm living according to my values, to be organized and have self-care, or whatever it is. 

And I don't have to take an hour walk in nature—if I step outside and look at the night sky, I'm living my value of connecting to nature. Or if I draw a doodle, I'm living my connection to art or looking at other artwork. So I'm saying these are big values, but you can make small things that contribute to you feeling like you are in alignment with your values. So again, I don't want to overwhelm parents. You called it a structure. We want to remind you that if you have the structure, it's going to help when you're feeling overwhelmed, to remind you of the things that are important to you.

32:37  Kiki: The thing I will just emphasize in alignment with what you're saying is: You might have one primary value, but it's very common for people to have dozens of things that are important to them. And when I'm working with a client on values and we're trying to make meaningful changes to their life, we usually focus on one value at a time in the way that you're saying. It's natural and normal for values to change. It's natural and normal for our values to shift in priority. And being self compassionate and just meeting yourself where you're at is very important of just doing what you can to bring a little bit more fulfillment or pleasure or joy or pride into your life.

33:20  Leslie: So we're not asking for a perfect lifestyle and life. There's going to be challenges, there's going to be tough things. And if we can, again, just know we have our awareness on things that are important to us, we can drop those in. And a drop in the bucket can make a ripple effect, and I've seen that ripple effect. So it makes a big difference. 

This is amazing, because you do have so much to offer people, whether they're in therapy or not, they have access to you and everything that you offer. Tell us about where they can find out about you,

34:07  Kiki: So the primary place that you can find out everything about me is my website, which is my name; so it's kikifehling.com and I'm sure you'll have that in the show notes. And there you can find my book and the deck that Leslie mentioned, as well as connection to my social media. But on my website I also offer links to other resources that are for free, online, not just mine. If you're just interested in learning more about these special terms we're using, or “Wow, DBT sounds pretty cool,” and it is, you can find lots of information there,

34:43  Leslie: And I will add one more idea that has been really a passion of mine for a very long time, which is when I finish with a client and we're wrapping up, and they're going to go out and live their life, I want them to feel like the growing and the learning never ends. I've called this kind of moving on with your life, when you're not in therapy, living therapeutically. And it's this idea that we can continue to grow and learn, because therapy is definitely designed to help us grow and learn. But when we're not in therapy, or don't have access to it, there are still so many ways we can live therapeutically, in a way that allows us to continue to grow and learn.

35:29  Kiki: I love that. I think earlier you mentioned Dr. Linehan and how the goal of DBT is to build a life worth living, which is just a life that is most meaningful for each individual person. That is a process, that's not a destination. It's a constantly shifting and changing thing. And so I love that, living therapeutically. I might have to use that and credit you, of course. But yeah, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for this podcast and your work in this space.

35:58  Leslie: Thank you, Kiki. Take care. Have a great day.

 [Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]

36:03  Leslie Cohen-Rubury: I want to thank Kiki again for being here today. As always, you can find links to everything we talked about in our show notes. I really think her TikToks are a great and easy resource to learn the DBT skills, and you don't even need to be in therapy to learn these skills.

And this week: Practice naming your emotions. 

Join us next week when we meet Kevin and Scott, who have two young sons and are struggling to feel like good enough parents. 

Subscribe to Is My Child A Monster? wherever you get your podcasts. And go ahead—rate and review to help spread the word. You can also find a full transcript of this episode, or sign up for my newsletter at ismychildamonster.com. The Is My Child A Monster? team is Alletta Cooper, Camilla Salazar, and me. Special thanks to Eric Rubury. Our theme music is by L-Ray Music. And I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Thanks so much for listening. 

Transcribed by Eric Rubury