Anger, Resilience, And Raising Humans

What if anger wasn’t the problem to solve but a message to translate? We dig into the real mechanics of emotional regulation, from the childhood patterns that prime our reactions to the nervous system tools that bring us back to center. Licensed therapist and host Mary Rothwell welcomes mental health coach Davina Hehn for a candid, story-rich conversation about raising resilient kids while keeping a strong partnership intact.

We start by reframing anger as a secondary emotion—often covering disappointment, fear, or loneliness—and share how suppression masquerades as control. Davina breaks down simple, science-backed tools you can try today: visual cues that interrupt anger loops, humming to activate the vagus nerve, and playful code words that defuse tension without shaming anyone. You’ll hear how to model repair in front of your kids, apologize for behaviors without apologizing for feelings, and turn everyday conflicts into a master class in accountability and calm.

Then we explore Davina’s Parenting vs Partnership lens, a fresh way to understand why many couples clash after kids. Some of us are wired to prioritize the relationship; others feel most alive in hands-on parenting. Naming your default reduces blame and opens space to borrow strengths from the other side. Along the way, we talk resilience over rescue, boundaries that protect rather than control, and how to build a home where rupture is expected and repair is guaranteed.

If you’re ready to replace reactivity with clarity and raise children who trust their own capacity to face hard things, this one’s for you. Listen, share it with a friend, and tell us: are you wired more for parenting or partnership? Subscribe, leave a review, and help more listeners find the show.

You can find Davina at https://www.asteadyspace.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Core Premise
• 1:08 Childhood, Resilience, And Perspective
• 2:30 Introducing Guest Davina Hain
• 3:58 Anger In Relationships And Gender Norms
• 9:05 Emotional Age And Trauma Roots
• 12:05 Suppression Versus Regulation
• 16:25 Compassion, Accountability, And The And
• 21:35 Anger As Secondary: Naming Emotions
• 26:20 Fear, Courage, And Nervous System
• 29:20 Breaking Cycles And Modeling Repair
• 35:55 Letting Kids Struggle And Build Grit
• 41:15 Practical Tools: Cues, Humming, Code Words
• 48:35 Boundaries That Protect, Not Control
• 51:55 Parenting Versus Partnership Theory
• 59:20 Using The Quiz To Reduce Shame
• 1:05:10 Resources, Free Groups, And Closing

Transcript

Davina: 0:00

I also am very open and accepting of the fact that I am likely creating different wounds that I have not experienced yet, that I don't know how they'll manifest later yet. And part of that has been a it's been a real challenge in being able to radically accept that I'm doing my best with what I know and what I'm what I think will be their the path of least regret.

Mary: 0:33

Welcome to No Shrinking Violets. I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner. I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives. We'll explore all realms of wellness, what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms. It's time to own your space, trust your nature, and flourish. Let's dive in. Hey Violets, welcome to the show. In my work with therapy clients, I think childhood experiences inform how someone interacts with the world nearly 100% of the time. This includes how we experience and express emotions. Do we internalize hurt and self-blame? Do we interpret the actions of others as intentional and react with angry outbursts? Of course, as with everything, there are exceptions. Times when experiences or situations with parents don't have the deleterious effects on attachment or parenting or emotional regulation that I might expect. This is tempered by the wild card I call resilience. And a trait that I think is nearly as important is perspective. How do you see the world? Optimism is a superpower. Finally, making the choice to pursue therapy or coaching, depending on the situation, is basically learning to use a lightsaber to engage with the force. It's so powerful. It's nearly impossible not to try to undo our own childhood experiences through our parenting. More often, we unintentionally repeat patterns that we experienced as kids. And while I don't want the average parent to live in fear that they will screw up their own kids, I do believe that managing your own shit and having a strong co-parent, if that's your situation, is work you can do to give your children the best chance to find their own healthy relationships and create a life where they thrive. My guest today, Davina Hain, believes that we show up in one of two preferred roles, parenting or partnership. I'm looking forward to delving into this more because I think trying to maintain a healthy partnership while raising grounded, emotionally balanced children is one of the toughest challenges there is. My experience has been that most people decide early on that one of those roles needs to take a back seat. And from my vantage point, I most often see people choose nurturing children over nurturing their relationship. However, I could be wrong, I plan to ask Davina this question, and we'll also tap into her insights on the role of anger and how we navigate relationships. Davina Hain is a trained therapist, turned mental health coach and professional friend, empowering us to advocate for ourselves without causing collateral damage, to regulate our nervous system, and to raise kids in ways worth repeating. Welcome to No Shrinking Violet's Davina.

Davina: 3:24

Hi. All of that was just so on point, and I agree with it entirely. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Mary: 3:34

Okay. So I told her before we hit record that I we could probably talk for two hours because y'all know that when I get a fellow trained mental health person on here with me, I want to just go to town. But anyway, um, let me start with having you share the highlights of your story. So what do you see as contributing to your most important life moments and what brought you to where you are now doing this work?

Davina: 3:58

Yeah. So I actually went into grad school for forensic psychology and I was convinced that I was going to be the one therapist, the one researcher who was going to debunk that childhood determines everything. And I very quickly learned how silly that was and how much all of that is rooted from our childhood. So there, there we are. And also the fact that I was, I went into grad school because I was this traditional fixer in my family who always wanted peace and mediating and always trying to understand other people's inner working, right? I oftentimes saw two people having two completely different arguments, but they just couldn't see that they were so different. So that was that part. And then so much of who I've become now, post-grad and post-training and opting out of traditional licensure and the therapeutic model has been very much shaped by my experience with my husband. I went into anger management in an attempt to fix him because he was refusing to do the work. He wasn't open at the time. And I figured, all right, well, he's Hulk smashing through walls. I am this failed therapist. So why don't I figure out a way to mend it? And I learned very quickly that I contributed to my own problem. That no much, no wonder this man was Hulk smashing through walls when I won't let him leave. And how much my anxious attachment and my people pleasing and my neediness in that way trapped him and suffocated him. So that's where the anger part came through. And then so much of the work that I continue to do now is shaped by my role as a wife and as a as a mother. Parenting has rocked my entire existence in so many ways. And I've had to allow for the work that I do to evolve along with the shit show that is the parenting and partnering world.

Mary: 5:54

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so this idea of anger, it's I've mentioned this so often because really my topics, I have them um basically related to women's experiences. And so when we talk about anger as women, I think we tend to think about it as something that we shouldn't do. It's dangerous, we look crazy. And then you're talking about your husband, this stereotypical male anger shower that it, you know, because for men, I think anger is acceptable. It's one of the acceptable emotions. Sadness, melancholy tends not to be, but it's opposite for women. What has been uh whatever your personal experience, your professional experience with that?

Davina: 6:40

No, it's it's entirely accurate. Men are allowed to experience happiness and anger. Women are allowed to experience some sadness and some happiness. So when men experience anything other than anger, and anything more vulnerable beneath it, they are a pussy. They're weak, they're beta, they're they're you know, soft. And women, when we experience anger or express anger, we are typecast as a ball busting bitch. There's really no in-between there, and it leaves us all suffocated when we're all wired inherently to experience a wide range of all of these emotions. And especially anger that's so deeply rooted in survival. But yes, the way that they manifest, the way that we express them are very different. My husband Hulk smashed through walls, we replaced doors and drywall and all of this. And I, through my training, I learned that I also battled anger. I just internalized it. And I would emotionally punish and withhold intimacy and with and not just sexual intimacy, but emotional intimacy. And I would punish through shame. And there were these ways that I hadn't, even through all of my training, through all of this, I hadn't quite seen that what I was dealing with was anger, like with very much within the anger family. And I struggled within it as well.

Mary: 7:59

Yeah. And we do tend to internalize. You know, you talk about being a helper, and I don't like to stereotype gender, sex roles, whatever. But so often women are the ones that have been socialized to be the connector and we're not supposed to explode. So then, yes, it turns inward and often becomes physical symptoms and that kind of thing. But we talked, obviously, we mentioned this idea of childhood. So um when did you come to this realization that, oh my gosh, yeah, like that's kind of important in informing how we emotionally regulate or express our emotions?

Davina: 8:42

Yeah. So my schooling was in forensic psychology. So my first year, I interned with Department of Youth Services in Massachusetts at a juvenile facility. And of course, that was still kids being kids and not kids being kids. This was kids behaving in very childlike ways when it came to managing emotions and aggression. My second year was at an adult male medium security prison for sex offenders.

Mary: 9:07

Wow.

Davina: 9:08

And then that became a realization of, oh, we're all just walking, you know, we're kids walking in adult bodies, no matter the age. I was also witnessing how I would, I would shut down like a preteen in like my like moody emo ways. And how my husband, when he would get upset, he behaved very childlike. And so these, it was more so a very slow burn of acknowledging this and really seeing that outside of what the literature shows us and the research shows us, we can see it plain as day in traffic, in the checkout line. We can see how so many of us are not only shaped by our childhood, we are still trapped within that emotional age and maturity of like we are most significant trauma that we just didn't know how to process. It overwhelmed our ability to cope.

Mary: 9:57

Yeah. And I think that idea of wherever the biggest trauma happened or the thing, the event, that's sort of the age that we function emotionally. I just find that even though for all the years I've done this work, that still is so fascinating to me. Same.

Davina: 10:15

I mean, it's one, we see it behaviorally, right? You're acting like a child. But when we learn more about the inner working and the way that especially the anger part of our brain, the fear center, the amygdala lights up in a similar fashion to children, we can actively see that uh the behaviors are driven by my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, the meaning that I that I assign to them. So if I haven't evolved that part, my physical age is happening. Yeah. But my emotional age is quite literally just stuck back there.

Mary: 10:49

Yeah. And I think sometimes we can mistake suppressing anger for regulating it. So can you explain a little how you see that being different? Totally.

Davina: 10:58

It's a lot of the intellectualizing. It's the same shit I used to do, right? Like I have this degree, these multiple degrees, I have all of this experience. So I must not struggle with these things. I must have a really firm grasp over my mental health. And it is that that we we sometimes think that just because someone is calm, appearing, that they are regulated internally. But yes, we're likely within a freeze or a fawn response. And we are still operating within this survival mode, numbing out until things feel safe again. And the reason why it doesn't bubble back up later is because I've suppressed it so deeply that I've almost forgotten about it. Or I've suppressed it so deeply that I've then converted it into shame or guilt that I have for myself. That's what I did. I would feel so much anger, righteous anger. I would shove it down because it just I didn't know what to do with it. And I don't want to feel out of control and powerless over myself. So then later on, when I'm overwhelmed with the disgust that we sometimes feel with feeling that way toward people we love, I then would internalize that as, oh man, like I'm viewing my family member this way. I'm viewing my friend in this way. That must be really wrong of me to feel at all. So let me minimize entirely my original upset and then just store this as being my character defect, my flaw, instead of really seeing the nuance there that my upset was righteous, it was valid, it was real. What I did with it wasn't great. What they did with it likely wasn't great, and find a new way through, but we're not taught into the minutiae of how to do these things.

Mary: 12:48

We absolutely aren't. And you're, I mean, that idea of shame, you know, we experience this feeling or these strong feelings, and because we're told we're not supposed to feel those things, then we feel badly for having the feeling. So when we then get caught up in that and that stuckness happens, we're not really regulating. So this idea of emotional regulation, I also want to maybe define that a little bit. And I I tend to do the definition stuff a lot because there's so much misinformation or confusing information out there. So, how do you go about starting to regulate emotion versus simply shoving it somewhere and trying to pretend it didn't happen?

Davina: 13:38

Yeah, and I love how much you get into the definition of these things because especially across social media and a lot of a lot of us are deeply misinformed, myself included in many areas, I'm sure. It becomes this acknowledgement that regulation isn't staying calm all the time. We're not meant to stay regulated entirely. It's more so about how quickly, how effectively I can get activated and then return back to some level of balance and harmony within my existence. It's not never being upset. It's not eliminating anger, like the very traditional anger management world would perceive. It's it's so much more about what I do when I get activated, how I discuss these things with myself, what solutions I come up with, and how much static that I have in my chest, how much of that actually resolves, what that's coming through in myself narratives, in the way that I view the world, in how able and capable I feel to move through certain distress experiences and those types of things. It's really just finding some level of balance in between all of the chaos that we are meant and wired to actually experience.

Mary: 14:53

And I think starting from a place of grace, you know, recognizing that whatever we have developed came from a place of survival. So in your family, um, if you were the one that was the placator, you know, you're making sure everybody's okay, or you were the identified patient, you were the bad kid, all of that developed to somehow try to stabilize, stabilize that environment of childhood is how I see it. And then we, as we talked about, we sort of freeze at that emotional age. We carry that behavior into adulthood. And then we're like, why is this not working? It's all we, you know, it's all we know. But I think understanding, first of all, it was a strength at one point. It's what you needed to do to survive. And now transition that, understand and transition, like, okay, it's just not working anymore. It's like now you have the wrong tool. So finding a new tool and new coping strategies, I think is key.

Davina: 15:53

Totally. And what you're what you're touching on is multiple truths. We very much are raised within black and white. Anger is good, anger is bad, you know, this this type of happy smile is good, anger is bad more so. And what you're expressing is about, what you're advocating for is about multiple truths. It's the and. But when so many of us are raised with this notion, and then we adopt and absorb and live within this narrative that I am bad for experiencing this, or I shouldn't, or I'm I'm inherently flawed for having it, it's a really hard thing to convert that into grace and compassion for myself in adulthood. We're talking decades of that narrative being reinforced. And so when clients come to me or friends, family, anyone comes to me who wants to do some of this work, that's almost always the biggest step, the biggest shift that we have to make is just flirting with maybe being curious about the potential of maybe giving myself compassion without just radically forgiving, either, as if things didn't matter and that I don't also hold self-responsibility over it. Yes. It becomes this and experience. And when we can acknowledge that what need I was attempting to meet was valid and real and true, survival, what I did with it was poor, and I can shift what I do with it while still getting that original need met. That's where really our power lies here.

Mary: 17:25

Yeah. And you used one of my favorite words, curiosity, because I think we scramble once we're in a situation and it's not working. And, you know, like let's think about a marriage. Like you mentioned, like there's two styles here, they're clashing, they're not working, you're growing farther apart. I think that panic can set in. But if you can take a minute and be curious, like, wow, I always seem to react this way. I wonder where that came from. I think that starts to be that first little thread to pull, understanding insight does not equal change. But I think it's important because I think that's part of the self-forgiveness cycle.

Davina: 18:04

Absolutely. And that kind of goes back to your you asking about the regulation part of how can we really tell? It is leading with curiosity about what happens within my body when this experience happens. When I say, Oh, it's fine, I'm just gonna let it go, air quotes all day, that I'm just going to let it go. What do you actually feel? Do you actually feel a level of release from your chest? Or does it feel more constrained, more heavy, like there's a big old box right in there? It's leading with curiosity about what actually am I experiencing somatically that I can then make meaning of intellectually, which is typically what we do, right? And it is leading with curiosity, just wondering what it is. And I love that neither one of us is using why, because we know what the why does. It it helps us instead of looking at ourselves through this point of ridicule, it instead opens up this, oh, I wonder. I wonder what that is. I wonder where that came from. And I wonder how I came to be in this way without then going into all of the flawed narratives that we have.

Mary: 19:18

Yeah. So, okay, 17 things in there that I loved. Let me think about um, the one thing is you also brought up um accountability. You know, we can look at what our parents did, what they knew, how they parented, and say it's all because of my mom. It's all because of my dad's drinking. And I think one of those keys that we get to of change is accepting that that happened. Our parents were not perfect, and here we are now. Okay, so there have been so many themes that you have brought up that I want to tease apart a little more. The one thing that I loved is a little bit ago, you brought up the kind of the concept of. Not blaming the situation. So, in other words, we can look at what happened to us and we can say, Well, I'm this way because my mom, it that's the why, right? I'm this way because my mom did this, or my dad drank, or all that can be true. And there's your and that you brought up, and you have responsibility now to play with the hand you're dealt. You're in the game, you got the cards, you gotta play them. I think that that's the that's one of the hardest things, I think, to just get to that acceptance of okay, it that happened, and now what?

Davina: 20:35

Yeah, and that's what I so much of what I lead with in in my work within myself and of course professionally is this concept of radical self-responsibility. That yes, this happened, you aren't to blame for it, you are responsible for it. In any given moment, no matter what happens, you are still responsible for what you do as a result of what happens. And that's where I think sometimes we in the work that I do, almost always, it's well, you made me angry. If you hadn't done this, then I wouldn't have done this. And we do have this fundamental human need to justify our behavior, right? We we are much more encouraged to stay the same for survival than we are to evolve and change. And so we understand all of that and still say, yeah, and right? Yes, they they got loud with you. Yes, they they yelled, yes, they name called, and what did you do as a result of that? And a lot of the time it feels there, there is this dissonance that we can have and this push against the concept that I'm supposed to rise. I'm supposed to be held to a higher standard. I'm I'm supposed to just let them get away with it, is almost always the language, the narrative that we take. And yeah, because I lead with so much more pride in myself. I feel better about myself in the way that I manage myself. I convert that guilt and shame into pride and compassion because of those things coming up. And for the most part, I'm able to keep my shit together. Every so often I'm not, I'm I will take the emotional bait, I will stoop, my inner petty gets pulled all the way out. Yes. And here's what I'm doing, so that I can hopefully, with this work, with hope in myself and faith in myself, not make the same mistake twice in the same way.

Mary: 22:35

Yeah, I think sometimes we believe that if we are healthy, we are healed, period, that we're not gonna do it again. And that's just not human. Two things that I think are important. You brought up not only the somatic part of this, but and the how does your body feel part, but also the narrative part. The what are you thinking? What's what is your story? Like, what do we assign meaning to and how do we assign the meaning? And I think those two things, both of those are so important. And not everyone can access both of them in the same way. And I see you nodding. So I know you know what I mean, but I I've had clients say to me, like, well, I'm not thinking anything. I just feel so mad. And I'm like, but there's something, there's an interpretation there. When someone does X, you interpret that to mean they don't care about you or they're intentionally trying to be mean, like those kinds of things. How do you tease that apart with your clients?

Davina: 23:36

Yeah. So first we start with affect labeling, right? We tend to use a lot of anger family words when we're describing how we feel. And because anger is a secondary emotion, we have to dig in deeper to what the primary was. Back in the day, I had this guy friend who was up in arms, absolutely unwilling to acknowledge that anger is secondary. So we broke it apart. We I asked him, it was like a night of drinking on a weekend, nothing crazy. But it was, well, I was angry at, I think it was his sister at the time. I was angry at my sister. Okay, well, well, for what? Well, she pissed me off. Okay. What did she do that pissed you off? Well, she left me alone to deal with this instead of coming into town to help me with my mom. Okay. So yes, anger is there. What's underneath it? It sounds like disappointment to me. It sounds like loneliness and feeling let down. That those are much different than just anger, right? And so through each one of these things, we can ask ourselves, okay, well, what about that? What about that? What about that? And then through the affect labeling, through really enhancing our emotional vocabulary, getting more emotionally literate, we can then understand ourselves more. It's not about making excuses for other people or justifying other people's, other people's behavior. It's so much more about acknowledging what happened, coming up with explanations for the behavior so that I can live with more peace within my own body, so that I feel like when I actually let it go, I'm putting it down. I'm placing it down. I know the shape and the color and the texture and the weight that it carries. And I can actively choose to put it down because now I understand it. So we always want to start with affect labeling. We expand the emotional vocabulary, get more granular in what those emotions mean. And now we hear people saying, even I feel small when, versus I know the exact wording that I want, it's better than I'm frustrated by you. Or it pisses me off when you. So if we can start understanding what was at the root of it, then the story through context clues, we can typically put together quite simply. And it what I end up seeing for so many of my clients, I'm sure you as well, right? You see this like this lift. The shoulders go back, the chest gets full, they share that with you. There, there's typically some level of tears and also frustration that it seems so easy. And why did I struggle for so long? But we have to start with the basics. And that's where everything I do is is rooted in the tenets of learning how to read. It's not anger management, it's anger intelligence. We are we are becoming literate in this language that most of us were never taught how to speak.

Mary: 26:42

Yes, that's so true. And that secondary emotion is really something that people don't know and or if they know, they forget. Because I think we think about the root emotions, things like disappointment, hurt, or especially fear as weak. You know, we're at the mercy of a hurt or a fear. But when we're angry, we are activated and it's it's much, I will say, safer. But then again, a lot of times women just turn that around and then they shove it somewhere so they don't feel it because it's not okay to feel. But I just think you're right. It's so important to understand that when I was a kid, I was so disappointed because my dad almost never showed up for me. So then I just got mad about it and I'm still mad at my dad. And you're right. Once you can just move that aside and like look underneath and be like, oh yeah, I remember that now. But it feels so much harder to be hurt all the time and disappointed than to have that hot anger, I think.

Davina: 27:52

Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's so much more vulnerable. I have to admit, harm done. And none of us want to do that. There's also this notion of bravery and courage, as if we aren't scared first. I tell this, I'm raising two boys, I'm raising two men. And when I talk to them about bravery and courage, I tell them you're supposed to be scared first. That's the point. If you weren't scared first and did it anyway, you're just doing normal stuff that everyone else does all the time. It's it's not any different. So being able to see and acknowledge that, oh, this is fear, that's maybe coming through as anxiety, or my son says, I'm just stressed out, it's that kind of thing. But underneath it is the fear of the unknown and a lack of confidence in my ability to navigate it. So if we can convert that over from fear into I have faith in my ability to navigate whatever comes next, I trust the future version of me to know what to do, then it can morph more into that courage, that bravery that we all really want and that we all find to be so magnetic and something that we want to achieve, but we don't want to feel or admit the ick that has to come first, the weakness as many of us perceive it, to come first. Yeah.

unknown: 29:18

Yeah.

Mary: 29:18

And you just segued into the next thing I wanted to talk about a little bit. And that is how do we not repeat the cycle? How do we teach our children to emotionally regulate? How do we kind of break the generational cycle? Because you're talking about a husband who has outward anger or had, right? That was how he expressed it. Now you have boys. And so I think sometimes it's we can first underestimate how perceptive our children are, and also underestimate how important it is to name the things and help them do what you just said. So, how does someone start to then break the cycle if they've seen this in their family, in their children, and start to teach their children how to regulate these feelings for themselves?

Davina: 30:08

First thing is going to be doing it for yourself. Our kids pick up on bullshit. They sniff out inauthenticity. They are going to behave in the way that I behave, not in the way that I tell them to be. So, first, it's so much of the work was me recognizing that and being willing to acknowledge that it starts with me. They are little mirrors. They show us what behaviors we show them. And when we see it on them, it's gross, right? Like we see it, and we're just like, oh, what is that? Get rid of it. Call the therapist, call the pigs, like find out what's wrong with my kid. When in reality, if we're really open to seeing it, we will see that they are behaving in ways that I behave. So some of the ways that that we we do this in our family is by modeling these things. We don't really fight in front of our kids. My husband and I don't really fight like that anymore. He's now nearly five years sober. We're doing really, really well. And he is now anger management certified in the whole deal with me. So there's that part that it's it's one about how we handle conflict. Our kids see us TIFF. They might see us what they would perceive as a fight, which isn't definitely not one, but if it's the most that they've experienced, that's that's the label they'll give it. But we we not only let them watch us engage in topics and arguments that are appropriate, we invite them in to watch us repair. So it can be something where we say, Hey, do you remember in the car when Papa and I got into the argument on the way to skate park? Yes. Okay, what was that like for you? And then they share. Like we were scared, we we thought you were mad at each other. Okay, can I share with you what I was experiencing? Yes, here's what I was happening, here's what was happening for me. And here now that I'm with Papa and I've I've taken some time to think about it and understand more about it. Papa, this is what was upsetting me. Here's what I did about it that I wish I would have done differently, that I'm gonna work on for next time. Here's where I'm looking for accountability from you. Are you open to trying this and that next time? Yes, okay, great. Thank you. I love you, whatever. And it becomes this series. But what a lot of us do is fight behind closed doors as if cat kids can't hear through walls. Or assume that even if they didn't hear us, that they won't pick up on that energy of discomfort. We know when we're in a perfectly peaceful room and somebody walks in and the energy shifts, everyone feels that. So acknowledging it is almost always the very first thing. They don't know what to do with all of this. We barely do. So we want to be able to share with them to whatever extent we can what it is that I do now. We talk it through, not just, hey, I'm sorry I yelled. I won't do that again, which is what I used to say. It's instead, hey, are you open to hearing what was happening for me earlier? Yes. Okay, great. Here's where I here's where I felt unheard. Here's where I felt ignored. Here's where I was having a hard time. Here's what I did with it. I I take accountability for that. I never apologize to my kids for my feelings. They're not. I don't, I don't feel bad for feeling how I felt. I feel bad about the way that I handled it. So I tell them, I'm not sorry that I got angry. I'm not sorry that I felt these ways. I am sorry, though, for the way that I handled it, for what I did with it. And then we we can pull and make it more of a conversation with them. But there is so much shame and disgust when we behave in ways that we promised ourselves that we never would. That more of us shy away. We shove it down, we repress it, we overcompensate by waking up merry poppins the next morning, trying to make everything super cute and the Mickey Mouse pancakes and all of this, but that's not what they need. They don't need us to glaze over it. They need us to open it up and show them what each part looks like and feels like and what to do with it. And to an added little thing at the sun. Yes. I am working on not repeating the same wounds that I experienced, right? I'm not trying to bleed on kids who didn't wound me. I also am very open and accepting of the fact that I am likely creating different wounds that I have not experienced yet, that I don't know how they'll manifest later yet. And part of that has been a it's been a real challenge in being able to radically accept that I'm doing my best with what I know and what I'm what I think will be their the path of least regret for them. And I have no doubt that there are some things that I'm building in them and some ways that I'm wounding them that aren't as obvious to me yet.

Mary: 35:06

Yeah, well, you spoke about bravery. That's a really brave thing to say because I think that so many parents are terrified that they're gonna screw their kids up. And one of the things that I've seen so often, and even my in my own family, there were five kids in my family. No one has the same experience. A parent makes a comment, and every one of the five kids is gonna hear that differently. One is gonna think it's funny, one is gonna be wounded by it. So your kids interpret things you say and do in ways different from each other, ways like you're saying you can never imagine how later that is not a flashball moment for them. Like you don't know what's gonna happen. But I think one of the most powerful things you're handing them is you are diffusing conflict. How many people do you know that are afraid of conflict and they won't engage? It's bad, it's scary, it means you don't love somebody. It's like, actually, no, it doesn't. If there was no conflict, there would be no resilience. So what you're doing for them, which I love, is you're you're just diffusing it. Like here, this thing happened. What was it like for you to see this disagreement? And here's how you know, you're basically showing them by just being there, here's how you can navigate this for yourself later. I love that.

Davina: 36:31

Yeah. That's what we've determined to be the top thing. We don't place any emphasis on grades. We read with them, sure. Yes. But more than anything, we we want to build resilience and fortitude in my kids. I want them to, I constantly have this narrative of if God forbid something happened to me tomorrow, would I feel confident that I've equipped them to even navigate the grief of losing me? Right. It it becomes this bigger picture thing that I'm working very much on my kids' soft skills. Hard skills, they will learn on YouTube and they can learn it in a weekend. I want them to know what to do with it. When my son was bullied in in kindergarten, many of my mom friends were like, go to the principal, go complain, get him pulled out of that school, put him in a new school. And there we went through a multi-month period where my son just did not want to go to school. And of course, at some point I did bring it up to the administration, but more than anything, I told him, there are gonna be mean people everywhere, all the time, forever. I won't be able to remove you from each one of those situations. So here's what we can do about it. Right. And then by the end of the year, and this is likely won't be the case for everyone. This is likely more the exception than the rule. By the end of the year, he and his bully were good friends because we talked about why people bully each other. That what is that kid experiencing at home? What is his life? Maybe he just needs kindness, maybe he just needs these things. Don't sacrifice your safety in order to provide it. Remove yourself, yes. And here's maybe an explanation for the behavior without the excuse.

Speaker 3: 38:13

Yeah.

Davina: 38:13

And so I want to build up in them the ability, the fortitude to navigate challenge. I have no idea what that's going to look like. Our world is incredibly unpredictable. And I want to help them have more confidence in their ability to navigate it. And this is something that I learned in the last few years of my life how to do for myself. And I'm still teaching myself. But leaving, leading with that, and that's what I do with them all the time, is I'm still learning. The reason I still shout when I get upset is because I wasn't taught these things. My parents didn't have the luxury of focusing on mental health. They were just trying to survive in a new country, right? This it they didn't have the luxury of focusing on these things. So I do with you, and also for me, I'm still learning these things as is Papa. And the part that I place so much emphasis on when it comes to anger, primarily, is what happens neurochemically and within our bodies. That a lot of the time it feels like a moral failing when I can't keep my shit together. When in reality, your your frontal lobe is hijacked, the blood supply is gone from your rational brain. You, it's no longer an unwillingness, it's an incapability. And the more that my clients learn about this, the more they understand and they can pull themselves away from the version of me that I thought just wasn't capable, that was not good enough to this part of being, this machinery that we are constantly trying to evolve and rewire, sure. And we inherited. So we we can offset, not blame, but try to figure it out. We weren't given a manual. And my kids, both of my kids, inherited my and my husband's. Brain chemistry when we were extremely wounded. But before we had really done the true work. And now we're we're experiencing what that looks like and helping them rebuild that for themselves.

Speaker 3: 40:12

Yeah.

Mary: 40:12

That's the lightsaber I talked about, the giving them the, you know, you have faith in them to learn how to navigate. You don't need to swoop in and fix everything. And I saw the result of that when I worked with college students. I mean, I had parents that filled out the applications for the college. And then once they're there and, you know, the parents can't get access to certain things because of, you know, FERPA and all of those laws, the kids were just stranded. And so I think by starting at a young age to say, I trust that you can learn this and it's okay to mess up. And, you know, all of those things, there is sometimes you don't have the best judgment. And you can think back through that and you can make a different decision next time. And that is such a strong and powerful message to give them.

unknown: 41:05

Yeah.

Davina: 41:05

And again, it's, it's, it's about me starting with that. If I want my kids to be able to forgive themselves after they make mistakes and not internalize it as a fact about themselves, that's my work that I'm still very deep within now. Is how can I show that to myself? How can I make it obvious enough to them and actually think out loud? That's what I've been, what I've been trying to do lately is when these things come through and I'm and I recognize I made a mistake, I will audibly think and I will share, oh man, that's so disappointing. I really didn't love that I did that. Part of me really wants to feel bad about myself, about this. And also, but no, I believe in myself and I know that I'm I'm capable of doing hard things and I know that I'm I'm allowed to forgive myself without acting like it didn't happen. So what can I do about it? And they'll like literally audibly hear my wheels hurt because I'm still trying to do this and I want to be able to model it in any way that I possibly can. Um, but again, who knows? Maybe I'm maybe I'm just making them overly critical. You know, I I don't know. But it seems to be working. My kids are are showing so much more resilience than they ever did. We moved across state lines in February of this year, and that was such an adjustment. And their ability to adapt has been profound. It's been really incredible. And I even see that where I went into the school and I saw my son sitting alone at lunch. He didn't know I was there, and he had his lunch bag open and his face was in it, and he was crying into his lunch bag. And I just, of course, just viscerally wanted to just ball him up and take him home and just protect him and like I'll homeschool you fucking leave over. And it was that that I sat there and I stared at him and I teared from the from the corner of the room. And I I asked myself, like, what can I realistically do? I want to remove him right this second and take him to McDonald's and feed him, you know, all sorts of sodium-fueled food that will help him feel better. But what is that gonna do for him tomorrow? How am I gonna get him to come back tomorrow when I just saved him from this? So I talked to the principal and I talked to the lunch, the woman who was running the lunch, and then one of the cafeteria workers came over and was like, he's gonna be fine. I'm gonna keep an eye on him. And it was that that I left and I felt like my heart stayed there. And then the whole day I worked from across the street from his school so that I could be there right after he got out. And I'm realizing that the things that are really hard here in the moment to watch our kids go through that we just want to fix for them so desperately because we just don't want them to experience a single ounce of pain, is creating a more painful future because we're robbing them of the opportunity of learning how to move through it. And I I thankfully got to see that in real time. And I'm so grateful that that period is over and now he's happy to go to school every day. It's just, it's been a lot of lessons that we've experienced in this last year for every single one of us.

Mary: 44:22

Yeah, it's hard to watch it. And I, you know, I talk about nature a lot. And if you think about the trees that are the strongest are the ones that typically had to endure the most wind, the most rough weather, because it makes the roots stronger and it makes the tree stronger. And so I often look at the lessons of nature because I think we can feel so uncaring when we see our kids struggling. It is heartbreaking. And I just had this conversation with somebody a couple of days ago that it's sort of she saw this thing happening and she was afraid of, you know, there would be some alienation from people. And it it actually happened. And I'm like, but you can't go in there and engineer a solution. This is hard for you to watch. It's hard for her to navigate, but the only way through it is for her to figure it out. And I think there's freedom in this too. When you talk about continuing to do your own work, parents don't have to have all the answers. I think we have, that's the other thing. I think that load of crap we've been told is like, as a good parent, you always know what to do and you always know the solution and you always know what to tell your kids. It's like, well, no, sometimes you have to let them do exactly what you're saying, struggle and cry, and then build that strong root system from adversity so that the next time it's not as hard.

Davina: 45:46

Yeah. And I mean, it's gosh, it's so true. And there, there is this piece about we tell our kids how to behave because we know what we want the end result to look like. I want you to gain composure. I want you to get your shit together and move through and do it anyway. But we bypass the internal systems that have to be on board in order for us to do that. And that's of course what we try to do with ourselves. We are hoping that we can shove things down in that way too. And I remember back to one of my my own therapy sessions as the client a few years ago. And I was sharing with her just deep frustration I had with my kids and their big emotions. They're just like these raw blobs of emotional flesh. Like it's just constant. And I rem and I said something to her about their big emotions and some part of me that like didn't feel like they should experience it. And she said, Well, why not? And my response was, they should just know better. So, of course, from the therapy world, there's a lot to dive into what that means. But it was that that we we expect our kids to know how to do it. We expect them to be able to regulate better than we can. We expect that when we shout for them to calm down and take a deep breath, that they will do it when I'm not.

Mary: 47:09

Yeah.

Davina: 47:09

And it really is we we just bypass these things and in our attempt to stay regulated, we we hyper control what our kids do and the way that our kids behave so that I don't have to experience the distress of your distress. The amount of times that my kid's tantrum became my own is countless. Uh-huh. And it is that about leading with more confidence that no matter what my kid experiences, I'm going to remind myself of what to do. And I do have a few strategies if you're open to me sharing them, about like just quicker things that we can do. Okay. So we oftentimes we we speak with our hands in front of our bodies, right? I can see them in my periphery now, even though I'm not directly looking at them. And I might notice if something is off. If I'm wearing a new ring or a ring is missing, like I lost my engagement ring recently. It's these types of things that we can notice if something is added or removed. So when we're starting to do this work, if you're not ready to go to therapy, if you're not ready to find a provider, but you do want to have some more conscious awareness over what's happening, we add something to your hands. You specifically choose a token, a thumb ring, you paint your thumbnail a certain color. My husband for a very long time sharpied a big circle on the back of his hand. And what it does is it disrupts that loop, that pattern loop. Because when we are angry, we're likely like this or like this, like something is in front of us. So if we can do something to interrupt that pattern just more often, we're also assigning that when I see that circle on the back of my hand, that all right, this is something that I'm working on. I am working on regulating myself a little bit more, recognizing when my heart rate is getting wildly high and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs with the kids. So maybe if I see that, it'll disrupt the pattern. None of these are, it's none of these tools are going to be foolproof. It's more so let's stack, let once that circle stops losing its carrying its weight, you switch to something else. You switch to something new and different. And so I'm constantly trying to encourage my clients to find small things that can be those ripples that turn into waves. And the more things that we can keep in our conscious awareness, the more likely it is that that will become the new subconscious patterning and actually tend to heal things without us even fully recognizing it. Another thing to do is humming. So I just started incorporating this with my kids. Is that when we start to get loud, we'll choose a song and we'll hum the song together because it stimulates the vagus nerve, it activates more of our rest and digest system, and it allows for us to turn this really deep opportunity for rupture, if not full-blown rupture, into a bit of play, into a bit of repair that helps us move through that. And so if we have the visual cue, because we take in things visually before we're even consciously aware of them, if we have the visual cue that's like, oh, wait, hold up, like I'm supposed to be doing something differently here. Oh, what was that? Oh, right, we can hum. We can try something different and just see what that does, see if that helps. And again, we trial and error once that loses its its effectiveness, we add in something new and different.

Mary: 50:28

I really love those suggestions because the one one of the things it does, in addition to the distraction and sort of interrupting the loop, is it takes a lot of that intensity out of it. Like we think it's so important in that moment. And what can you, I mean, draw something silly on your hand or hum a silly tune because all of a sudden, then whatever that was, because most of the time you won't remember in three days what you were yelling about, right? So in that moment, trying to get it down to the size it really is. So I love that that is sort of an another effect of that is um to put it, make it the size it really needs to be. Those are great suggestions.

Davina: 51:11

Totally. And and I always want, you know, us as parents, we we try to make things cute and have things solved before we share them with our kids. But we're learning too, and we're trying to figure this out in real time. So I always suggest talking to your kids about it. When you go and you apologize, or you just radically act like nothing happened and everything's cupcakes and rainbows. Let them know what you're working on. When we apologize to our kids, if we apologize to our kids, there's almost always this like, I won't do it again, or mama's working on it. You know, it's it's not tangible enough. They need to see what it's like to set these goals, how to make them realistic and attainable, and how to actually follow through. So when that comes through, I I went from shouting at my kids, still do every so often, like let's be real, to then sharing with them, this is when I got loud. Right? Like just I'm I might be raising my voice to share it, but I'm letting them know, like, hey, here's the threshold. Here's what's happening with that. And then when we repair, I'll tell them, hey, so I'm working on not being loud. I'm working on staying more calm in the moment. I'm working on how I share things with you, how many times I repeat myself, what I do in that way. And here's what I could use from you. Let's put something on the back of your hand. What token do you want to do? Do you want to paint one of your nails and we'll do this together? You come up with something that's less emotionally driven because then the reason I'm sharing this is because a lot of people say, like, well, when I'm getting angry, just like tell me to calm down or tell me to go take a breath or do a cold plunge or you know, whatever this is. Right. In that moment, you're being voluntole and you're not going to be open to it. You are 100%. And then it and then it causes so much more rupture. Yeah. So we have a bit of a code word. For one of my nephew and me, it's chocolate. For one of my sons, it's rhino. For me and my and my husband, it's banana. And it allows for us to say that in real time and remind each other of a silly word that we've used, but also something that would that gives us context of the conversation that we had. And it doesn't, it is really incredible how quickly it removes all of that static. How much it diffuses so much of the anger in that moment because it's, oh, right. I'm not being told I'm hearing my husband say banana.

Speaker 3: 53:42

Yeah.

Davina: 53:42

Or my my son is saying rhino. And I'm remembering back to this conversation visually where I was holding this rhino toy when we made this deal, when we agreed to be held to a higher standard for ourselves.

Speaker 3: 53:54

Yeah.

Davina: 53:55

And it's it's incorporating them in it is going to be the most powerful thing.

Mary: 54:00

And it also keeps you with having an internal locus of control. In other words, you're not looking to somebody else to calm you down. It's more like they're a partner in the exchange and they're allowed to say kind of the equivalent of hands up, hang on a second, but in a way that, yeah, has a context, has maybe a little bit of humor, instead of giving them the responsibility to tell you what to do. That's a great way to reframe it.

Davina: 54:29

Yeah, thank you. It's it's been so much trial and error. I'm telling you, we've tried so many different things. And at the end of the day, what I'm recognizing is sharing what we're working on and taking those active steps and setting real boundaries that aren't just control, right? Like setting the real boundary of I don't sit near people who hurt me, I'm moving across the room, not stop hitting me.

Mary: 54:52

Yeah.

Davina: 54:53

Those two things and differentiating between them, they are just they're incredibly powerful and so and they are what have been so transformative in my existence. And as I shared at the top, I actually maybe it was it was before we started recording. I was born to be a partner, not a parent. Oh, yeah. Parenting does not come naturally to me.

Mary: 55:13

Sorry, did you want to start there? Yeah. Yeah. I would love to make sure that we touch on that before we end because I teased it in the beginning. Um, so you have an online quiz called Parenting versus Partnership. And I took this quiz. And most people who listen to this show know I don't have my own children. I have stepchildren, but I don't have my own children. And I'm a very um independent person that loves solitude. So I'm thinking I'm gonna be like um, I wasn't sure where I was gonna land between these two. So um I ended up being, I think it was 60% partner. And I don't know if that has to do with what I've always done is work with children, like in my work, work with young people. But tell us a little bit about, you know, this idea of partnership versus parenting. And do you see people tend to think they need to just choose one?

Davina: 56:07

Yes, my God. This came from it's my anecdotal theory from my marriage, from the marriages of my family members and my clients, of course. It was this that I started noticing that once people had kids, that was almost always the biggest, of course, shift in our lives. The rupture that came as a result of it was because we just view things differently. We view the world inherently differently. So I've developed this theory over the last six years that we are wired for parenting or partnering primarily. We can do both super effectively, we can do neither super effectively. It just means that one is going to be the natural way that I view the world, the natural way that I move through and step in and step and step up versus the one that feels so much harder for me. And so, for what we typically see is when a couple has a baby or prepares for a baby, there's one person who inherently believes that 70, 80% of our entire lives have to change. And maybe 20 or 30 can say the same. And those are the people who were born to be parents. That this this becomes more of their identity. This is the people who, when their child is born and babies put in their arms, they feel complete. They feel like this magical connection right away. It makes sense to me. I've I feel at home. And then you have the other person, like myself, that are like, well, okay, well, yeah, they're coming in, but like they're coming into our world and they're coming into our relationship. So 70, 80% can stay exactly the same. And we will modify our lives a little bit to add them in. That's those of us who hold our baby when they're born and are like, what the fuck do I do with this? I'm just supposed to take this home and with their background check to adopt a ferret, but I can bring home this entire human. Like, what is that? And things don't come naturally. I don't quite know how to navigate it. The person that was wired for parenting feels like their partner is just needy and in the way and should just understand that baby comes first now. And the parent is saying, like, okay, yeah, baby's here, but like, I miss my partner. I miss my husband, I miss my wife. I almost feel like they get in the way of my relationship. And in many sessions with these clients, when there's one of each and each relationship, the amount of judgment that comes through and the way that we are willing to perceive each other, and that, okay, the child is now more important than me in our marriage. How does that make sense? And what do you mean you should be as important as this child? How does that make sense? It's such a deep difference between the two. And it causes so much anger and resentment and really a form of a level of disgust that we can have in our partner for viewing this so inherently differently than I do. And so this theory helps us just understand it a little bit more. One, two, when I first started admitting these things, I felt incredibly uncomfortable by it. I shared it with some friends and got a lot of like, what the fuck? Looks like what kind of mom are you? I felt incredibly judged and it contributed to so much of my depressive experience that I had around that time. And so when I started sharing this, and it was like in a it was in one of my sessions that it was like a bing, oh my gosh, this is what I think is happening. I shared it immediately, and they both just felt so seen and understood by both things simultaneously. So then the goals that we had for them was aligned based on that theory and not trying to shove one into the Realm of the other. But how do we work with this? How do we make time for both? How do how do we adjust within both of these systems? And more so than anything, what I want people to take from the result of this quiz is one, let me know if it's accurate for you, if it feels good. And two, if that helps you feel less shameful, if it makes you feel more like you understand yourself more in a way that hasn't been backed by research yet, but in a way that has been lived by so many of us and really helps us to feel more accepting of our own way of viewing it too. Yeah.

Mary: 1:00:38

Yeah, it's I've never seen anything like it. So of course, as soon as I visited your website and I saw it, I'm like, even though I'm not a parent, I'm like, I gotta do this. And I just I love thinking about that because I have seen so many marriages or partnerships suffer because I think again, it's a little bit of socialization that you're supposed to abandon the marriage, the partnership to focus on the kids. Because if you don't, you're a bad parent. And I remember the first time I had a really good friend tell call her kid an asshole, and I was like, and then I was like, well, no, he is kind of acting like that. And it has nothing to do with how they feel about their child. They love their child. They're a wonderful, wonderful parent. But I think when we can have a little bit of that ability to like see this as just this is a person we're raising, and sometimes they do things that are really hard. But also, how do we find ways then to lean a little bit into supporting the relationship, nurturing the relationship? I think sometimes we need permission for that. You know, I think sometimes when when I when people say, well, I would love to just drop the kids off for the weekend with grandma and we could go have a uh weekend together, but I feel so guilty. And it's like, but you don't need to feel guilty. Like, so I think it's important that you have this tool because then it can start the conversation.

Davina: 1:02:06

Yeah, and it allows for us to have that, right? Like, where does that guilt even come from? Who says I have to carry it? Is it really guilt or do you just miss your kid? Or do you not have guilt and that feels guilty? Right. And that's that's creating more guilt for you. But it it really allows for me because we I was convinced that my husband and I were both born to be partners, which is why parenting was so challenging for both of us. And then when I made this quiz, my husband took it many times, and every single time he got part uh parent. Oh wow. So that caused us to have so many more conversations and play the tape back in different ways and really see that he was born to be a parent more than I more than either one of us ever thought. Yeah. And it just makes so much sense to our dynamic now, and it helps us understand it so much more. So now when I'm thinking about how to be a better parent, I'm not saying because I wasn't born to be one and what can I do about it, and that's just not the way that I'm wired. It's instead, okay, well, if I wanted, if I wanted to behave more like someone who was born to be a parent, how would I handle this birthday? What would I do this weekend with my kids? How would I move through my role with them? And what what people around me who have taken this quiz who were born to be parents, what are they doing? What can I learn from them? And also on the inverse, my marriage at this point is very strong and we're very proud of it. We're doing so much work to ensure that it's it's so secure and we're, I'm incredibly proud of it. And those same friends who were born to be parents, who that part comes so easily and it makes so much sense to them, and it feeds a part of their identity in a way that it doesn't for me, they then come to me and say, Hey, my marriage is suffering. How do you view this? How do you handle this? And it becomes so much more of this community, this more tribal experience, this collectivist experience where we can not just point out each other's weaknesses and inflate my strengths, but instead acknowledge where my gaps lie and pull in for reference people whose parent experience I would like to replicate and people whose marriage experience they would want to replicate. Yeah. And allow for that to just be more rich data for us to work with.

Mary: 1:04:37

Yeah. And I just believe we're all okay. However, we are, it's just accepting that and then figuring out where you go from there to get where you want to get, to, to do or be the person that you want to be, have the life you want. So, Davina, this has been a great conversation. And I know you have also an anger quiz on your website. Tell us a little more about what you offer and where people can find you, and then I will link it in the show notes.

Davina: 1:05:05

Yeah, so anyone can find me at a study space anywhere. That's my Instagram handle, all my socials, my website itself. It's really just a place for us to come in, find our balance, and go back out into the world when things get a little rocky. We come back in and we repeat. Um, and so that's where they can find me anywhere there. I do run free groups every Thursday at 11 a.m. Pacific called the Shift Live Lab. And we approach new and different topics. It's skills. You can join Mike and Camera off if you'd like. But I'm really just working to build a community for those of us who don't quite know where to go to land. So that's every Thursday. And then the anger quiz is an anger archetype. So a lot of the time when we're trying to start unpacking the mess, the overfilled suitcase that is anger, we don't really know where to start. So, what this quiz helps us understand is I've basically created these five archetypes based on what our anger serves to protect. And you can go, you take the quiz, it's 10 questions, and you can really see what your top flare is, what the very top thing that affects you most deeply is, and then start working backward to kind of reverse engineer this to understand yourself a little bit more.

Mary: 1:06:20

Yeah. Well, you have so many things that are free, I think, that are that have substance. You know, I think so often people like throw something out there to say, I have this free thing. But when you're you're doing giving things that I think have a lot of um a lot of quality to them. And so I think that's awesome. So I will link all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. I loved this conversation.

Davina: 1:06:48

Same. Thank you so much for having me. I it's it's a breath of fresh air having this conversation with you and of course someone else in the field who just understands it. And this is I love the conversations that are actual conversations and aren't just interviews disguised. It's really wonderful.

unknown: 1:07:05

Yeah.

Mary: 1:07:06

Well, that's one of the things that I strive for. So I always say I don't, I only start with a like a couple signposts of the trail, and then we just kind of find the trail together. So that's what I love that you walked out with me today.

Davina: 1:07:18

So absolutely. Thank you for having me on it.

Mary: 1:07:21

Sure. And I want to thank everyone for listening. If you appreciate the topics and guests on no shrinking violets, please consider showing your support at the link in the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.