Participants received a hard copy of Brad Chapin’s Self Regulation Skillset for Educators journal. One concept (chapter) was covered per session, meeting online weekly to discuss the lesson and our ongoing practice.

The eight sessions with Brad and The Gravity Well are now open to the public and listed here: https://www.thegravitywell.net/s/leadership-training.

In addition, please check out my two episodes with Brad in Season 1: Episode 2 via Clubhouse (audio only) and Episode 25 in-person (audio/video).

Introduction to Skill 7: Understanding Your Motives

Brad | Public Health Care Director:

Choice is such a complicated thing. Period. Choice of how I want to feel about this or choice about what I want to do about it. Gosh, it’s many layers. Yeah. Sometimes you’re right, it’s about dissecting that a little bit to find if there is a level here where I do have some choice and control on that. I think you’re hitting on this autonomy piece that we, yes, but also really interesting research about when one of these needs isn’t being met, our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up. I’ve gotten so much mileage out of this, the work done by DC and Ryan, this last skill here, just we use it also as a leadership model. I mean, if you’re talking about leading a team, their competence, their autonomy to do their work and their connectedness to you, it’s a great model for relationships, leadership, and it’s fundamental, which I love.

You could get really, and I like simple. I mean, there are some theories about motivation that have 30 to 60 different facets. And I’m like, who could, that might be great, but who has time and energy to look at that? I don’t, in the practical sense and also the normalcy of just all the stuff we’re talking about, everything we’ve talked about in here is just a normal human response. And if we’re not feeling well, there’s a really, most of the time, a really pretty good explanation as to why we’re not feeling well. And then

Jenny | Geophysicist:

I’ve heard the crisis we’re in right now, the social, environmental and economic crisis is best described as the leadership crisis.

Brad:

Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Jenny:

To me, what you just said goes right into this and it’s what Tami and I are doing with this and the next course, trying to find leadership of yourself first and foremost. Right?

Tami | Retired Teacher:

For sure.

Jenny:

And then when you’re organizing, to me, that’s helping us understand how we respond to challenges as a community beyond that. Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said about teaching leadership skills simply because we need a societal leadership shift rather than we need a new leader to replace somebody. Right? A very different time. I think it’s why I appreciate the work so much, Brad.

Brad:

Yeah, it’s fun to explore these areas and just how deep you can go down some of these pathways. And I tried to lay out at the beginning that this is surface level. We tried to take 200 years worth of research and make it, and something that a lay person can work on a skill every week and feel like they understand it and can do something with it. But you could take, I mean a semester for each one of these skills, there’s just piles of research and books and things you could, rabbit holes that you could go down. I’m interested in that feedback. It’s like, did we go deep enough on some of these? Was it two surface levels?

Jenny:

Welcome to the last class, you’ve made it! This has been tremendous. And I am thrilled with what this work has meant just in my life and in the work I’m doing and feeling like something easy that’s added to my, what I’m already doing, not in a way that it’s piling on, just lightening the load, if you will. That’s what I feel like this has been for me. Thank you very much, Brad. Oh, I’m not saying thank you and I shouldn’t be. Hey Tami. I was trying to avoid it. It’s a new language. Yeah, this is ongoing and I’ve sent everybody in my last email I just wanted to touch on, there’s a, I’ll put it in the chat here too, but I’ve got a link for a survey. I did just mention to Brad if he wants any changes, I might add some questions from him and then notify you guys if that happens. But yeah, any feedback you can offer me either privately or on our social media. That being said, I’m exiting Meta as of tomorrow. That’s everything I wanted to cover off in terms of housekeeping. And then Brad, if you can just remember what you had mentioned when we started, how you want to structure today before you go into the lesson.

Brad:

Hi everybody. I hope you had a decent week and skilled training and that your challenges were limited. I know for me, we had a joint commission visit the hospital here, which is an accrediting body at the federal level. When they show up with seven surveyors, many of them physicians to look at your entire process in your hospital and tear it apart and tell you what you need to improve on, that’s always we need to, you talk about challenges for us, that’s an anxiety provoking situation. I have worked all week to apply the skills here that we are working on. And like we said at the beginning, you’re not ever going to be perfect at this and that’s not the goal. Setting that expectation, these are skills we can make improvements upon. I work all the time just like you all to try to catch myself and use the language and remind myself of the pieces that I can influence and which ones I don’t have control over.

I thought today we would just for sure touch on this last skill, but then also maybe when we go into the breakout rooms, just overall we haven’t dug into your personal plans and I hope you’ve been adding to that as we go along. But that’s the last section there. We put some of those handouts on page one 16. It’s just a one page look at the whole skillset. If you ever want to take a picture of something to have with you, that’s a good page just as a reference. But hopefully you’ve been adding into that personal plan as we go through each skill, what’s meaningful for you. And then I talk about a meaningful picture to take as a reminder. That’s your personal plan on how you apply these skills in your life. Might just take a little bit of time in your breakout groups to talk about where you’re at with your plan, if you feel good with that.

And then I think we’ll use that time at the end to see if there’s any questions around your plan or I always like to talk to people too and ask about where do you go from here? What are some of your concrete steps that you can keep this alive and moving? Do you want to take a picture of this and print it out and post it up? Where in your workspace do you want to laminate it and do something with it? Put it on a coffee cup, get a tattoo of it. I don’t know, somewhere it’s kept front and center. This is just the first step. Alright, this skill to me, this is motivation, motives, and I talked a little bit last week. I think you all are familiar, it’s a super short chapter, but I have gotten, I was telling Jenny, so much mileage out of this work by Deci and Ryan on Self-Determination Theory.

They really did a lot of great work to boil down a big pile of research on what motives for human beings, what motivates and drives our behaviour. And there’s some motive profiles and theories that have up to 60 different aspects of motivation. And I was telling the group that that’s just too much. We like simple, we like to keep it straightforward and something that you can use. Competence, autonomy, and relatedness seem to drive a lot of what human beings do. Their research is really interesting. The part about if one of these areas isn’t being met, that our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up significantly. It really makes sense to focus on these three areas, that first one, that competence. If we’re not feeling good at something, or I think this comes up a lot, I teach a nursing class, new nurses, third year nursing students before this.

I think about their challenges with competence that are coming over the next few years in their life or a new teacher in education. When we’re working with students, obviously they’re trying to learn competencies in all kinds of different areas as kiddos. When someone’s not feeling competent, that need is still banging away in there. And when we talk with teachers in education, if Johnny’s not too good during reading class, not too good at reading, and he’s got to be there several hours a week, that’s the time he could really find out that he’s a pretty good class clown during reading and he can feel competent at doing that because he’s not so competent at reading. And we do the same thing on the job in relationships. I also think this is a super great leadership model working with your team on competence. And then the second one, autonomy, that’s the opposite of micromanaging people.

You provide ‘em enough competence training and support, but also provide them enough autonomy to do the job on their own, have freedom to choose and make choices. When we apply that to ourselves, it’s like what are some areas, do I not feel like I have a choice? And I think Jenny was bringing that up before we hopped on all here together. Was there areas in my life where I don’t feel like I have a lot of autonomy? Sometimes it’s financial, sometimes it’s political, sometimes it’s in relationships, sometimes it’s at my job. If I’m not feeling well or feeling distressed or dysregulated, is that maybe a reason? And that would be pretty normal to feel distressed about if I don’t feel like I have a lot of choice. And we also talked about the layers of choice to feel I have some choice about how I think about things.

I have some choice about what I want to do about things in response to them. That’s an area, if you define it and put it in a box, you can see where you can move inside the box a little bit. There’s some wiggle room there. And then the last one, relatedness is just such a huge one. We know people don’t do well in isolation. We’ve seen that the epidemic of loneliness does not lead to a good place for human beings most of the time. And if we’re not feeling connected, I also see just in the work that I do, human beings can tend to do some really unhealthy things to try to find connection. To just be aware of if we’re not feeling connected to someone, how do we go about establishing connection or reestablishing connection? I’m going to quit talking about that, but that’s my overview. It’s only 10 after. I’d like to send you all into your breakout rooms unless you have any questions about those three. But this one’s pretty straightforward. I think the chapter’s only two or three pages, which is how we like it. Short and sweet. Take a look at your reflection questions and process those together. And then if you want to have some discussion around each of the three areas, that makes sense to me. And then overall how you feel about your plan and being able to commit to that going forward. But that would be good.

Jenny:

See you on the other side. We’ll go about 20 minutes on this just talking about, and then we’ll come back in and talk about the program overall. We’ll be ready to do that, as well. Okay. Good luck everyone. See you on the other side.

Break Out Session with Teachers and an Engineer (text only)

Brad (11:10):

How are you?

Teacher 3:

I’m okay. How are you?

Brad:

Good. Where are you at?

Teacher 3:

I am in Red Deer, Alberta.

Brad:

You’re in Red Deer. Okay. Alright.

Teacher 3:

I’m one of the teachers in the teacher group, but not at the same school as everybody else.

Brad:

Gotcha. What age group do you? I can’t remember.

Teacher 3:

Right now. I’m six to eight, 6, 7, 8.

Brad:

Junior high. Okay.

Teacher 3:

Yeah. Junior high. The time of your life, right?

Brad:

Yes. Many self regulation issues with that group.

Teacher 3:

Yeah, it’s never ending.

Brad:

No, it’s not. They’re trying to figure it all out. Gosh. And they actually, sometimes we think they actually almost go backwards a little bit with their self-regulation at that age. It’s interesting. Yeah. Alright. Tami, can you hear us okay?

Tami | Retired Teacher:

Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m getting solar panels installed. They were just finishing doing a quick walkthrough to show me what to do if there’s a fire and stuff.

Brad:

Okay. That sounds important. Okay. Alright, cool. What are your thoughts, feelings about these three motives?

Tami:

I’m retired, I tend to do things that I’m competent at.

Brad:

That’s interesting, yeah, you get to choose, you have autonomy, you have a lot more choice there on how you do things and you probably are choosing things that you enjoy or are good at. Are you trying any new things in retirement?

Tami:

Well, like Jenny said, we’re doing that course for power and learning about activism. I’ve joined two new groups, I’m part of Alberta Resistance and I do a lot of the research coordination and stuff and do a weekly newsletter for that. I’m part of the board, as well, I’ve made a lot of new connections that I’m making that way and then helping to organize the recall.

Brad:

That checks the relatedness box too. You’re doing something there that’s checking all three. Good. How about Teacher 3? How do you feel about, have you had, one of the things I hear people say about competence a lot of times is if there’s been major changes or anything like that.

Teacher 3:

I mean, I don’t know. I do have a new-ish job in teaching this year. Yeah, I think I just get most frustrated when I feel like other people don’t offer grace in certain areas. Does that make sense? But I also get frustrated with myself when I don’t know the information, how do I put that? If I feel like something wasn’t communicated to me and then I make the mistake, then I’m like, if someone would’ve told me, I wouldn’t have made that mistake. Does that make sense?

Brad:

Yeah. If someone would’ve just let me know or there was a pamphlet or whatever, I would’ve worked to become competent at this if I would’ve known. But then I look sometimes incompetent if I, yeah, and that doesn’t feel good.

Teacher 3:

No.

Brad:

For sure.

Teacher 3:

But I don’t know, I’ve also been teaching for a long time, there’s only small things like that, but I do enjoy changing things up and not knowing because I think that’s where people grow. I’ve taught all the grades and taught a lot of different subjects, but I think…

Brad:

I think that’s an interesting thing when you talk about balance here with that competence because there is that whole growth mindset. I have to push. I don’t have to, but there’s certainly benefit in pushing our competence sometimes outside of our comfort zone into areas where we aren’t competent.

Teacher 3:

Yeah, that’s hard because what do they say? It’s uncomfortable for people, but I think that that’s where you grow when things aren’t comfortable.

Brad:

Yeah. Have you read anything on the growth mindset idea that almost can’t grow without challenge or feeling challenges and competence? Hello?

Brad:

You just flew right into our group like that.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

Oh, I didn’t mean to join a breakout room. I thought I was in the lobby.

Brad:

We’re in breakout rooms, that’s good. You’re welcome.

Engineer:

Yeah, sorry I lost track of time. I was in the middle of a spreadsheet.

Brad:

You’re fine. We were just digging into those three areas, competence, autonomy, and relatedness and just sharing about that. We’ve got about 15 minutes left or so. Teacher 3 was just talking a little bit about work and trying to balance competence. She’s been teaching for a while and feels pretty good there. But also how do we push that a little bit to grow outside of our comfort zone and competence, but also she mentioned sometimes feeling less competent when we don’t have information at work and we’re still asked to be competent at something and we don’t have all the stuff to feel confident. I think all of us can probably relate to situations.

Engineer:

Yeah, that’s tough when you’re expected to have the answers, but you haven’t been given the Yeah, I struggle with competence a lot at work because I recently changed my career and basically started over. Yep,

Brad:

That’s what I’m learning. Exactly. What we were talking about is.

Engineer:

Even though I worked for 10 years as an engineer, now I’m doing something completely different. I’m starting over.

Brad:

And I think Teacher 3, grace is a good word. Are you able to give yourself grace during that time? We recognize this is new for me and times of change is where we struggle the most with competence. Makes sense. Yeah. How about the autonomy one, the freedom to have choice, either personal or financial or in relationships or There’s a number of, I mean all aspects of life where sometimes we can feel trapped. Anything comes to the surface on that one?

Engineer:

I feel like a lot of times it’s like I feel trapped by the choices. I have choices, but I don’t like any of the choices presented and then I feel really frustrated and I’m not getting the autonomy. I feel really lucky in that I work from home and I have flexible hours, but I often feel constrained because my job requires meeting deadlines and getting tasks done within a certain amount of time. When it takes me longer than what the cost estimate expected of me, I feel really stressed and I am probably working a lot of unpaid time because I feel ashamed that I can’t meet the cost estimate.

Brad:

Wow.

Engineer:

And that’s not in my job description. I’m not expected to work unpaid time, but I just feel ashamed that I can’t meet the expectations that I just, oh my gosh, unpaid time.

Brad:

I mean, if we were to lay out choices, what choice do you have there? I mean

Engineer:

I would like my employer to recognize that they screwed up when they did the estimate, the job estimate. I am just over a year at my job, I’ve been involved with some of the cost estimates, the one project I’m currently working on. But I see myself as taking, I don’t take responsibility for that estimate. I helped with it. I was one of my first ones and I was guided by my supervisor who has now left the company and I feel like there should be some contingency at the company for when I’m not responsible for the estimate, but I’m suffering the consequences of it I think I should have to work on. And there’s no right answer. My boss will never admit that. Oh, most of my supervisors will never admit that I should work unpaid time. But then at the same time, when I blow the budget, because I can’t meet the expectations, there’s no solution other than making me feel stupid and bad and oh, I’ve had my business leader just tell me things like, oh, just get it done faster, be more efficient. And I’m like, I’m learning as I go.

Brad:

Yeah.

Engineer:

This is not my fault that my supervisor left and I’m teaching myself stuff now and the people who are expected to take over for him, he was brilliant. We needed two people to make up for him after he left basically. And we still don’t have the knowledge that he had to do and I’m still not up to the speed that he expected.

Brad:

We think these are primary issues in leadership and also burnout. I mean, if you’re not feeling competent and supported in your work and you don’t have autonomy choice to make improvements,

Engineer:

I can only hope that I can get faster. But it’s been a year and a half now.

Brad:

And then that affects the third area of connectedness. Then you start to feel disconnected.

Engineer:

I’m really frustrated with my business leader right now because I’ve told her I can develop some Excel tools that can make my job faster, but it would require probably a week’s worth of non-project time. And she’s like, great, you can fill out an application to get that paid for. And I’m like, I don’t even have time to fill out the application because I’m behind on my current projects. And she doesn’t seem to understand or sympathize with that.

Brad:

Yeah, that’s tough. And then we see people leave jobs.

Engineer:

I also feel trapped. I don’t think I’ll leave this job until I find the time to develop those tools and then maybe I will leave if they won’t. But

Brad:

Especially if you’ve communicated that through your channels and oh my gosh, yeah, it does feel powerless then at that point. You can see how, I mean the research we talked about earlier, if even one of these needs isn’t being met, our likelihood for depression and stress related disorders, anxiety goes up significantly. But one thing that helps us balance it out is if we’re not feeling these needs being met in the workplace, we can sometimes look outside of work. It’s not going to make up for it, it’s not going to make that go away, but sometimes we pick up hobbies or things that we feel competent at or golf’s not a good example. No one’s good at golf really. I don’t know. Tami was saying she’s retired, she’s got some more choices than some of us that are still working about what she wants to get competent or feel competent in doing. It’s a different phase of life. It’s really interesting. But also to keep challenging herself, she said she’s found some connection, joined some groups, some areas that she’s passionate about. She gets a feeling of competence there. Some autonomy because free to choose and do. But then also the connections that come with that’s pretty cool.

Sometimes it’s not work, we can’t find it at work, so we pursue it outside.

Engineer:

Yeah, I’ve tried joining some groups about the energy transition. That’s where I met Jenny and that’s been helpful. But lately I ran into some conflict with someone in one of those groups, and I decided to leave just recently. I haven’t really told, I tried to tell them, but nobody really responded, I’ve just walked away.

Brad:

That can be tough too. I do see some people get these needs met through more of a, I don’t know if the right word is side hustle, but a passion outside of your regular work, these side jobs. That’s

Engineer:

True. But yeah, I’ve picked up a side hustle that is related to my work. It makes me feel justified and I’ll be unpaid over time. I’m working like, well if you won’t pay me to develop these tools, I’m going to develop them in my own time and then I’ll be ready to leave when things keep getting worse and you don’t respect that. That’s my plan in the long term really. I do building energy analysis and I’ve offered to do that for some friends that a friend of mine renovated, they retrofitted their house and spent a lot of money on it, but they never verified if it was actually worth it. I offered to do that and I haven’t started on it yet because I’ve been working so much overtime trying to meet my deadlines. But hopefully when things slow down and I can have some breathing room, I would like to develop my tools to do that. And that feels like it would be rewarding. I don’t have physical energy or time to do it right now.

Brad:

Teacher 3, have you seen that too? I mean, I see people do stuff outside of work to fill their cup in these areas.

Teacher 3:

I just have a couple of thoughts, Lisa, about what you said. I used to have this job in a different teaching job and the better I did, the more I got dumped on. I always have this phrase in the back of my mind, it doesn’t pay to do your job well because then it becomes, oh well she can do more because she already does this. And then I was thinking about the fact that this guy was running basically two people’s jobs by himself. Well no wonder he’s like, see ya. He probably was tired or maybe,

Engineer:

Yeah, I still can’t figure out how he gets things done so fast or used to, he left my company to start his own company.

Teacher 3:

Well yeah, why wouldn’t you?

Brad:

It’s that entrepreneurial thing that can come out of this. I’ve seen it lots of times. Yeah.

Teacher 3:

I was just thinking about that. I quit. This is my second year in this position and I did leave and then they floundered. They couldn’t find anyone to do my job. They were begging me to help them. I set up classes like Google classrooms and gave assignments. I wrote sub plans for a couple of weeks for them. Not my job, but I love and I don’t want to see them fail. But yeah, I was just thinking to myself about that. I do have two other jobs that I do outside of this, but they’ll never paint. The problem is you have to support yourself too. It’s like sometimes it’s like you have to balance that out.

Engineer:

That’s why I feel like I’m trapped. I’m a little bit trapped right now, but I’m biting my time, build up the tools in my spare time and then when I feel like I’ve got them and I’ve got the credentials to leave, if I don’t see the pay bump that I’m asking for and being paid for my overtime, regardless of whether it’s project related or not, if it’s non-project, then I feel like I’m justified in doing that time. If it’s improving my work, I think I should be paid for it and I don’t think I should have to fill out an application to do that work. I think there should be some buffer.

Brad:

Makes sense.

Engineer:

I had a lot of free time right before the Christmas break. I don’t get paid break time there and a lot of my projects were paused or pushed back. I ran out of project work to do and ended up taking, I ended up getting sick, but this has happened, I’ve only been here for a year and a half, I’ve only been through two Christmas seasons and the office doesn’t technically close. We aren’t given that break. I’ve worked for other engineering companies where from Christmas to New Year’s, everybody gets that time off automatically and we shift hours around to make up for it. And I’ve been really frustrated and noticed a pattern that at Christmas time projects get delayed or paused or pushed back into January and then I’m left with no chargeable work to do and then my only choice is to use my paid time off, which I don’t have a lot of.

Brad:

You’re describing a lot of stuff that’s out of your control. That’s right. You don’t feel like you have enough choice.

Engineer:

I don’t have that.

Brad:

Anything to add. Tami, you’re the one that’s giving us hope here for the future. You’re in retirement, we’re all [wanting].

Tami:

Jealous of you, Tami. We’re trying to get there. We’re trying to get there. Absolutely. I taught school too and there was a lot of unpaid work time that was involved in teaching. I know you’d take the first month and just recover and then you’d have two weeks when you could actually function and be okay and then you’d have two weeks of getting ready for your classroom. I totally get it. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. But

Engineer:

This is a well-known thing, right? I’ve known a lot of teachers and they know they have this unpaid work

Tami:

They expect because you only work 10 months and you’re paid over 12 months, right? There’s an you

Engineer:

Oh, that’s what happens? In a way you’re compensated. Would you agree or do you still feel like it’s not?

Tami:

I never complained about how much money I made. I thought I made good money. I worked really hard for it compared to say a nurse who gets paid overtime and stuff and makes $150,000 a year.

Engineer:

And you have no paid overtime, right?

Tami:

No paid overtime.

Teacher 3:

And the hard thing

Tami:

It is a lot of extra time.

Teacher 3:

And you get personal days like this division, I think I get two and often people will take a personal day to catch up on work. You get two personal days to watch your kid graduate. Well sometimes there’s, but if they have dance or hockey or whatever, those two personal plays really should be used on personal things. But often you’re using them to mark or do report card comments. Not enough hours in the day when those things are due. There’s just not enough manpower to do them anyways. We’re all dreaming of choosing what we want to do when we want to do it, Tami.

Brad (28:42):

How about the relatedness one? How about the third one on connection?

Teacher 3:

I don’t know. I think teachers are well and I am very social. If I’m not seeing people physically, I always make a point of calling them or voice messages or whatever. And teachers are pretty social people, I always rely on that really heavily.

Brad:

That’s good. Yeah. Support system.

Tami:

Support systems are important. Yes.

Engineer:

I work mostly remotely, but I feel a good connection when I have one-on-one conversations with people and I feel seen by them or understood. And since my boss left, I feel like I’ve lost that. I mean he left in August, it’s been six months, but I definitely feel like I’ve lost a connection, but at the same time I’m always guarded because I’ve been laid off more than five times in the last 15 years. I also don’t seek out deep connections at work for that reason that it could happen again.

I used to believe that, oh, if you just made yourself valuable you couldn’t be let go. My first layoff was that exact situation where my mentor and my mentor and supervisor at the time, my first layoff, thought that I was too valuable to lay off. She told me that she actually called senior management and said, you’re making a huge mistake laying her off because she has so much potential. And then all of my layoffs after that have been because I was a temporary job or something like that. Nobody was really invested in me or believed in me in every subsequent layoff after that.

Brad:

Wow, that’s tough. Yeah, I know sometimes we go through periods of feeling connected or less even in relationships, even some of our most stable relationships, sometimes we feel not as connected as we would like to feel. Distance that goes up and down ebbs and flows a little bit. I think with this skill, what I like to focus on is if I’m not feeling as connected, can I call that out and can I address it in a healthy way instead of, one example I sometimes see is in relationships if one person is doing better than the other one or things are just going super well for that person and maybe not so well for me, the other side, it’s like I need more connection. I need to feel more connected to that person. Do I go to them and say, Hey, can we hang out this weekend?

I feel like I just need some time with you and let’s go to dinner or go out for a walk or do something versus some more unhealthy things like spinning up drama or getting some things going on over here to get attention in an unhealthy way. I think sometimes we do that if we’re not paying attention, if we’re not being conscious about it, we can do that sometimes subconsciously. To me that relatedness is like, am I getting it in healthy ways or maybe not healthy. And you see that in schools all the time with kids. I mean attention. How are they getting their attention or connection? How are they building connections? Healthier, unhealthy.

Engineer:

I get my connection through my volunteering. In the summertime I volunteer with the Edmonton Folk Music Festival and I help build the site and I feel like that’s a volunteer position. I’ve put a lot of time into it and it’s been basically my longest running job ever. But it doesn’t pay. Even if I have to use up all of my paid time off to keep doing it, I will because of the connections I have there.

Brad:

How about you Tami? Connection?

Tami:

Well, I’ve got connections. I’ve got people that I’ve known for years that we still connect with and I think.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Tami (11:09):

Everybody’s back, we’re doing good. The one thing that came, one reflection thing that came to me that I just want to throw out there is for me that competency piece builds that self-esteem. And then when you feel good about things, you’re able to be more successful.

Brad:

Very good. Exactly. Alright, we’re back. Looks like we’re back.

Jenny:

Yeah, mic drop on that. Tami, you hit the whole thing altogether and they’re all done.

Brad:

Any themes anybody wants to talk about, we can talk about that skill. That’s pretty straightforward. Unless someone has something really, I think we covered it. Unless something really came out of your groups? I mean we hit each one of these in our group and it was just interesting to talk about the different facets at work or at home. And then some places where we feel a little bit stuck, it’s like how do we ferret out little areas where we maybe do have some control? Also saying accepting. I think she was talking about some areas where she doesn’t have a lot of control but accepting maybe that I don’t right now, but I could change things in the future to get that. But I’m going to just get through this for now and see if things change. But also knowing that I do have an option in the future.

Tami:

Just the fact that we’re all in different stages of our lives, but we can all relate to what everybody else is going through. And there is a light at the end of the tunnel everybody, and it’s not the Trump Gaza AI generated video? Sorry.

Brad:

We were all talking about our work stress and Tami’s retirement, we were looking to Tami for hope or where we’re trying to get to have more autonomy and competence and choice and connection where we want it. It’s really cool to see and hear from her perspective.

Engineer:

I think I could be really good at being retired. I love volunteering. I like having an income is really nice, but I don’t connect it to what I do, if that makes any sense. But yeah, I get a lot of fulfillment out of my volunteer work.

Brad:

We did talk about that in our group that sometimes if our job, if she is going through a hard time right now, where she’s at in her work, but it does sometimes spawn or prompt these side gigs like this outside of your normal job, you start up like an entrepreneurial spirit and you get your cup filled by doing what you really like to do outside of your normal job. And I know mean people have built businesses out of that. They’ve done all kinds of amazing things with that. I think that’s interesting. That’s that motivation that’s coming from getting, I want to feel confident, I want to have choice in my life. I want to have some direction and maybe if it’s not happening here, I’m going to direct it over there. That was really interesting too. How about the other groups?

Jenny:

We talked a lot about how we want to use this next Brad. We were talking about, well the two educators here, we’re talking about how applicable it is in our own lives and the appreciation of seeing other perspectives talking about this issue rather than coming from it as we’re teaching children this skill now. Oh right, this does apply to me too and how does it also apply to my life? And realizing that a lot of this is a personal reflection more than potentially even the kids that they’re dealing with. And for me, potentially the people I’m working with, I would say I agree. I get a lot of enjoyment from the actual work I’m doing, but not necessarily with the things I can control or less control I should say. That’s where these skills really can come in to help alleviate the way I manage those things as they come at me when I don’t really have much choice in that.

That’s what, and then we were just talking about applying this with other schools and potentially I am excited to try and get it out to some organizations in a union type way too. Brad, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for the workforce, especially safety. That’s something I haven’t explored yet. Anyway, those were the things we were getting excited and ahead of ourselves and thinking about also how it translates to these kiddos and ourselves in our lives. I was asking that question. I was really interested in how you feel about putting this work out to kids and knowing what it might seed in terms of their ability to navigate challenges in their own personal lives. And Lynette rightly said, just like it is for us, it’s going to help them in their lives. Yeah, it was just really neat to hear how it can be applied broadly and how it’s inclusive. The last thing we spoke about is that because the language is common and it’s simplistic, it allows this to be accessible to the most amount of people. And that’s what really gets me excited about it.

Brad:

I appreciate that feedback and that’s how it was intended. It’s hard to put something together that can cut across many different areas of challenge and different types of people. If you think of things, if something’s left out, please let me know. Frameworks are always improving and growing and we’re trying to do better with it, but also to keep it small enough and practical enough to where we can teach it to people and practice with them in a clear way. Does anybody feel like sharing quickly anything from their plans or you feel okay about where your plans are going forward? We talked about the body’s response to challenges. We started clear back there, remembered with warning signs and fight or flight and safe and calm and then moved up through these big scary, intense things called emotions. And we labelled them, express ‘em in healthy ways and take some, how much ownership and control do we have over those or influence. And then this last section was just about our thoughts and rules and our motives. That’s if we talked at the beginning about tearing this process of responding to a challenge, tearing it apart, breaking it into chunks, and now trying to put that all back together again. I just wonder if anybody could move through their plan pretty quickly or just read some, here’s my warning signs, here’s what I’m going to do for my safe and calm [practice]. That is your final product final.

Jenny:

I can take a stab at one and hopefully that’ll prompt some others. For me, my warning signs are that I feel a punch in my stomach. My voice will start to raise, I can start, my foot will start to, maybe that’s even earlier. My foot will start to shake. I’m getting and now I can see that right away. Oh, my foot’s going, what’s happening? I’m looking forward to that now, which is really good. Creating safety and calm. I think I mentioned I’ve been going back to yoga class in a group. I used to just do it at home and I haven’t had the same sense of connection and consistency, I’m glad to be putting that back in my life as something. And then Chris and I have been listening to music more again, that’s been helpful for us.

The labelling, our emotions, I think that’s an ongoing conversation. I’m excited about that. We’re talking about breaking down things as they’re coming at us and how we can work through that. Taking ownership of my emotions. I think that being able to know that I can choose how long I’m irritated with something potentially, and also the intensity. I’m really glad to know and I’ve learned that I can step away from things for the most part. That’s really important for me, Brad, I was taught that we’ve worked through things when I was young it was like, nope, we’re sitting here until we work through this.

And now it’s like, whoa. That’s a big part of the reason why we struggled to work through things. Yeah, I think that is really huge for me. Expressing my emotions in healthy ways. I think the being mad part is the one that I’m going to probably focus on most. I don’t quite know what that looks like differently, but I think finding safety and calm will help me be able to at least give it time and space as you’ve offered. And then to look at the patterns of always speaking. I think that’s really huge if there’s just been, I said it here today, what if I don’t feel like I have any choice? And you were like, “Well, but do you, because you could also…”

Brad:

You picked up on that. That’s good. I try to say it in a way that’s not upsetting, it’s just as a reminder, but right.

Jenny:

Yeah.

Brad:

Great job.

Jenny:

But that was an “always” statement. And then I think about just breaking down what I’m feeling. It’s like we went through the feelings, but then also why do I have those feelings? I feel like that’s the last step here is what are my motives and why are they being impacted? And I think again, it’s just really simple, Brad, and really effective for that.

Brad:

Thank you for stepping through that. I think that’s important to step through that because that’s what you can do with yourself in the face of these challenges is step right through it just like you did right there and apply that to each one of these challenges that we face. And it just becomes, it almost becomes a lifestyle I can tell you of trying to create, balance, a recipe for creating balance in the face of challenge. And that’s what we’re trying to do. It doesn’t make all challenges go away. It can prevent challenges because we know that challenged people and when we’re not responding well to challenges, we often create more challenges for ourselves. In that way it can reduce challenge, but our goal is to try to put ourselves in that balanced position to respond in the most healthy way to the next challenge that’s coming along.

Well, I just want to say thank you to all of you for participating in this experience. And I’ve learned, I always learned a lot, just as much from all the participants and try to make things better and easier for people to understand. That’s my goal. If you do feel like this was helpful for you, I’d be happy if you went out and put a review out somewhere. Again, if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, just forget anything I said about that. But we are trying to spread the word. There’s a lot of plenty of suffering and stress and challenge out there for folks and we’ve just seen people benefit. And if we can do that, we want to be able to do that.

Tami:

I was going to just talk about skill three, right? Because labelling your emotions, figuring out why you’re feeling a certain way. I’ve been finding myself the last couple of weeks being really irritated. Nothing around me that’s irritating me, but just being shopping or whatever and somebody goes in front of me or something. And just getting like, why did you do that? And recognizing for myself that okay, just talking to myself and going, well, it’s got nothing to do with you. That taking ownership piece and recognizing that it’s got nothing, they’re not doing it to annoy me. They’re just doing it because that’s the natural thing to do. Same thing as getting cut off in traffic, but just being aware of those things and doing that self-talk I think has really come forward for me.

Brad:

That’s huge.

Tami:

That’s one big one.

Brad:

Thank you for sharing that. That’s huge.

Jenny:

I totally agree. I just want to add that I’m excited. I’ve noticed myself being able to say, “Oh, that person’s dysregulated.” And then, okay, “now what do I do with that?” How do I help them? Maybe that’s something, I mean you’re trying to do it here. I think humour is a really big thing, Brad, I’m glad that you appreciate that. But yeah, do you have any tips for us as, I guess a question for you in terms of when we do see it now we have the gift, thank you for giving us the gift. How do we have the grace with that gift when we see it, if you will?

Brad:

There is this secondary aspect and you have to be in a place with your skills, but we are modelling this behaviour through our actions all the time to help someone else co-regulate the first thing. We have to be able to do it ourselves. Because if they see us as somebody who’s dysregulated, we’re not going to be like, oh, that please show me how to be regulated. It doesn’t mean we never show emotion, all those myths. It doesn’t mean we never show emotion, it’s how we show it. We have to step through these. But I think if, to me it’s that part of sharing with that person that this is a skillset because when you’re in the middle of dysregulation and you have no idea, remember when we first started that first thing I asked people to do with their lens for behaviour was to see it as a skillset instead of just an expectation that everyone should have this behaviour 25 years old, you should know all this.

Well, if you don’t, you don’t. I think one of the best things we have to start there when you’re trying to help anybody learn this skillset is to normalize what’s happening with them. Everything we’ve talked about here is a human being’s normal response to challenges. And if you can just imagine that with no skill training, you know what that looks like. What we’re trying to do is just get some skills on board. Will you let me help you learn a couple of skills? I know this doesn’t look like much fun being in distress, suffering, failing at all these things. Sometimes you can come to that angle with them instead of it’s, it’s just around helping someone like a basketball coach. I can see you want to be better at basketball. I know some things like dribbling and passing and stuff we can work on pretty easily to get better at . Let me help you with that, it is a really good angle. But that co-regulation is huge. For us to be able to step somebody through that, we’ve got to be able to do it.

Jenny:

Cool. Don’t try it, is what I heard. No, I’m just kidding.

Brad:

You’re there. You’re getting there, right? I mean everything you shared, you have a plan. Remember we talked about knowing versus doing. I just want to make sure everybody’s in a good spot where they have a plan about skills, but implementation is key. Practice, practice, practice. Those muscles aren’t going to get any better just sitting on a page in your book here. Right. Got to do something with them and we have plenty of opportunities to practice, right? There’s no shortage of challenges.

Jenny:

Agreed. Okay. Just a bit of housekeeping. I would love your feedback in whatever form you can give it.

Tami:

I just want to say thank you for this course. I’m buying my sister one of these books. She works as a teacher as well and I think it would tremendously help her and help with her students too. Thanks for the time and the effort that you guys have put into doing this. I appreciate it.

Jenny:

Alright, well thank you so much, Brad. We’ll be in touch. Thank you. This has been incredible. Guys. I’m thrilled. Thank you for being here all the way through it and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Brad:

Nice to know you all, nice to meet you all and spend time together. It’s really cool. I’m going to miss visiting with you all once a week.

Jenny:

Me too, Brad. It’s been amazing.

Brad:

I wish you all the best.

Jenny:

Thank you so much. Okay, take care everyone. Have a good rest of your week.

Introduction to Skill 6: Identifying and Analyzing Thought Patterns

Jenny | Geophysicist:

I really was looking at the questions today and saying how much we put the stuff that we can’t control in our minds, constantly. It’s exhausting, really.

Brad | Public Health Care Director:

Yeah. I think right before I do this, I come from two back to back nursing programs teaching these same skills in a leadership course there. It’s interesting coming from them. This is their third year, they’re like 21, 22 years old. And just to see them struggling with these and they’re just looking at you, do I really need this stuff? And I’m like, oh wow, your next few years, your next few decades, the challenges, and it goes along with what we’ve seen in our course is that people who seem to benefit the most are those that are in the middle of suffering or have had some suffering in their life to be able to apply this to, and they recognize the need and the motivation to do it. Not that you have to be in terrible pain and suffering to get something out of this, but there does seem to be a correlation for those that grow the most. Yeah.

Jenny:

Acknowledging that you need it is the biggest problem. And then opportunity if you can get past it. Right?

Brad:

Yep. I can’t remember if we talked last week when we were in New York when we logged on. Yes. I don’t know, Jenny, I think you started something here. I told the publisher about what we were doing and just some of the traction, and I thought last week was just, I felt that that was pretty impactful. The session last week was just not that the others weren’t, but it was just a different level of getting in touch with some of these skills and applying ‘em to some real raw areas of our lives and sharing some of that information with them, just how that impacted me. They decided to, everybody at the conference last week got a copy of the book. There were 1500 copies of this book that went out and I said I’d be willing to do a book study with anybody that gets a book in New York. They had 45 people already signed up to do a book study. I thought that was just thanks for sharing this idea and working with me on this idea and it’s cool.

Jenny:

Totally thrilled to hear that, Brad. And yeah, I agree with you. Last week’s session especially I feel was very impactful for me. I think there were a lot of things that came together in my mind and then it was like, but now what do I do with it? Oh, right. Next week’s skill building. It all fits nicely, Brad. Yeah, great.

Brad:

Welcome everybody. It’s great to see all your faces again every week. I sure look forward to this. This session, we’ve covered two domains already and this is our third and final domain of this particular framework. We’ve gone through the biological, what’s our body’s response to challenge and then we separate it out, have feelings and emotions about challenge and we talked extensively the last three weeks on those skills. How do I label that, express it in a healthy way and take some ownership? How much control do I have over that dial of intensity of the emotion that I’m experiencing in response to a challenge? And then this week is the highest, what I would say if you had to put this in a hierarchy, this is the highest level of skill. And when we look at kids, we don’t often get very far down this track before third or fourth grade.

We spent most of the time in physical and emotional regulation with kiddos. Actually this requires the ability to think about thinking. That’s that a little bit higher level of can I examine my thoughts? Can I notice what’s going through my head? Can I pull that out, write it down. And then can I manipulate that? It takes this skill of self-awareness to be able to notice what’s going through your head, recognize it, put some words to it, and then label that. Also the next step is, and we’re going to explore that a little bit, but do I have patterns? Do I notice any patterns of thought that I’ve developed over the years that those are helpful? And then we talk less about positive and negative. We talk mostly about helpful and unhelpful or healthy and unhealthy when it comes to thinking.

And you’re the best judge of that for yourself. All of this is super personal. We all have, I’ve put in here some pretty commonly identified thought patterns that can trip people up. I think that’s interesting as part of this chapter, but I’ll throw out the highlights that I think I hope you keyed in from this chapter. Number one, attention, attention theory is heavy in this chapter. Because attention, what you choose to attend to is ultimately what helps build these patterns of thoughts and beliefs that you have. And the cool thing about attention is that we have some control over what we choose to attend to throughout the day. There’s a relationship here too, and I was just really digging into it this morning. I don’t know why, I think it was because I was thinking about this, but this whole idea of a negativity bias that we could be as human beings really.

And we talked about how we’re hardwired to focus on threats. Are we hardwired to focus on what’s wrong a lot of the time and for survival reasons to pay attention to what’s going on? These brains are problem solving machines and they will search out things that we think still need to be resolved. You notice this when you lay down to go to sleep at night and your brain is still just trying to solve these problems that we don’t have answers to and it’s just going and going and going. What I was wondering was, and in this chapter I talked about what if you go through the day and 80% or even 90% of what you think about or recognize or pay attention to are what we might consider to be negative threatening things 90% of the day. What messaging is then coming through as far as what shape I should be in?

What should my mood be? If you’re responding to threat 90% of the time or looking for threats, searching for threat, that’s going to have, there’s a result, there’s a consequence of that, a biological consequence, a mood consequence, behaviour consequence to that versus maybe if we were 50-50 and it’s just throwing out. The other interesting thing about human beings is it’s really hard to attend to more than one thing at a time. While you’re attending to a threat, what could you possibly be missing right over here that might not be threatening, might actually be wonderful, it might lead to joy, might be joyful. What my thought this morning was, oh my gosh, what if our default is threat response? What if our default is looking at the negative? And to have joy, you have to work to get it. You have to be intentional about cultivating joy.

What if the default is this experience and then the default isn’t joy? What if the default isn’t joy? And that’s just an interesting thing that goes along with this when we talked about being, it all relates back to that physical biological survival mechanism of being aware of threats in our environment to survive. But that almost sounds like it’s hard work to create joy. And we talk a lot about this. You’ve seen the work coming up lately about mental health in the workplace. How do we find joy in the workplace? And it’s like, well, maybe it’s not there if we don’t create it, maybe it’s not there by default, which would mean that we would have to take some action and some steps to make that happen. Then the question becomes, well what can make that happen? How can we create that?

We’ve talked about pitfalls to stay that are going to lead down that path, but also we need to think about things that can strengthen that muscle. And one of the things I hope you got out of here was the gratitude practice. It’s just one way that we can strengthen that muscle to be able to be intentional about paying attention to what’s going well or maybe some of those wonderful things. And I think sometimes people think, oh, I got to think of this big giant thing that’s happened. That’s wonderful. Actually what we’ve noticed is that the smaller, sometimes the things that people find, the more we’re working that muscle to have to look for those things. Let’s see. Lastly, I think the thing that I wanted to say about attention is that I started the chapter off by talking about our ability to go to the future and go to the past.

I think this is where we pull back into that mindfulness practice from skill two. The other benefit here is with skill seven, because if we are pulled to keep ourselves in the present, there’s less threat right in front of us, right in the here and now. There’s often a lot of threat in the future and we seem to sometimes focus on threats from the past. If we can keep attention right here that can also strengthen that muscle to be more aware of what’s the joy right in front of me right now that I may miss if my attention is pulled to threat in the future or threat in the past. Hope that makes sense. And then I think we would just go into the reflection questions from this. I do often fall back to this when you’re having, the other skills, gratitude and the other concrete skill here is the skill of reframing our thoughts and beliefs and examining those to be more moderate if you want to.

But just being aware, remember we talked about where that line is and then if something crosses that line, that equals threat to me. We go back to fight or flight kicking in, but just being aware of where that line is based on your beliefs, a lot of them start people should or people should never or I must or have to or a good example. Everything has to be perfect or it has to be my way. Or sometimes these thoughts when you say ‘em out loud, these core beliefs, they just sound ridiculous sometimes. But if you dig down under the surface level, they’re often protected by a whole bunch of defenses. That’s a little bit of the homework to get to what’s underneath all that. But I think the easiest way that I’ve come across to help people reframe their own thinking is once we come across these situations where their thoughts have gotten in the way of joy is to say, what advice would you say to a friend of yours that’s thinking that way? That has been the easiest way for me to help someone shift. We often give great advice to other people when they say these extreme statements or thoughts, but we rarely give that to ourselves. That’s an interesting truth that I’ve seen. Okay, I’ll be quiet and then I think if we would want to go into breakout rooms and just take a look at the reflection questions from this chapter together.

Jenny:

Okay. Can I just ask a quick question, Brad, before we go into the breakout rooms? I was really curious about when you talk about these sweeping statements, I’m not perfect, this specific thing I failed at and therefore I am the worst.

Brad:

Yeah, generalized.

Jenny:

How does that fit into, like you’re saying, and I think there’s validity to your statement that I wonder if threat or being fearful or whatever is something we have to overcome focusing on threat and trying to seek joy. I’m just wondering, do you have any sense of where that came from? Why would we be labelling things as everything or nothing in our thinking as a threat response? Do you have any insight into that?

Brad:

Well, to me it’s probably a real basic categorization. Phenomenon of the brain. We put things in categories we like to organize. If you think of the brain as a computer model, which is a common way to think about filing and sorting things and being able to make decisions about things, it helps us put things in boxes and make sense of the world around us. It’s just that once you start a belief that you think the way something is this way the brain works is we just suck in all kinds of information that matches that it gets bigger, our pile of evidence and we get really good at rejecting anything that may be contrary to that. It’s almost like if you think about AI algorithms and the way some of the computer models work, that the more you click on something, the more you get fed those kinds of things and the more you see those kinds of things.

Then you, I always use the death star analogy as Star Wars. If you have this belief system, it’s just this huge thing that you’ve collected evidence for over the last 30 years and then somebody says something that’s contrary to that, it doesn’t get anywhere near, I mean it’s shot down, clear out there. The problem is what if that thought that you’ve developed or belief that you’ve developed is that I’m not worthy of love and attention from other people and then somebody comes along and wants to say, well, I care about you. That’s that little ship coming in. I have all this evidence and in the work that I’ve done with people that have been in that hopeless situation, what’s the first thought? Do you think a person would think through their lens when somebody comes along and says, well, I care about you after they have all this evidence that says that people don’t care about me, what would they do with that?

Jenny:

I’d imagine No, you don’t. Right?

Brad:

Yeah, you’re just saying that, right? They come right back. They can even take something that could change that idea and twist it up to fit into the pile. That’s why this is a higher level skill. You really have to examine these patterns that you’ve established through evidence to change those we have to reframe. We have to look for new evidence and we have to strengthen these other muscles like gratitude.

Jenny:

Great. Anybody else have any questions before we go into the rooms?

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

A question about balancing that worry of the future versus being present and grateful.

Brad:

Yeah.

Gord:

It’s almost like the analogy I was thinking of is how you drive down a highway, right? You’re always looking ahead, but you also want to be aware of your immediate surroundings, a little bit of what’s behind you, but around you forward, around you, beside you, forward, always cycling through that. Well, the future is full of potential. The future is full of worry, as well. I struggle sometimes with that. Spending too much time in the future versus at the end of the day, things are still gorgeous. I got a lot to be grateful for. Beautiful day. Finally, we’re above zero here in Calgary. It’s awesome. Again, I think other people struggle with that too. Any advice? The power of the now and all the rest of that. It’s hard to practice.

Brad:

And it is, that’s why it’s a skill. But I’m smiling because I’ve struggled with all these just like you all do, and this is a big one for me and a lot of us that are brought up with this idea of being prepared. I got to prepare for everything. Well, how am I going to be prepared if I don’t think about the future? Just like all of our other skills, the whole theme is balance, right? Self-regulation is balanced. It’s not saying you don’t ever think about the future, you don’t think about the past. It’s just like what you said. One thing really stuck with me though. If I’m going to, where do I have my most control over what happens in the future

Gord:

Right now? What decisions I make right now.

Brad:

Exactly. It always drives back to how am I caring for myself now if I have a big exam tomorrow, if I have a big day tomorrow, if I don’t get any sleep right now, if I’m laying here thinking about that tomorrow, how am I prepping for tomorrow if I don’t get any sleep tonight? That’s where it becomes ineffective. It’s always to me about what’s effective, what’s helpful and healthy and what’s not. That’s where the line is for you. If you already have 14 plans for that event, that could happen next week. I would challenge you to think, do I need a 15th one? Right? Yeah. But like I said, the brain loves to solve problems. If it’s got an unsolvable problem, wow, it’s going to want to go after that sometimes.

Gord:

Is that higher level thinking, planning, trying to anticipate, trying to manage the future versus living in the now, which is more lizard, the lizard brain trying to survive the moment.

Brad:

I actually think it’s harder and probably takes a higher level to be able to recognize that you’re being pulled. Just like having the conversation we’re having right now, recognizing when you’re being pulled too much to the future to bring yourself back. That’s a super high skill level right there. Yeah.

Gord:

Cool.

Jenny:

Awesome. Okay, thank you for the help.

Break Out Session with School Support Staff (text only)

Brad (17:38):

Good question. Alright, here’s my group for this week. How are y’all doing?

School Support 1:

Hey, we’re pretty happy. I think it was positive temps here, too. We went to a convention this morning and it was still freezing-your-face-off cold and then by the afternoon I didn’t have to wear a coat. It was awesome.

Brad:

Beautiful.

School Support 1:

Yep.

Brad:

That’s great. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we’ve been sub zero temperatures. Yeah, negative 10, negative 15 Fahrenheit here for the last few days.

School Support 1:

Hey School Support 2. What is that in Celsius?

School Support 2:

I don’t know.

School Support 1

Oh, come on.

Brad: It’s cold. I can tell you it’s very cold. I know.

School Support 2:

When I went to New Jersey, they were complaining about the temperature and I told them what we do here and it didn’t compare.

Brad:

That’s funny. Yeah, that’s very cool. Where do you guys want to start here? Do you want to start with gratitude or do you want to start looking at some of these patterns of thoughts? What do you think would be most helpful?

School Support 2:

I think probably the patterns of thought. To me it’s like patterns of thought and then gratitude is a specific emphasis on reversing some of those negative patterns of thought. I was thinking when you were talking, I missed a part. I was brain dead and daydreaming when I used to do police work. We always had this, our staff sergeant always said, when you’re out with people and they’re doing whatever he says, never attribute to malice what can probably be attributed to incompetence. When you’re dealing with people, people that hit their kids or you see something like that, it’s just not necessarily stand in their shoes to see it, but just realize that it’s probably not malicious and it doesn’t really perfectly apply, but I’ve just always thought you don’t have to attribute it to a negative all the time. Sometimes it is, but not all the time.

Brad:

Sounds like our first chapter here, seeing that behaviour as a lack of knowledge or skillset versus something else. I like that. And if that’s the core, if you talk about patterns of thought or patterns of belief, to me that sounds like a really great one to see other people’s behaviour through. Yeah.

School Support 1:

I’d say the same. Well, just to focus gratitude I think is something that I do naturally and it’s just a part of my every day. Definitely those thought patterns I think are where I would focus too, I think.

Brad:

How’d you learn that? Do you know the gratitude piece? How did you start doing that?

School Support 1:

I’m not sure. I don’t know. I know it’s come up in counselling or different things and then a really strong faith system and I definitely, I’m married to a half empty person, runs half empty.

Brad:

Optimism.

School Support 1:

But I run half full and so.

Brad:

That’s great.

School Support 1:

We’ve learned how to exist quite well, that’s good.

Brad:

I am in a similar situation and it’s funny and we know that about each other, but it’s a nice balance.

School Support 1:

Well, I think of those thought patterns where automatically if somebody didn’t text me back, I texted my bestie on Monday and she didn’t text me back until Tuesday. My thought was, she’s probably really busy today. Whereas my husband’s thought would be, well, I don’t think they like me. We refute each other’s thoughts.

Brad:

That’s a great example and if you dig down some of those things go clear back down to do you think humans are generally good or generally not good? And that’s where some of that, I know one of the last questions I had was where do you think some of these patterns of belief came from? And they come from way back. They start when we’re pretty small

School Support 1:

And some of them are intergenerational.

Brad:

You see ‘em in families and it’s like you said, we have our family sayings and some of those family sayings are good and some don’t really make any sense. I don’t know if you’ve experienced

School Support 1:

Some have kept this alive, but yeah.

Brad:

Yes, I know just looking at some of these common patterns, like overgeneralizing, something happens one time and we think it’s, we say to ourselves, oh, this always this way. It’s always going to be this way or everybody’s this way. If you have had teenagers or you spend time around teenagers, you hear these kinds of things all the time and everybody’s doing it, everybody’s doing, that’s usually not true, but that’s their perception.

School Support 1:

It’s interesting because I can be myself, I think that all or nothing thinking is more negative when you think about yourself than if you’re dealing with other people. That’s what I found. I’ll jump to conclusions, not for other people, but for myself.

Brad:

Yeah. Do you think you can control your thoughts?

School Support 1:

I think we can. Like what you said, we can reframe them, but I think sometimes that initial thought comes out and then you have to process and depending on where you are or where I am in that moment, I think it depends on how well I process it.

Brad:

If I said, think about a pink elephant.

School Support 1:

I would think of one.

Brad:

You could probably do that. But also I think you’re absolutely right. I think sometimes those heat of the moment, those first initial thoughts pop and I always think of, you’ve seen the first Ghostbusters, you guys remember the first Ghostbusters where they’re on the top of the building and it says, choose your destroyer. And everybody says, clear your minds, don’t think of anything. And then says the choice has been made. And they’re like, did you think of anything? No. What did you think of? And then Ray says, “it just popped in there” and what was it, the Michelin man or state puff marshmallow man or something that he thought of. I think that we can absolutely have things pop in there, but then once you recognize it and you can manipulate it, challenge it, reframe it. Yeah.

School Support 1:

Think it’s just a matter of trying to grab hold of it before it gets too far. I deal with anxiety, but it’s really manageable. But there’s times that I’ve said in the last five years where it wasn’t manageable and so then that it goes from I am having trouble with this to all of a sudden I can’t do this anymore. Then just grabbing that thinking back,

Brad:

And then we talk about, there should be a line in this framework from skill six here all the way back to threat. What happens is these thoughts trigger that fight or flight again just, and that often gets us in that cycle of lizard brain lizard where we’re just in that threat mode. It starts the whole process over again because these thoughts are often threatening.

School Support 1:

Well, sometimes I’ll just play it out. Right? Okay, what if?

Brad:

Yeah, that’s a good challenging statement. What if you play that game with yourself?

School Support 1:

And then usually I can be like, oh, it’s okay.

Brad:

That’s great, that’s a really good skill.

School Support 1:

I can survive. I taught with School Support 2 and I survived.

School Support 2:

Exactly.

School Support 2:

Yeah, I agree with that. Sometimes I’ll visualize if I know a scenario, if you have enough time to know the threats coming, which you often do walking into stuff, I’m just thinking of policing stuff. I would always usually go over the worst case scenario in the back of your head. You always know what the worst case scenario is, so you can’t do that every time. You’ll kill your brain, but you always know. But I go through the next worst case scenario, like an assault or someone getting handcuffed and throwing punches. And I always knew that I could handle that. In life, those worst case scenarios are a lot less. Walking through and just like, okay, if worst comes to worst. “It is what it is” kind of thing. And when you do it enough, the worst doesn’t seem horrible and it’s usually never that. Right?

Brad:

Right, exactly. That whole, you described it perfectly, that process of what you just described is, and then I play it out, oh, I can with the what if questions too. Well, what if that does happen? Am I still going to be here? Am I still going to have friends? Am I still, can I do this? Can I still go to the park? Can I still, yeah, I can do a lot of those things. It’s going to be okay. Yeah, it doesn’t say that everything’s going to be perfect. Right, and I think that’s that borderline on toxic positivity that we have to be careful with this skill. I’ve seen therapists do this, oh, just look on the bright side or just switch those words around and everything will be rosy and fine. When we reframe, we still acknowledge this is an issue, this is concerning, this is probably a problem, but it’s not to that level.

School Support 1:

Well, then that in turn then goes back to regulating those threats and bringing you back into your cognitive brain to be like, okay.

School Support 2:

Yeah. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where putting into perspective where he says, this is the worst day of my life, and I think it’s Grandpa Simpson says, or Homer says, worst Steve of your life so far, classic. Once you do that, it’s perspective, right?

Brad:

Yeah.

School Support 2:

I imagine if you look back at the teenage angst, the worst days of my life, I don’t even remember what those were. Yeah, they seemed so powerful at the time, right? Yeah. I wish you could do life backwards and you all the little things would be super easy.

Brad:

We just don’t have that skill yet, and that’s so scary to me with teenage suicide and all these things. It’s like, well, this relationship ended, it’s the end of the world, and we see that all the time. It’s like, oh, I can’t function without this. And they don’t have that evidence to, oh yes, you can, or how do I prove that to myself when I’m younger? Interesting.

School Support 1:

I really liked too, and I’ve used this actually in class too, where the thinking about what you would say to others to give advice, but because I’ve done that in class too, because often kids won’t ask questions, let’s say, and I’ll ask them, okay, what would another a grade eight, six student let’s say, ask or they think about this or what would they, because I think when you do that, it just takes that pressure off. But, I give good advice to other people, but definitely not always to myself.

Brad:

It is fascinating that we do that. We are great with the advice we give others and so supportive, the words we use, and then with ourselves, it’s a completely different language.

School Support 1:

Why does that happen? Why do we have such a free breath?

Brad:

Yeah, we are so tough on ourselves. Compared to some things we say to ourselves, you would never say it to even a stranger. That is a great question. That might be something we take back to the group. It’s like, what’s adaptive? I always think that in terms of the things we do are purposeful as a species, what’s the adaptive function of being so tough on us? I guess learning from mistakes, but it just doesn’t seem beneficial or functional to be hard on ourselves. I don’t know.

Any thoughts, School Support 2?

School Support 2:

I’m wondering if for most people, day to day now, for example, when it was minus 55 here Celsius, my furnace burnt out and I’m like, holy crap. And then you think of the worst things like my pipes are going to freeze, but I never for once, it didn’t cross my mind that I was going to die. I go to my parents’ house, I go to my brother’s house, I go to the RCMP station. You go to a hospital, you go to a store. It was like, oh, my pipes are going to freeze and I’m going to have to put a thousand down on my deductible. Right?

But back in the day, it was minus 55 and you didn’t split the wood. You have, I think you died. I’m wondering if it’s a holdover from those days. Just like when we have fight or flight and we run, there’s not a lot that can really kill us nowadays compared to the old days.

Brad:

It’s punishment, I’ll never forget about this. We replay it over and over and we see that with trauma, the brain has this capacity to replay things. Well, in PTSD, we call it flashbacks, but the brain somehow is reminding us like, Hey, don’t forget that was dangerous. Don’t do that again. It’s like, okay, you’ve played that 10,000 times. I got it. I’m not going to forget. You don’t have to keep playing it, but that could be part of it. But I think there’s a connection too, to guilt and shame on that. We talked a little bit about that last week. It’s almost like this self punishment that we do as a consequence for ourselves to say, don’t do that again. I don’t know. That’s interesting. But there’s a limit to where it’s adaptable. I mean, if it gets to a point where it’s causing your mood to be down, your behaviour to be low, that seems to me to be working against survival.

School Support 2:

I wonder if that’s a really good point. Back in the day, the depression slash whatever was a good trade off. It could be anxious or dead. Nowadays, we don’t have death, but we still haven’t figured out that it’s now maladaptive. You know what I mean? It’d be interesting to see in a thousand years do people think negatively?

Brad:

Exactly.

School Support 2:

It will no longer help. It’s at the point where it doesn’t help us. Right?

Brad:

Yeah.

School Support 2:

But it takes time. I don’t know. I’m a biology person, I like to think of theory.

Brad:

Yeah, it’s logical. It makes sense and it explains a lot of our behaviours. But again, the whole thing we’re doing is balanced. Everything has an extreme to where it’s no longer functional, and then that gets weeded out over time.

School Support 1:

Yeah, I think it definitely has a functional piece because it gets us doing things or at least thinking about things or considering, but then it can be maladaptive or just not necessary in that moment even.

Brad:

True. Yeah. I catch myself a lot. One of the things for me is a clue is extreme words. I, and I do this with my kids and I do it at work and I do it with myself. If I find myself saying or thinking always or never, or these extreme words, because we think in words, and if I’m thinking extremely, I know my feelings and behaviours are going to be extreme too. That’s probably not where I want to be.

School Support 1:

Then I think lots of times if around my kids or if my spouse, if my behaviour is that way, I can usually route it back too, right? What I’m thinking. Yeah,

Brad:

That’s a really good skill too. It’s so tied together, thoughts and feelings and behaviours and intervening in thoughts is one of the best ways to be able to catch that.

School Support 1:

I think I’m good with others for sure. While I try really hard to not “should” on people.

Brad:

Yeah, good, brave

School Support 1:

Should on me, but then sometimes I’ll be like, oh, I should do this. Oh, I should do this. And then I’m like, okay, that’s enough.

Brad:

Do you ever do this? Must or have to? Things like, well, do I really have to, I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t do that. Same thing. Yeah, should or have to or must. We used to call it masturbatory thinking, but I don’t really like the sound of that word.

School Support 1:

I haven’t heard of that word. I must assume before my time.

Brad:

It’s a thing.

School Support 1:

There are probably some things, hey School Support 2, in the safety, there’s probably something “I must do” or “I have to do”.

Brad:

Yeah, some non-negotiables. Yeah.

School Support 2:

I even think like OCD and the way brains are wired, if you think about OCD people, there are some things that don’t fit the pattern, but often it’s like checking the stove has to be checked. Yeah, check the house to make sure it’s locked and it’s often fatalistic things that could get you killed. I’m always wondering if they don’t, I don’t leave the stove on, and if I do, it’s not a big deal, but I will come back to check the stove again. One of my old ones that I used to, I would go a route if I was going for a walk, I would go and if I went around a tree, I’d have to rewind around the same tree back.

Brad:

Interesting.

School Support 2:

And then I found out afterwards, once, that was when I was 10, when I started doing policing, we found out that nine times out of 10 in mass shootings and stuff, people that Las Vegas shooting, most of the people, 80% of the people that got shot were going for the front door where they came in because that was the safe door with the lights and the safety. That’s what they thought. That’s where they came in. It was safe. When they came in, they left the same way and that’s where he was shooting down from. Whereas there were tons of exits away from him and they went towards, I’m wondering if what we know to be safe before is safe. I don’t know. I’m on a tangent, but.

Brad:

That’s interesting to think about. But yeah, to drill down, did you ever get to the bottom of that? Well, why do I go around the tree this way?

School Support 2:

No, I don’t do it anymore. I still check the stove, but it’s just important things. I’ll double check the door, but it’s nothing, none of the little things anymore. I don’t know.

Brad:

Yeah, double check is probably fine. Triple, quadruple, then we’re getting into.

School Support 2:

Yeah.

Brad:

Yeah. But yeah, I used to, I’ve seen clients that used to, I’d have to walk around the car six times before I got in. I have to, and that’s when we’re getting to, that’s not functional really.

School Support 2:

Yeah.

Brad:

Good. Do either of you mind sharing? Do you have any beliefs or thoughts or things, patterns that you think have caused trouble? Oh, saved by the bell. I think we’re coming back.

School Support 2:

I don’t think just to end that, I don’t think patterns necessarily. I think sometimes my pattern in the army, they instill time in you. If you’re not five minutes, if they say six o’clock, it’s 5:55, otherwise you’re in trouble. Then it’s 5:50, I will still show up for the stupidest things early and I’m the first one there. I don’t know how many online calls I’ve been sitting there with the host just awkwardly sitting there because I log in and seriously, I came home, let my dogs out, and it was anxiety-inducing not to be on time. Right?

Brad:

Wow. Yeah, that’s a good example.

School Support 2:

Yeah. The army’s rules ruined me though. Just let slide because it seems like you’re inoculated to some of the biggest stresses that I roll up on really tragic car accidents and can remember everything about first aid and not panic, and then I’m five minutes late for a Zoom call and I’m panicking.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Engineer, MSc Sustainability (17:45):

I have a question that I’m wondering, and I hope that someone with some clinical experience can maybe show some data on this, but how is there anybody left in our society who doesn’t have some form of PTSD? Because I feel like everybody I meet has some kind of tragedy or trauma from their childhood or from their occupation. Who are these people that we hear about in studies where it’s like 80% of people don’t have trauma? I’m like, where are these people? I’ve never met them. Everyone I know has trauma.

Brad:

Yeah, I think I said that if I didn’t, I usually say in my talks that almost everybody I meet, today’s world has something in their history that they would consider traumatic. And it’s interesting when we talk about that in relation to this skill because in our group we were talking about, we were always talking about is this adaptive? How did we get to this part where we’re doing these things, it’s supposed to be helping us and just the brain’s ability or it thinks it’s helping us by replaying these situations over and over and over again to be like, well, don’t forget about that. That was bad for you. Remember that didn’t feel good, let’s play that about 10,000 times to make sure you remember it. And it’s like, okay, I got it. 10,000 times is too many. And in PTSD, we call that flashbacks. There are a lot of things that we described that as, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s not really adaptive. It’s getting in our way and it gets this groove going to where it starts to form beliefs and it gets so strong. Yeah, I’m with you. I don’t know. I don’t know where these people are that don’t have any challenges in their life. Okay, what themes came out of the discussion? Any themes with this gratitude or these patterns of thought that can trip us up?

Jenny:

We were talking a lot about trying to prepare for something, again, something that we feel strongly about. Last week I really liked how you were talking about when our core beliefs are challenged, and a lot of the work, Gordon and I, we were in a separate room to challenge those beliefs. We are trying to help people move away from these core beliefs that we carry in our province especially. I was just in a discussion today where doctors were saying Alberta and Calgary are the worst users of energy in the world, we have the biggest shift to make, if you will.

This is one of the things that we’re trying to change and it feels impossible. I think there’s a lot of preparation, like Gordon and I were talking about how before we go into one of these big discussions, we’re playing out these possible scenarios. When they say this, I’m going to say this, and when they say this, I’m going to say this. To me, that’s that pattern. We’re not able to just wait and see and be ready to respond. Your training program is teaching us. Instead we’re trying to control this story, which we clearly see over and over again we can’t control. I dunno, that’s a lot of words that I do. It’s a job of explaining that. Gordon, or can you offer?

Gord:

Yeah, I think so. And the core of what we’re talking about, Jenny, is trust in yourself. Loving yourself enough to react appropriately in the moment. And that’s what I think this is what you’re trying to teach as well, Brad, is trust yourself. You can’t prepare for every possible scenario. Being a watcher is what I’m learning from a different series of classes. Meditation and Buddhism, be the watcher. Control your mind. Enjoy the quiet moments and trust in the moment that even though someone’s coming to attack you with a purpose, you will stand your ground and not internalize it immediately. Those are the challenges and it’s like flexing a muscle practice over and over again. Like you’ve been saying, Brad, it’s tough, but it’s never too late to learn it.

Brad:

I would probably reframe what you just said. Thank you for sharing that both. What we’re looking for here is individual personal skills. To me, what you just described is a challenge of something that’s outside of your control, a system of people that believe differently than you. That’s the challenge. What can we control? The whole book’s been about what you can control, and to me it sounds upsetting. The mood is that you’re upset by that. You’re angry, you’re sad or all these emotions about it. What are your beliefs in that? If you want to effectively impact that, what do you have control of? Where I would say one thing is if your mood gets to be too angry or too depressed or too extreme, you probably won’t be effective in that. Also, what I heard you say, Jenny, is that you seem to wrestle with, or I’m just going to use your word, impossible.

It seems impossible. If that’s the thought going through my head that today this feels impossible, this is where I would go with you in that it’s not about changing all, it is about changing all of them, but what we’re learning here is what I’m most concerned about is what’s going on between your two ears because you have control of that. Because if you are feeling that it’s impossible, that’s going to impact your emotion, it’s going to impact your body, it’s going to impact your motivation, it’s probably going to impact the way that you approach them. It might seem desperate, it might seem reactive, it might seem all the things that you don’t want to be. I need to work on that. What is possible and what’s a realistic timeline? Those questions. Are you going to go from here to here overnight? Is that why we’re feeling like it’s impossible? We want that to happen, but the reality is probably not. What is success? What is possible? I think that’s the work that we’re doing with this skill. Does that make sense? It’s taking just a step back from where you were going with that.

Jenny:

Well, yeah, because the skill of reframing it, that’s where I’d be labelling this is what my pattern is and how I’m saying this is impossible and this is what’s going to happen and dah, dah. And then reframing that as what is possible, minimizing the threat, if you will, is I think what the skill is. Is that right?

Brad:

Yeah. Yes. Well, just being aware of what that belief is. I want these people to see my point of view. I want them to change. They have to change, they have to do everything. How do I get from where we are right now to that? And I don’t have control over those people. And I know when you put yourself in that, when you have such a strong belief about something and you really believe everyone has to do this way, it’s going to be difficult.

Admit & Teachers:

In our group, we just talked about the power that gratitude plays in your emotional regulation and how important it is to really look, you’re not looking for large things. It’s the small things that keep you staying as regulated as, and how it really does affect your mood and the mood of others that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis. For sure.

Brad:

Yeah, I love that. I also think if we put this, if then a lot of these things get us in trouble when we say if, then I’ll only be happy if everyone sees it my way. I’ll only be happy if we, wow, that’s putting your happiness clear out here, and then what are we going to do right now? Be unhappy. Until that gets met. I think those are the rules and beliefs that we’re talking about here. Great. And gratitude is such a strengthening thing to do, staying present in the moment. But what else? Good stuff.

Nature Lover:

I think of a phrase in the book that said something like, we can control all of our emotions or all emotions can be controlled or something like that. And we had a bit of a discussion about that because Amy was saying that, well, a lot of these things are actually a physical threat, even if they are just social emotional, they could have a lasting physical threat. There were a lot of examples. We had a nice discussion or a good discussion about that, but we didn’t really go into the reflection questions this week.

Brad:

Yes, if you dig deep enough, a lot of these could be seen as physical threats. I’ll be excluded from the tribe or the group or whatever. But the practical piece of it is where are the places that you can intervene?

Jenny:

It was the phrase in your book that said, we can always control our thoughts. What page is that? That was a grandiose thought today when you said we shouldn’t say always, every, never.

Brad:

What page is that? I’ll have to look.

Amy | Osteopathic Manual Therapist:

It didn’t leave space for the time where somebody does something so intense, even if it’s social without physical, if it’s intense that there’s no way to briefly, as we process a negative emotion to first think something negative before we reframe it.

Brad:

Where is that?

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I think the phrase is that only you can control your emotions. Not always you can, but that’s about owning your emotions. My word phrase comes to mind, I guess my brain inserts the word always, but yeah, only you can control your emotions, except when I can’t. I disagree with

Amy:

That’s not in control of your emotions because we’re social beings. I disagree with that. I think if we smile at somebody, we briefly positively affect somebody’s chemicals in their body, or if we kick somebody, we briefly affect their emotion. That’s back to where I would say I would never say always or never. I would lean towards it more often.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

But the phrase doesn’t include any of those adjectives always or often. It just says only you only is not a frequency.

Amy:

Only is an amount of a group, and that’s what I disagree with. I think other people can affect our emotions, social beings.

Jenny:

Yeah,

Amy:

You pick somebody or you hug somebody, you affect them.

Jenny:

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Brad:

Yeah, we do differentiate between influence and control. Yeah.

Jenny:

Yeah. I did have one simple question, practical question, Brad, is we were talking about this gratitude thing and wondering why it was three, just out of curiosity, is it because what you led off this conversation with that we potentially have a tendency to want to focus on threats that are we trying to stack gratitude so that we have more, we’re giving ourselves more gratitude than we’re allowing by default?

Brad:

Actually, it’s simply just from some research that was done on three good things, it’s actually a line of research saying that three good things can significantly impact mood. It’s a good number. I like three, also.

Jenny:

Three good reasons.

Gord:

You can’t sit on a stool without three legs, right? There you go. There you go.

Jenny:

Okay, we are close to the hour here, I don’t know, Brad, if you want to lead us in. Next week is our last week, right?

Brad:

Yeah. Yes.

Jenny:

If you want to offer some thoughts before we park today might be helpful. Thank you.

Brad:

I do want to, yeah, and one of the things I started off this whole process was, but make sure you don’t ruin the experience by overthinking. Don’t let that get in the way of your skill development. That does happen quite frequently. Actually next week we are moving into motives. Motives, what we talk about in the second skill here as far as cognitive regulation goes is how do we get these psychological needs met that we have as human beings in healthy versus unhealthy ways? We absolutely want to be aware of these needs. They’re fundamental. Some research we’re drawing on here is some work that was done by DC and Ryan in the late nineties. The framework is called self-determination theory, but they really boiled down our fundamental needs as human beings, psychological needs and motives into three, again, the three, I don’t know, Gord, three fundamental psychological needs.

And their research showed that if these needs aren’t being met, our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up significantly. Motives can be seen as the building blocks for individual personality. I think this is a really fascinating piece of self-regulation just as who we are, what’s important to us and what drives our behaviour. That’s motivation. Looking at these three areas, and I’ll just throw ‘em out there. They identified competence, our need to feel good at stuff, good at things, and don’t like to do things that we’re not having success with or failing at. The second one is autonomy. That’s the need to feel free to have choice and do what we want to do when we want to do it. That’s where we bump up against authority and rules and people. I know there’s people in this group that have a strong need for autonomy.

They don’t like to be told what to do or how things are. Also, the third one is relatedness. That’s the need for connection to other people. And I love this model, especially when you start to think about how we were impacted during the pandemic and the research that says if these needs aren’t being met, and I think I talked earlier, if any of you remember that day during the pandemic where you looked in the mirror, it was like, I’m not okay. Things are different. I need to do something different with myself. This is not going well. I think these three were key. For me, competence was impacted, autonomy was impacted, and relatedness was impacted. It’s a really interesting model to describe why we weren’t feeling so good during that time.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I love these three psychological needs, and I find it fascinating that profit is not one of them because that seems to be something that comes, I think about basic income and people are like, oh, if you’re not, if you are just given money for not doing any work, you’ll just become an alcoholic and sit on the couch all day, right? People say that all the time, but I noticed there’s only two citations here, but there should be millions of citations of this. This seems so obvious. We should have basic income tomorrow. If there’s so much psychological evidence that all you need is competency, independence, and connection, then why not give people what they need to survive? I feel like all of the arguments against it are just moot at this point.

Brad:

Interesting. There are motive profiles that take into account status, power, money, relationship. There are more complex motive profiles. I pulled this one in because I like the simplicity of it. It really gets to the core values of human fundamentals. Yeah, that’s a good call out though.

Gord:

I can’t be on the call next week. I’m going to be offline for a week and a half just for mental health and marital health and all the rest of it. I wanted to thank you, Brad, Jenny, for putting on the course and all the participants, especially that part you and I chatted about, Brad, about the vulnerability. It’s okay, instead of going to the rage, go to the vulnerability piece if there’s other people in the room, and that will work to my benefit. It’s more honest and pure instead of driving people away. That, and everything else I’m learning is just trying to get more control in the moment instead of letting other people take in my power. Again, thank you. Thank you so much.

Brad:

Yeah, it’s a lot of strength and vulnerability, Gord, yeah.

Jenny:

That’s fantastic. Okay, we’ve gone a little over time, if that’s okay. I guess we’ll wrap here.

Brad:

Just before we end, I would just say discord is normal in all kinds of discussion, and that’s okay. I hope if anyone wants to process any of that offline, I’d be happy to do that. I just want to make sure everybody’s okay with that.

Jenny:

Yeah, you bet, Brad. I’ll pass that on, as well. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great night, everyone. Great week. We’ll see you next week to close this off. Thank you.

Brad:

All right. Great. Have a good week. Bye bye-Bye. Bye.

Jenny:

Bye.

Introduction to Skill 5: A Healthy Expression of Emotions

Brad | Public Health Care Director:

We’re going stairway, and I was going my way, and there’s just a lot of sessions here. I mean, there’s probably 40 speakers, presenters, keynoters, and some big names in education. It’s busy, there’s I think 1500 people in attendance here, but it’s a really good lineup of different topics. But we plan to maybe have lunch tomorrow. They said they’re going to miss out tonight. I said, go ahead. I think they’re going to Moulin Rouge or one of the shows. I said, yeah, go do New York. Nice. We’ll catch up tomorrow. I said, we’ll just do a private lunch session tomorrow.

Jenny | Geophysicist:

That’s fantastic. Right on. I’m glad. Yeah, I really want to help her get this through the education system. It needs to be, and it’s well received when we’ve spoken to people. This has been the course that has had the most uptake so far. By the way, it’s going to be a part of this broader governance program that I’m building, and that will be a piece of, starting with that and then moving into community governance and then land governance and finally spiritual governance.

Brad:

Awesome.

Jenny:

That’s the idea of my piece that I think I can own in this is trying to loop it all together.

Brad:

I love that. Yeah, good. For right now, I’m just kind of enjoying, one thing I wish we would’ve done, and I might try to do this with the next group, is collected a little bit of data upfront, maybe a questionnaire to,

Jenny:

Oh, good idea.

Brad:

Say, where were you when we started this? And then compared to where you are at the end.

Jenny:

You raise a really important thing. I’ve been talking about, it’s just a simple example. My old bootcamp coach, he was very good at knowing how to keep everybody challenged. Meaning whether somebody was an expert like Amy versus somebody who’s brand new to this, like Jenny, they all feel like they’re contributing in a way that’s meaningful for them.

Brad:

You’re right.

Jenny:

Had we done that first, we could have had a sense, and then I could have paired people almost more skill, less skill

Brad:

True.

Jenny:

And then also if two experts wanted to talk together, there could have been opportunities to do that more thoughtfully. Yeah. Hi, Tami. How are you?

Tami:

I’m good.

Jenny:

Thank you, Tami, me and Tami have spent much time together. So much.

Brad:

I guess I’m an hour ahead of what I normally am. I’m on East Coast time this time, that was something I had to remember.

Jenny:

Brad’s in New York City, in Times Square, and he’s staying in the same hotel that I stayed in 2001, Marriott Marquee. Yeah. It’s funny. He showed his window and I was like, what hotel are you staying at? And then, wait, that’s probably not appropriate. But we weren’t recording and now I’ve said it. I won’t use that, Brad. That’s okay. You’ll have been and gone. It won’t matter.

Brad:

It’s a great view. Yeah, it’s a great location. If you ever get here, this is just essentially located as you can get on Broadway. I mean, you walk out the door in Hamilton, Richard Rogers theater’s right here, and Lion King’s right across the street and you want to see a show, you can’t hardly beat it. And they do a great job because they get the teachers, they block this off. They got a great deal because teachers couldn’t afford to come to New York, they locked in some low rates during COVID, and we’re at a conference for educators, but it’s pretty awesome.

Jenny:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s so cool.

Brad:

Wow. Here comes some people.

Jenny:

Hi everybody. I’ll get the room set up once we get going here, but I guess we can get started. Brad, why don’t you take it away.

Brad:

Yeah, good to see everyone. I was just telling Jenny, I think you started something here with this at this conference. I got here and talked a little bit about what we were doing meeting weekly and practicing skills together and developing this community of support around a pathway of skills that we have in common and applying it to some of the challenges that we have in our lives and supporting each other. I really appreciated that feedback last time, just about the cohesion of the group. I think that’s something that I should have probably talked more about and probably should have incorporated more. I wrote this as a self-regulation journey, but I’m really seeing the benefits of the group as far as the practice and support and ideas and learning from other people and the validation and some of the other pieces that come along with that.

Thank you for that feedback. I’m learning too as we go through this. They gave everyone here at this conference a copy of this book, 1500 of these went out to people from all over the country, and world, and I told ‘em what we were doing, and then they made this slide. They’re going to put it up on the big projector in front of everyone. I’ll be starting another book study for anyone that was here and got the book starting in March. They’ll be doing the same thing that we’re doing here with another group of people. Just super exciting. Thank you so much everybody for this journey and coming along and trying it out and also being very open-minded about this is a first time try for this. I’m just going to jump right in, Jenny, if you think, and I’ll just, we’re up on skill five here. Expression, I think that that skill we covered last week, the ownership piece, I did want to, before we go into skill five, did anybody have any questions or issues? That’s just so sticky, anybody catch themselves? I do want to reflect a little bit on that. Did things make me upset? We spend one week on that skill, but it’s such a big piece of this. Anybody have any thoughts about that to share with the group?

Jenny:

Yeah, I think it was, I noticed myself being able to think about this in an incident that happened to me this week. I don’t know if this is true, Brad, and maybe you can validate this, but I was told by a sports expert, these were her words. What drives us is fear, but if they really narrow it down, it’s fear of embarrassment. This was the lesson she gave. I don’t know, you can correct me or not if that’s real, but why I say that is, I had put something out on social media that was quite popular, got a lot of attention. It wasn’t me, but it was somebody speaking for me.

Somebody came and put a comment to something else I did, and it’s said, the veracity of what you’re saying and the way you excluded people, and this other conversation shows that nothing about what you’re doing and dah, dah, dah. It went on like that. I right away was like, okay, now I’m dysregulated. I knew it. And then the thing I was asking myself is I was surprised at how high. Again, I went through this, I how high, and I was like, yeah, I’m ready. I could tell I was ready to fire it back. I was wanting to just go, well, actually, but instead I was like, thank you for your concern. I’ll DM you about this. Then I sent him a note and said, “Hey, how can I help? What’s going on?” Anyway, then I didn’t read. To your point about being able to be effective.

He sent me a note back and all I read was, if you want to know more, read this 20 page document. And I was like, I can’t do that. And then he said, I just gave you three reasons for what you did wrong. Then I looked and he had given me three reasons, then I had to slow down and try. I just noticed how much I wasn’t able to act. I finally did what you advised in the first place, which was, I need to take a break. I was at an eight, I needed to just walk away from it. I stopped engaging with him entirely. And then I actually had, I’m sorry to go on about this. I hope it’s okay to use this example, but I actually had a meeting with somebody who’s working with me, and I said, do you know the name of his journalism? And he goes, yeah, I do. And I said, oh, great. And he goes, it’s really good stuff. I was actually thinking you should be working with this guy. I laughed and I told him the thing, and then I said, I’m sure he has. I’ve heard him speak, I’ve met him. He knows what he’s talking about. I know I need to talk to him, can you please just help me, help him? He’s going to help me try and engage with this guy. It’s all great, but I was able to use it and really think about it and I can see, I hope this is the goal, how you can start doing that in real time. And that’s the self-talk that you taught that you’re teaching us.

Brad:

Okay.

Jenny:

That was long-winded. Thank you.

Brad:

Yeah, remember when we talked about skill development, exposure, then there’s development, then there’s practice and it takes time. And we sometimes work with kids on this and they’ll say, yeah, I really did a good job calming down after I smacked so-so in the face. And it’s like, you got to be careful. You want to say, that’s great. Good job. Now we just want to get that safe and calm before you swing at somebody. It’s a good job on the skills. It’s just timing now. And that’s what we see with skill progression. You’re describing it. It’s not like it’s easy to talk about here, right? Because we’re not upset. We’re talking about things that aren’t fresh. It’s not real time right now. It’s reflective, but that’s also how you learn skills. We can’t learn in those heat of the moment moments. It’s not a teachable moment.

We have to practice when we’re not upset to be able to apply when we need it in the moment of upset. Nice job of explaining that. I also wondered if anybody just reflecting on that ownership piece, if anybody was able to do anything with that dial, remember I used the analogy of who’s got their hand on the dial if where a seven or an eight, and if we were able to think about intensity and duration and who really controls that intensity and duration of those emotions that we have. I hope that you’re seeing this as a progression. We’ve already covered fight or flight system activation, and then how to turn that dial down biological dial. Then we’ve talked about labelling these feelings. Last time we worked on this ownership piece of can things really make me, I have the final say about how angry or how sad or how scared I want to be about this.

Brad:

And then now we’re getting into this fifth skill, which is, okay, this emotional stuff, it’s energy, it’s going to go somewhere, it’s got to be directed, and you can be intentional about that. And that’s our goal with self-regulation is to be intentional with our skills, to take some conscious steps to do something with this and not be super passive about it. Because if we allow that to be our default, sometimes we develop skills that aren’t healthy in that area. Hopefully key points, what I’ve been doing every week are key points I want to point out with this skill, but key points are stuffing feelings is not a healthy skill. That’s the first one that we often have to do, and this is something I want y’all to think about and talk about in your breakout groups. I know I say this about halfway through or a third of the way through the chapter, but where did we learn this?

This is one of those things that I think it’s interesting to reflect on your upbringing about what was anger like in my home as a kid? What was sadness? What was fear? Were they even talked about? Were they even acknowledged as different things? And this is something I think that’s really unique, and you talk about skill development. If we haven’t had exposure to this stuff, there’s households where, hey, we don’t get angry here. We don’t do this. We don’t talk about that. We’re not going to be upset. How does a person coming from that have any idea what to do when they feel angry or sad or scared? This can really hit on some, I think this one in particular really hits on some things that are learned behaviors from our upbringing and models that we had in our life when we were younger about what to do with this energy.

That’s a key point. Stuffing is not, it’s going to come out. The other thing is I do see people, and this is a common pattern. I just stuff it, stuff it stuff. I only have so much capacity to hold that and then it comes. It’s a really predictable cycle of holding it in and then it comes busting out on the poor, unsuspecting, next person that’s in front of me when I’m up to here and it comes busting out. Those are patterns that we want to look for. I also think it’s really interesting when we do this in the adult group when we’re face-to-face, I’ve got people up in groups and we’ve got happy, sad, angry, and scared down one side of the page, and then we put healthy and unhealthy at the top and draw a line between the two.

And the group’s job is to determine what are healthy ways to express sadness and what are unhealthy ways that we sometimes express sadness? What are healthy ways to express fear and sometimes unhealthy ways that we do that and go down the list. I think that’s an important exercise, and you might think about that in your breakout groups. Those were the points that I wanted to make. And I do think these questions, these reflection questions in this section are really good to talk about in your breakout groups. They guide exactly where I think you want to go here. And I did talk about patterns of healthy and patterns of unhealthy and also being proactive versus reactive. How can I let them, I feel like this is one where a visual might be a release valve letting pressure out here with expression, but I’m curious in your groups, talk about what works for you. What have you learned over the years? Sometimes our expression is connected to our creative outlets, our hobbies, our areas of interest. We see that a lot. If it’s connection to nature or higher power or you’re a real social person or you are a writer, those are things I want us to talk about in the breakout groups and how that helps. Any questions before we split up? Okay, I’m ready to go.

Jenny:

I’m going to go ahead and open the room. About 20 minutes then?

Brad:

Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenny:

Thank you. Good luck, everyone.

Break Out Session with Nature Lover, Teacher, and Support Staff (text only)

Brad:

I never know if I’m supposed to click something or does she automatically put us somewhere? I guess she just, we don’t have to do anything. Okay.

Nature lover:

Yeah, it looks different when we’re in a breakout room with you, Brad. I feel like the other one, the screen goes out and then it goes back on.

Brad:

Okay. Well, we are all in quadrants. Is that how it looks here or No. Okay. Okay. Well, what do you think of Skill five here? Expression, who wants to go through it?

Nature lover:

I thought it was really interesting that you asked about our upbringing, because it was like, “Oh, I never really thought about it”. My dad definitely would have angry outbursts, yelling or get in a fight, and my mom would have tears and as children, if we were crying or really upset, we were sent to our rooms without any tools of how to deal with it. Right?

Brad:

Yeah. Yeah. Think about that pattern for a second. I think that’s common. I’m glad that you brought that up. You think about seeing what you saw there in the adults, and then you have this emotional response, this energy, and then you are sent somewhere to do what really with no direction. And I think 5, 6, 7 years old, how does a person make sense of that? What does that equal? What do you think?

Nature lover:

Yeah, and as a kid, I would definitely tend to stew on it and then eventually calm down, but not ever really resolve anything or deal with it.

Brad:

Yeah. I’m sorry that that was your experience, and I think you are just, that is so common, I think. I hope we can talk about that with the group. Rhonda, anything to add from your side to that? That can give us some insight into where did our patterns start and then now as an adult reflecting on that, where do I want to be with that? How does that make sense for me now? What do you think?

Nature lover:

Yeah, I think I always talk about how I have a difficult time regulating, which is why I wanted to do this course and I do find it really hard to control my emotions. I don’t feel particularly amped up, but I do easily cry, which causes some social anxiety and stuff. I thought about it, I tried creative outlets. I spend a lot of time in nature, try to get enough sleep, all that stuff, right? Sure. But yeah, it’s a work in progress. And in thinking about it this week, I thought, well, I should probably try to more fully express the emotions I have in the moment more fully so that they don’t bubble out. I was out in nature in the back country the last couple days and with my boyfriend and another good friend, and I noticed that both of them would be skiing and they would say, oh, wow, it’s beautiful. Can you believe we lived near this? And really being mindful and present. I thought, “Well, I should probably take a page out of their books and really fully feel those feelings in the moment.”

Brad:

Wow. Do you feel joy like this? Is joy as intense too, as the sadness or fear that you feel? Is it?

Nature lover:

Yeah, definitely. I would say so, yeah.

Brad:

Okay. Okay. Wow, that is interesting. And do you see any connection to the patterns of upbringing? And I know this has got to be such an interesting domain for you with us talking about labelling and then with expression for you. I just think you have a really unique situation here.

Nature lover:

Yeah, I feel like, but then I have very little control over a lot of things,

Brad:

Right? Yeah. I like what you said earlier about do you feel like you have good pathways then for expression? You said nature. What else do you try to direct this toward?

Nature lover:

I do paint as well. I do watercolour paintings and acrylic paintings, but I’ve been in a rut and I haven’t been doing that, but I have been mending clothing and bags and things like that lately. Sewing and crocheting and…

Brad:

Hands and yeah.

Nature lover:

Things like that. Yeah, I definitely do have a creative side, I try to be more mindful to incorporate into more days.

Brad:

Good, good. Did you say painting? You do some? Yeah. Do you feel that emotional connection to the painting when you’re doing it or not really?

Nature lover:

Not really. No. Okay. Yeah. How about, and same thing with crochet, admitting I feel a sense of accomplishment, but it doesn’t feel particularly like an emotional expression.

Brad:

And that sounds like it probably fits more into skill too, that safe and calm pattern, rhythmic, repetitive, it’s soothing, safe, it’s familiar, predictable, that kind of thing. I wonder, socially you feel comfortable talking to people about feelings.

Nature lover:

Some people like to select groups.

Brad:

You have a few safe people that you can talk to?

Nature lover:

Definitely.

Brad:

If you feel afraid or if you’re feeling sad about something, can you speak with them?

Nature lover:

Yeah, definitely.

Brad:

I mean, that’s such a basic human one right there. That’s probably the most common expressive tool we have is social communication, but you have to have somebody safe to do that with, right? That’s the catch. If we don’t have somebody or if the person, our safe person is the one we’re upset with at the moment, then that closes that off. We’ve got to have something else somewhere else for that to go. Good. Patterns of expression. We talked a little bit about that. Gosh, Natalie and Rhonda, I wish we could hear from you. I don’t know what else we can, could look at the chat if you’re a fast typer. Okay, there we go. She’s putting some stuff in the chat. She says that’s her biggest trigger for emotions or your microphone not working as a trigger. I would say that is too,

Nature lover:

She says if her husband and her are arguing.

Brad:

People we care about and then if they’re our go-to, that was one of the biggest reasons we focused on self-regulation is, okay, what if I’m on my own here? What if I don’t have support right now? What can I still do? I don’t know where you all stand in this fight or fight environment. Okay, physical and verbal. The other thing, and I think this is worth pointing out, some of us become more of stuffing our feelings because our fight is pretty ugly. We have developed pretty good language skills. We can cut somebody up pretty darn fast. We’ve got sarcasm, we can hurt with our words. And then some of us, we end up shutting down because of that, because we know how bad we can hurt people. We have this, that stuffing comes from that too, we end up stuffing because of that, or we just let it rip, let it go, and pay for that on the backside.

Brad:

Good. What we want to do is try to channel that so you’re aware of it. We want to try to direct this. It’s almost like a path. I feel like instead of just letting it go all over the place, can I direct it a little bit? Not all the time, but the bulk of it in ways that I want to direct it. And yes, the answer is yes. You can direct some of that so you have control of it. Journaling’s a big one. I don’t know if any, I really don’t care for journaling. This is about as much journaling as I do. It’s just these short sorts of bursts, but we talked about where does that come from? Oh wow. How can that impact our relationships? I think that’s where you’re going from here. I pull up and go for a walk or craft until my brain is, yep.

Yeah, very good. Yes, those sound awesome. And where I was going earlier with that is I don’t know where you land on the higher power or spiritual component, but I see people plug that in here too because it’s always there, at least most of the spiritual systems that I’m familiar with. It’s something that you can always call upon or connect with or reach out to when you need to. And some people use nature in the same way. Yep. Give it to a hot air balloon. Do you almost feel a release like a physical when you do that? Almost like a weight? I’m just asking because some people have described that to me before that, and that’s where we have to be careful. You discharge a lot of intense emotions almost in a cathartic way. If we’re yelling or if we’re a fighter, there can be some reinforcement from that because it feels good for a second. The aftermath is not good, but it can feel good to us. If we’re feeling some good reinforcement for that, it could potentially lead us to keep strengthening that pattern, especially if it’s out of control. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True. You almost feel this sense of building and building and building and then it’s gone, or you can give it away and a release comes from that. Good. And that’s an intentional process. Sorry? Comments? Yes. I was talking a lot there.

Nature lover:

No, that all makes sense. Definitely. You feel the energy, right? When you get in a fight.

Brad:

Yeah.

Nature lover:

It makes sense that that energy has to go somewhere. If you tried to just be regulated without doing something to dissipate the energy that it wouldn’t really work long term.

Brad:

Yeah. I think in a relationship too, just when we used to in relationship counselling and things, we talk about rules of fighting and this one would come up a lot. What are the ground rules here? We know we’re going to get upset with each other. We’re not going to always agree. But what do you want to do with your anger and upset? It’s a way for me to be able to speak to parents kindly. Yeah. Yeah. And when it’s stuff that we feel strongly about, I mean, there are things that we have kids getting hurt or you look and people not doing what we would like them to do or political issues or religious, there’s all kinds of things that carry heavy emotion with it. I want to flip over to what do you think about on the other side? We talked a little bit about anger and sadness, fear, what about joy and gratitude on the other end?

Nature lover:

What about them?

Brad:

Yeah. Do you notice you’ve got ways for that to come through?

Nature lover:

Yeah, definitely. If I’m listening to music and I’m in a happy mood, then I’ll dance.

Brad:

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Dancing is a great one. Natalie too. Music is such a great one. Sharing. Gosh, talk about expression, right? Connecting with someone around an emotion for a song or connecting with a memory of a feeling that we had when that song was playing, or yes, identifying with another person that’s experiencing something similar to what we’re going through. What a powerful tool to not feel alone in the emotion. Yeah. Awesome. I think to me, this too, this gives us a little bit of a chance to, it helps us separate when we see anger, masking things. But you showed lots of joy. The idea of inappropriate expression of emotion isn’t just for the socially negative. Yeah, true.

Nature lover:

Have you gotten slack, Teacher 1 for expressing joy? Or people look at you funny for dancing in public or what?

Brad:

It’s too much. You’re too happy.

Nature lover:

Ever seen joy expressed weirdly? Not the dancing

Brad:

I have. And there’s things we have to be mindful of. I know we see it in the hospital situation. You have to be careful about celebrations in a hospital because people are there for sometimes really rotten reasons. And if we’re having a pizza party down the hall, but some people can’t handle big joy feelings. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I’ve seen that too. Really don’t allow themselves to celebrate a win or just we’re right back to it. What’s next? What’s next? And allowing joy. Isn’t that interesting? Or watching others be. Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. They’ll be upset or angry because someone, because we’re joyful or we’re having a good day or expressing

Nature lover:

Maybe the person experiencing joy feels scrutinized. Yeah. Trying to shut you down. Debbie Downers.

Brad:

I wonder where that comes from. That’s an interesting observation. Is it some jealousy, misery loves company oftentimes is a true statement. I’ve seen that.

Nature lover:

Or if they’re uncomfortable with expressing emotions themselves and are inhibited, then seeing somebody uninhibited. Could be

Brad:

People are scared. Challenging. Yeah. I think someone brought up last time, this whole belief of stoicism, you shouldn’t really go up or down. You should just be flat. It could be that. Yeah, they’re not comfortable with any, I think that might be where you’re going, Natalie, if they’re just not, we don’t need emotions. We’re not going to deal with it. We’re robots sort of a thing. There’s no time for it. Big stuffers, Flatliners. Yeah, absolutely. They can have a miserable time at Disney World, right? I mean, it’s just, yeah, at a birthday party. They’re the ones griping about the cake’s not good enough. Or what are we celebrating for? Oh, I feel bad for people like that. I think you probably heard that too. It hurts people, hurts people type of thing. They’re not feeling good, they’re lashing out at other folks, but wow, a lot here. Yeah, too many presents, too much joy. That’s right. Oh my gosh.

Nature lover:

Brad, seeing as you’re in this line of work and you teach these courses, what upbringing did you have?

Brad:

We were more, I was along the lines. I remember people really picking at me saying when I was younger, they were like, Brad, you really don’t seem to ever get angry. And I remember our upbringing was like, Nope. Nobody seemed to, they used humour a lot. And when things get serious, I try to catch myself doing that too, because there’s a fine line here around toxic positivity too. It’s like, oh, we’re just always going to be happy. We’re not going to worry about sadness and anger and all that stuff. Just look on the bright side or tell a joke. Some of my family still does that. It’s like you can’t hardly have a serious conversation about this really sucks. This sucks. It’s sad. Let’s be sad about it. And just for a minute, we don’t have to stay sad forever, but can we acknowledge that this is sad? It’s not a time to tell a joke. And that was something I really had to wrestle with, like, geez. And it was like learning as an adult, what the heck does anger feel like? Is that what that is? It’s weird because you just push it away.

Nature lover:

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely can relate to using humour to diffuse situations, but I mean, to an extent, sure. It’s not always appropriate, but to an extent it is a way to release a little bit of energy.

Brad:

Yeah. But I think to me, there has to be, there doesn’t have to be, but it’s healthy to be able to sit with these emotions for a minute.

Brad:

Because if you don’t, boy, they’ll catch up to you. I just see that all the time. And that’s why I talk about it like energy. It’s like you can’t run from it. You can’t stuff it. You can try, but it seems like it’s going to break out or break through in these other times. Just don’t unpack those feelings yet. Every feeling is okay. I love that. Have you ever, gosh, there’s a poem I’m thinking of Var Rumi. Gosh, you almost quoted that. I was going to, maybe we could close with that. You almost quoted that poem. Are you quoting a poem here? It is.

Nature lover:

No, not intentionally.

Brad:

Not intentionally. Well, you must not knowingly. You’re a poet and didn’t know it. Gosh. Okay. It’s called a guest house, if I can get this out.

Nature lover:

Oh, I have heard this. I think red at yoga.

Brad:

Yeah, probably. Yeah. This being human is a guest house every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes and unexpected visitors welcome and entertain them all, even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house, empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight, the dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Nature lover:

That’s so beautiful.

Brad:

I thought that really hit me when my mindfulness instructor read that to us and I was like, gosh, that’s, that’s the goal. Let ‘em come to the house and see ‘em, greet. They’re part of me, but they’re a guest and they can move on and make room for another one to come in.

Nature lover:

Perfect timing, Brad.

Brad:

That really reminded me of that, Teacher 1, when you said that, that they’re all okay and they’ll pass. Well, thank you group for sharing. That was great. Thank you.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions (text only)

Jenny:

Hello. How’d everybody’s rooms go?

Brad:

There was a lot to unpack.

Gord:

I’m feeling pretty sad.

Brad:

How are you? Good job. That’s okay.

Gord:

Yeah, we’re just talking about healthy versus unhealthy ways. Yeah, it was shocking. You’re right. For every emotion, there’s a good way and a bad way. I never even thought about it, Amy was just describing how maybe she can get into it in unhealthy ways, being accused of showing sadness in an unhealthy way. I was like, well, how is that possible?

Amy | Osteopathic Manual Therapist:

Well, we were talking about how some people think of crying as being manipulative, but the question is, did that person make themself cry? And a lot of times it’s a reflection that that person doesn’t want to associate or feel them to be attached to the feeling of sadness.

They’re turning to someone else’s emotional expression. Instead of it being their own neutral expression within themself, they’re treating it as being towards somebody to manipulate. You have to deliberately be using something to control. If someone’s like me, they’ve got a kinesthetic emotional memory disorder. We can’t stack a trajectory of emotions. Situations build without your being tracking the trajectory, only feeling snapshots, and suddenly it feels overwhelming and you just start crying. But that was a spontaneous cry as an outlet for a sense of overwhelm, which had nothing to do with any other person. It wasn’t towards somebody. It wasn’t communicative per se, although somebody can pay attention and communicate from it. But I was just sharing that when I was about 13 and I had a softball coach that when I spontaneously cried one time, she said, don’t manipulate me. And I was shocked because sadness in my home was the only negative emotion we were allowed to have. I think. I couldn’t believe that somebody would think that somebody would try to make themselves sad to accomplish something, or the fact that she had sat me so much and only played me a couple innings in the field and had told me that I’d play first and then didn’t play me first, why she wouldn’t expect me to feel sad to cry because of that.

I was more shocked. I’d never heard of anybody thinking of crying as manipulative. But in that case, I think she didn’t like feeling sadness. She turned it into me manipulating her instead of me expressing sadness.

Brad:

That’d be interesting. Yeah. Other thoughts? There’s just a lot here. You dug a little bit into it as a kid. How did this look in your home? It’s interesting to connect that to where we are as adults.

Jenny:

Well, it’s embarrassing to say out loud, but I was speaking with Teacher 3 and we were talking about how our family dealt with things. She was talking about how her grandma put everything in a box. That was the way she dealt with things. And how Jenna does that as well. The way she manages it is to set three things aside and then she deals with it. But for me, anger, sadness was welcome. I was one of three daughters. Sadness was welcome as what Amy said, but anger, the way I expressed anger was not welcome. And she said, what did your parents do with it? And to be honest, my parents locked me in my bedroom. That’s how they dealt with my anger when I was younger than seven. But that’s how they dealt with it. I still carry those memories today. I don’t feel like my story was acknowledged and I wasn’t taught how to deal with it. I was taught what I was doing wrong. Right.

Brad:

Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. You think about being locked in a room with this energy and then how does that connect to a skill? Where’s the skill train? What is the coaching, the teaching, what am I supposed to do with this? And that came up in our group too, it’s like, and this is not to blame anybody, because what I find when I dig into this is our parents didn’t know either what to do. They probably didn’t have a class like this. They didn’t have the information. And you ask them what their parents did, they’re probably a step up from that or two in hopefully a good direction. But that came up in our room. I don’t know, Nature lover, if you feel like Sharon, just a little bit about your Yeah, for

Nature lover:

Sure. Yeah, I shared that. It was really interesting when Brad asked us to reflect on that. And then we went into the group and immediately I was like, yeah, my dad would have angry outbursts and my mom would cry. It’s probably what’s acceptable for different sexes. And I noticed my brother also was angry and I cried. I was also sent to my room if I had big emotions with no tools on how to deal with them,

Jenny:

It was to get over it, right? It was, “Take some time, get over it.”

Nature lover:

And yeah, don’t blame my parents. They’re loving parents. They just celebrated their 50th anniversary. No blame at all. But they didn’t have the tools either. I’m almost 50 and I don’t have the tools yet. Thankfully I haven’t raised any children and passed that on.

Brad:

I appreciate your vulnerability and honesty because, and I want to acknowledge that’s hard as a kid. And then we don’t want to blame anybody, but it doesn’t take away how hard that is. And even seeing how it’s connected to our lives now as grownups, I was talking about, I had to learn how to be angry in our house. We didn’t get angry. It was like when emotions got serious, we told a joke or we, Hey, look at this shiny thing over here. We did a lot of just not focusing on it, it just wasn’t something that he talked about, but it was there and I felt it. I didn’t even really know what to do with it until I became an adult. It’s like, what is this? Is this angry? Am I mad right now? What is this about? It’s fascinating to open that door.

Amy:

I mean, related to that. Jenny, I heard you say that your experience wasn’t really acknowledged or accepted. And then I think along with that, it is saying you’re not acceptable with your experience. While you’re having your experience, you need to stay away from us. It’s that experience. And then you’re only acceptable with us when you’re a certain way. Then rather than even focusing on the anger, the question is why was the anger? Were you feeling trapped? Were you feeling not seen? Were you feeling whatever? Even backing up before the anger to go, what things do you not have words for and what things do you not have tools for? But even outside of the anger that now is completely insignificant and unacceptable.

Brad:

We’re reinforced. I can come out of my room now. I’m going to stuff this really, nothing was resolved, but I’m not crying anymore. I’m not yelling. You just reinforce this idea of, well, we’re not going to acknowledge it, we’re not going to deal with it. It just goes into this file,

Jenny:

Which I think is a reflection. Thank you, Amy. Because I think it’s a reflection of where we are in society. Meaning we were taught not to talk about religion and not to talk about politics. And if there’s two things we need to talk about right now, it’s both of those things and this is what we were taught. And I think a lot of, when I look at my childhood when I was two, the story that my family carries is that’s not fair. I used to always say, that’s not fair. And the response was, life isn’t fair, Jennifer. That was how we were brought up. And I wanted to say something to what Nature lover offered because Jenna and I spoke about this too. She is a son, and she said, the grandparents will say, stop crying when he cries. And I was saying how I equated that being a daughter and worse sadness and crying was totally okay. I equated it to being my boys. People don’t want my boys to be crying. There’s something wrong with them crying. I have two boys. That’s where I went. And she said, that makes a lot of sense because again, and I would love you to answer this question about embarrassment because is it embarrassing for a boy to cry? And is that why we stop it versus expressing some anger which is more acceptable?

Brad:

No, I think there’s definitely gender expectations there that are different still today, maybe somewhat better than it used to be. But

Gord:

Yeah, I grew up with three other brothers, one sister, it was like a cage match, UFC cage match every week. There were literally fights and parents would just stand back not dealing with the escalations up to that point. But then I remember them watching, and when I finally stood up to my younger, bigger brother, it’s about time you punched him in the face and it’s like none of them, and crying. You can imagine what older brothers do when you’re feeling emotional, right?

Brad:

Sure.

Gord:

I always say average iq, but high eq is not acceptable.

Brad:

Yeah. Survival.

Gord:

Yeah, survival. Dad’s very stoic. Mom’s very passionate. She openly discussed and wanted debates about religion and politics to the point fist pounding on the table. Her dad, my grandfather, taught her that. And there was a stain up on the ceiling in our kitchen because the coffee cups went flying. Wow. And that was like that. So

Brad:

Gordon, how do you do it now? What do you do with this? How do you express these emotions?

Gord:

Yeah, not much better.

Brad:

I don’t see any stains on the ceiling, but

Gord:

Yeah, there were stains on the wall. My sons saw. Well, yeah, there were stains on the wall. What do you expect when you find out your brother was just killed by somebody?

Brad:

Oh gosh.

Gord:

He was on his bike going for a bike ride and he got wiped out and you’re, you’re going to have reactions in the moment for sure. But yeah, it’s like there’s from zero 10 in that moment, tragic and other moments too where it’s how do you deescalate? How do you deescalate? That’s not something dad grew up with on a farm or mom grew up watching the Nazis do their things in the Netherlands, you don’t learn those skills. But now I have to. Right.

Brad:

Is this something you’re working on?

Gord:

Well, I have to. Right? One son’s coming back, I still have a son at home. I have to learn and teach them better skills than just pounding fists. This is helping. Yeah, this is all helping for sure.

Jenny:

Yeah. There’s been a change already in Gord. I’ve seen. I get to hang out with Gord once a week, yeah. Cool. He keeps saying how great this has been. Yeah.

Brad:

I want Gord to start working on a book.

Amy:

Jenny, regarding the comment about embarrassment. I think embarrassment is on a big spectrum, and at the strong end of the spectrum is shame. And I think it’s a big motivator. And of course the difference between shame and guilt is shame if your identity is icky. Guilt is your action was bad. One of the worst toxic emotions or impressions is shame, is to feel that as a whole human we’re bad and a mess and a failure and awful. I’d say embarrassments on a spectrum. Some people can be just lightly embarrassed that they did an action and they see it only as an action, and they don’t think that it’s going to break their relationship. They’re going to be looked down on. But then you look at the spectrum of embarrassment and you get to the shame end, where my whole identity is bad. This is going to be a relationship breaker. I’m going to miss opportunities and that kind of thing. I think that’s the type of thing that’s a huge driver for people. When you see people that care more about their image than about their real effects on people, I think shame is usually tied in there.

Jenny:

Yeah. If you want to put something in the chat, we could maybe talk about it. I’m sorry, your audio isn’t working.

Gord:

Do some people actually use shame to manipulate others? Is that what you’re suggesting there? Well,

Amy:

You trigger shame in people. You have a lot of power because shame’s so powerful. I’m just saying in general that shame’s way more powerful than say a mild embarrassment that’s action related, like embarrassment on a spectrum. Where embarrassment got to the level that you feel your relationships are threatened or you feel that as a human, that shame is usually tied into the fact that we’re social beings and shame gets tied to secrets, right? Secrets build shame because we think something bad that if anybody knew it, they wouldn’t accept us. And that makes the shame worse. But shame isn’t necessarily only used as manipulation, but it’s just that if someone triggers shame. If you want to share something and they act like what you said was so icky and shameful and untouchable and unspeakable that they can’t even acknowledge or talk about it if they’re silent, when you’re open about something, that’s a way to build shame, right?

Amy:

Because if you’re comfortable dialoguing on something that was discouraging for somebody or felt embarrassing and you show you accept them and can dialogue on it, you’re shame busting. But if you turn it into a secret or you turn it into some icky thing that you can even engage with, then that stays just in that person’s head. And then they’re like, well, why can’t that person talk about it? What’s bad about it? What’s bad about me? Right? Silence and secrets are shame builders and talking openly and going, oh, I’m one of 10 people that did that. Well then it’s not such an isolated deal. I’m not so bad. Then that’s a shame busting.

Gord:

Interesting. Okay.

Nature lover:

I know Brene Brown talks about that shame cannot live in the open. It has to live in darkness. If you can own it and something that you’re ashamed of, if you can own it and talk about it, or like Jenny bringing up, oh, I slipped up and maybe sent a heated message on social media or whatever, but if you make a mistake and own it, then it dissipates the shame as well.

Brad’s Final Word on Expression and Takeaways for the Next Session

Brad (15:09):

I’d say you all did a lot of [myth] busting tonight just visiting openly about these experiences. If I might know, we’re running up on time. Should I wind down a little bit here?

Jenny:

Yeah, please, Brad.

Brad:

Teacher 1 really triggered thought. I thought she was writing a poem for a second in the chat, we thought she’s a poet and didn’t know it. We had a poem that we felt was really relevant, and some of you might know this poem, it’s short, it’s by Rumi. It’s called The Guest House, and I think it’s really appropriate. My mindfulness teacher read this to us during our study on emotions and just being introspective here. If you’re willing, I’ll just read. It’s really short. It’s called The Guest House by Rumi.

“This being human is a guest house every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if there are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house, empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight, the dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

Really as we were talking about acknowledging these emotions, sitting with them for a minute, I thought that was a good analogy. I love that poem because it says, create some space for them. They’re normal, acknowledge them. And we talked a little bit about sharing what we can do with them while they’re spending time with us, and then that’s allowing us to, okay, you’ve been here a while, we’re going to clear that out and make room for the next one to come. I think seeing them as transitional is helpful. Sometimes we move through these things, but if we don’t sit with them for a minute, it’s hard to move past them.

I really appreciate the conversation. This can get pretty deep, pretty fast, and make sure you all take care of yourself tonight. Maybe do some safe and calm practice, maybe do some expression [work]. Because we got in touch with some heavy stuff here, which is okay. Next week, skill six. We are going to transition out of emotion regulation. We’ve learned, we’ve gone through five skills already, we’ve got some exposure to learning about what our physical warning signs are, practising safe and calm to shut that fight or flight down. Now we’ve got labelling emotions. We can separate what we’re feeling, ownership. I can turn the dial a little bit if I want to. We have “expression” on the board. I can direct this energy where I want to. And now we’re going to take a little step into, okay, how does thinking connect to all this?

We’ve got a physical response, we’ve got an emotional response to challenge. We’ve talked through, and now we’re going to look at “what do my thoughts have to do with my emotions and behaviour and this skill here?” The belief system is the core of cognitive therapy. Really, if you’ve done any cognitive therapy, this will sound familiar because it’s going to ask you to take a look, an inventory of your core beliefs. What are your rules for living? Defining characteristics of your personality, who you are, the building blocks of who you are based on our experience, our education, what people tell us. We form these rules for living. It’s really important to be aware of what those rules are. I will just throw out real quickly, there should be a direct line. If you lay these skills out in a row, there’s a direct line from Skill six back to threat because rules for living. When your rules for living are violated, you’re going to experience a threat. I want you to think about that connection as you go through this, and we’ll process that more next week.

Jenny:

Wonderful. Wow. Thank you guys. That was a big week. I agree. I was saying to Brad, I’m glad that we get a week to soak on these things and then reflect on it. Yeah, this has been amazing. Have a good week, everyone.

Brad:

Yes, take care.

Jenny:

Okay, bye for now. Bye.

Introduction to Skill 4: Taking Ownership of Your Emotions

Jenny | Geophysicist:

I did my first episode of the year, and I was nervous. I wasn’t really well prepared, I don’t think, and it didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. Already, those are my feelings. And then there’s lots of news in the world, in particular, what Donald Trump is doing affecting our economy, affecting not just ours, Americans, everybody’s right. It’s a big deal, and it’s hard not to get scared. I was thinking about my feelings. It was like I’m feeling really scared and then upset, and then

Brad | Public Mental Health Director:

Yes, it is a big deal. And yes, the fear is valid. And that’s why we talked about labelling that. Oh my gosh, yeah, that’s valid. Okay, what do we want to do about that? How much of this is me? And the right answer, I would say is most of it’s you get to control that fear, your ownership, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But then that next step, these are really hard to separate because they happen so fast, like labelling, ownership and expression all really go together, but we’re deconstructing this process. I’ll try to weave that in if you want to cover that. But you’re absolutely right. Actually, I used to have the skills reversed here, four and five. It used to go labelling expression ownership,

Jenny:

Umm.

Brad:

Then it made a little bit more sense like, okay, I need to own it before I express it. I don’t know, there’s some back and forth there, but this is such a fun skill. I can’t wait to hear what people have to say about this, because sometimes people will hear, well, you’re saying I shouldn’t be upset. And I’m like, there’s even a part I just read again. It says, no, that’s not what we’re saying.

Jenny:

Oh, funny. That’s awesome. Yeah, you’re right. I wanted to hear that your fear is normal, that you feel it is normal, that Yes, absolutely. But to me, the other part I was wanting, hoping we could talk about a bit is the situational versus the personal things. What I mean is a lot of fear comes from things that we’re not even bringing on. It’s not something that’s in us, it wasn’t something we were expecting. There’s a lot of, I guess a lot of this stuff is brand new. We’re in a lot of unknown, which when you talk about predictability, we don’t have a lot of predictability in our lives right now. I think it’s

Brad:

The biggest threat is the unknown. Yep.

Jenny:

And I guess sometimes we do get overcome, I suppose. But yeah, and I guess what I am learning from this too is that nothing needs, well, not nothing, generally speaking, social, emotional things don’t need to be dealt with right then and there. They generally can take a break if there’s something, if it’s really elevated, and it’s obviously important,

Brad:

And you’re not going to manage it well in that lizard brain,

Jenny:

Right? Yeah, not possible. That’s the part that I have to get past

Brad:

Always starting at one. It’s always you have to start there and work up to here, because this step isn’t even possible if you’re in fight or flight. I mean, you just can’t do it, so.

Jenny:

Right. Yeah, for sure.

Brad:

Yeah, because we’ll just go right to blame. We’ll go to all these other things that are reactive and it’s not even possible to get here. So

Jenny:

Anyway, I think this one is definitely one that requires practice. Some thoughts.

Brad:

Yeah. Oh my gosh, this is such a challenging but fun, rewarding skill. It’s like, this is my favorite one. And to try to teach it to kids is even more like, how do you get this concept to kids?

Brad:

We do it with games. We have a couple of games that we play. One’s called, You Can’t Make Me Smile, or You Can’t Make Me Laugh. And they try to get each other. One’s supposed to not laugh and one tries to get them to laugh. It’s this whole idea of how much control do I have over my emotional response to what you’re doing? You could flip that around to make me mad and make me scared, make me, and what they end up finding out is that they can have some control over their response to whatever someone else is doing.

Jenny:

All these things that I somehow think would be helpful for adults too, if we’re not [regulated].

Brad:

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Hopefully this last week we covered, we’re in this domain of emotion regulation, we never really leave the skills we’ve learned previously. We’ve still got that biological response, threat and safety, and now we’re adding on these emotional components. The first one was labelling. Get to know what we’re dealing with here before we can regulate it, try to put a name to it, specific name to it. And then this week, what I ask you to do in the book is to think about this idea of how much I’m angry or I’m sad, or I’m scared? How much control do I have over specifically the intensity and the duration of that emotion? I like to put numbers on things. You guys know that I use a scale of one to 10. A lot of times, and I use this example in my work behavioural health center.

Brad:

I might see Sarah on the unit today, and I was working with her yesterday. I might say, “Sarah, you were at a seven with me yesterday, and I totally get that you were upset, you were angry. I totally understand that.” And you’ll notice I’m talking to her a day later, and I’ll put this question out to her. I’ll say, “Sarah, I get that you are angry, but how long do you think you want to stay at a seven? You want to stay there for three minutes or three hours, three weeks?” “If I see you three years from now, are you going to be at a seven?” She’ll say, “Well, probably not.” And then I follow that question up with, “Well, who’s the only person on the planet that decides when you can go to a six?” And to me, that’s really showing what this skill is all about.

To me, this is the heart of responsibility and accountability. The skill is how much control and ownership do I have over my response to the threats and challenges that I face as a being. And in my work, 25 years in mental health, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say, and I know I started the chapter with a pretty bold statement about this causing the most human suffering on the planet, the lack of this skill. Because what happens when, what I see is if you don’t have this skill, where does it land you? Well, for one, you don’t believe you have any control over your mood and behaviour. You are simply reacting to everything that’s coming at you. What a powerless position to operate life from. You have no control. You’re at the mercy of everybody and everything, all these triggers, and they’re constantly just turning your dials and turning your nods, and that reactivity is, and it’s a victim.

It constantly puts us in that victim stance with a lot of blame. That’s the end result that I see in real life without this skill. And I think it’s probably the most important one. It’s also the most exciting. I think it’s the most entertaining one to teach and try to process through. But there’s a lot of value here. Sometimes people will hear, and I know you saw this in the chapter, that what we’re saying is you should just never show emotion. You should not let anything bother you. You should never get above a seven. And that’s not what it’s saying. Actually, what I’m saying is, if you’re at a seven, I want you to know that you’re at a seven, but also want you to know that you’re the one that has some influence about how long you stay at a seven.

Does that make sense? Does that sound fair? Like a fair place to be? That’s really nobody else’s. I always think of this dial and whose hand do you think is on the dial? We do an exercise in our adult training where we put a situation where somebody left work early and left you hanging there to cover work. We put this, the person is super angry, they’re at a seven, or an eight because they had to stay late and cover somebody else’s shift because they left. Then we have this pie chart and we say, who or what caused this person to become upset? Was it the person that left? Was it the work or was it themselves? And then to apply a certain percentage to each one of those potential causes. And it’s really interesting if you put [energy into] the person that dipped out or the work, all these things that you don’t have any control over. It’s really interesting how long people choose to stay in that upset then. But if you believe that you have some control over that, then it changes things. Any quick questions about that? This ownership and control thing is such an interesting skill.

Jenny:

Yeah. Do you mind repeating the three things? If either it was you that decided to leave,

Brad:

Well, we actually let ‘em choose the three. We choose who or what caused the main character here to become upset. Was it the person that dipped out? Are they going to blame that person? How much control are they going to give that person? And then usually the conversation evolves into the point of who is angry and suffering. The person that left work, they might be out at the beach, we don’t know where they are, we don’t have the information. They might be having a great time. Who’s the one that’s at an eight? Who’s the one that’s taking that home with them? Who’s the one that’s a coworker at an eight? Now working with patients or students or with our family whose biology is suffering, whose cortisol is through the roof, whose shoulders are tight or up to their ears. Really to me, it puts it back in that cord of how much control do I want to give that person over me and my space and my health and my happiness. It sounds easy when you talk about it, but in the moment. Yeah.

Jenny:

One thing I was reflecting on with this, Brad, is when people say, oh, I can’t work with these people. I’m just throwing out a phrase that people say, and that right there to me is where’s the ownership in that? Right? Rather than, how do I work with the people that I have? Most of the time we don’t have a choice. How do people take that ownership back is what I was thinking. Does that fit within this?

Brad:

Yeah, sure it does. I think, well, this is all about how much control you’re giving to external things or people over your mood and behaviour. It’s really what it comes down to. But we are really, I’ll give the example in there, how quickly we can sit here and say this and talk about memes, and you’re dealt the car, play the hand that you’re dealt, make lemonade out of lemons. All these cliches that we say about how we’re going to respond to the challenges we’re given. But when it comes right down to it, I hear people say all the time, she makes me so mad, he makes me. And the psychology behind this is something called attribution theory. Human beings, whatever we attribute causation to, basically whatever we think is making us a certain way, that’s where we’re going to put all of our energy to fix it.

If you think that’s outside of yourself, if you think someone else is making you feel a certain way, boy, your energy’s going to go there. How much control do you have over that person? Zero. Right? We can’t control other people. We try a lot and we fail miserably. There’s this misdirection of energy, and then you have failure. And then what usually happens after failure is this concept of learned helplessness. That’s the cycle I see over and over and over again. If I’m putting all this, I attribute causation of my upset and my mood to something else. I try to change something, but I don’t have much control over it. I fail, and then I’m right back at this learned helplessness, which is a threat, and I feel bad about it. And go right back into lizard brain and the whole thing starts all over again.

I want to make sure that this is landing on everybody in an okay way, because people can hear this skill in a lot of different ways. Some people hear this as blaming the victim, I’m upset now. It’s all my fault. You’re saying that it’s all my fault that I’m sad or I’m angry. What it doesn’t do, what we’re not doing is excusing bad behaviour. We’re not excusing whatever the trigger is, whatever’s happened to you. We’re not saying that’s okay if it’s something that’s not okay. We’re also not saying you should, like I said earlier, that you should never be at a seven or an eight, not telling you what number to be at at all. It’s the skill is this idea of being aware of where you’re at and that you can have some influence over that if you choose to, that no one else controls that and to not give that away, we do it a lot

And people have written about this. There’s great work that’s been done on this. Clear back to Epictetus was a philosopher in Nero’s time talking about how terrible it was to be a crippled slave in Nero’s time, locked up. Nero was not a very good person. He had his own mom executed, I think. But just his idea of I can still find joy in this terrible circumstance. Another one that comes to mind, Viktor Frankl, A Mans Search for Meaning, how he’s able to overcome horrible times during Holocaust period and those kinds of things. That, and you hear all kinds of stories like this of the human spirit. People call it the human spirit, but it’s this idea of “how much can I still have joy, even though the circumstances don’t reflect that, when they are pretty dire?” That’s where this comes from.

That’s the skill here though that we’re working on. Yeah. I think the other challenge that I usually put forward is really thinking about that when you say, that makes me, or she makes me or he makes me. I’ll confess in our profession as a therapist, I was actually trained to use that sort of language in therapy. It was in the textbook this way. To me as a psychologist I was supposed to ask you this question, questions in this phrasing. And if you didn’t do it, like the textbook said, you got counted off. But I was supposed to say, “How did that make you feel?” Listen to the phrasing. Where are we attributing the cause to? If I say, how did that make you feel? What’s making you feel that? How much control do we have over that? Zero. I’ve since written to my professor, they don’t like getting emails from me anymore.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

Should we be using a different phrase instead of how did that make you feel? Should we be reordering it or rewording it?

Brad:

Yeah, take a stab at that. What do you think would be a way to rephrase that?

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I think one thing my therapist has said is, “When that happened, how did you feel?”

Brad:

Yes. Or you can just take the make out of it. How did you feel about that? Where’s the power? And you say those two next to each other out loud. How did that make you feel versus how did you feel about that? Do you hear the difference in power? It may sound small, may sound like semantics here, but we think in words and our belief systems are constructed in words. And if you’re going to put all the power over my emotions with something outside of our control, we’re not starting from a good place. Those are the kinds of things that we need to think about with this skill.

Jenny:

If everyone’s ready, I’ve got the breakout rooms set here I can send us off. Again, I’m putting the teachers in with Brad this week and looking for volunteers for next week if people are interested. We can chat about that when we come back. Okay. Opening the rooms now.

Break Out Session with Staff and Teachers (text only)

Brad (15:21):

Hey.

Teacher 1:

How are you?

Brad:

I got to move out of this sun. I’m good. I am good.

School Administrator 1:

We were saying that this is the first time we’re sitting here going, oh, it’s not nighttime yet. We’re getting a little bit more daylight.

Brad:

That’s right. That’s true. You’re right. That’s a good perspective to have. Well, what’d you think about this practice of ownership? What do you think?

School Administrator 2:

I can label it and name it. The duration piece is so much harder to put a number to, or an endpoint, because for me, the endpoint is when it’s all out and when it’s done and finished.

Brad:

Yeah.

Admin 2:

For me, I can’t say I think this many days or this long with the awareness of it can’t be all consuming. It can’t be all those things, but to attach a number for me is really hard.

Brad:

I appreciate that. I think this whole skill is really hard. When you start to put a number, it’s not something where we typically do put a number to how you’re thinking about something or how much control you think you have. It’s just the practice of trying, I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but just practice of being aware of that and trying that process is strengthening that muscle.

Admin 2:

Right. And maybe I’m not thinking that when I do it, it’s okay. I’m going to give myself a bit of time to work through it, and I’m more generalized with the amount, not necessarily an actual number. Maybe I’m getting hung up on the number piece.

Brad:

I was hearing that and I’m glad you said it and not me. But yes, I think you’re right on that. Unless you want to give a specific example, and maybe that would help.

Admin 2:

I guess more at home when my kids are, my girls are 21 and 22, they’re older, but they’re still dealing with their dad in a separated situation and stuff. And being the outside person watching it gets really hard for me. And then I get all dysregulated and set myself off a little bit. At that moment, I’m like, I need to breathe. I need to do those things, but I’m not thinking I’m only going to give myself an hour. I’m just like, I need to move on. Or I say something more generalized.

Brad:

Remember how these skills go together. The lizard brain can’t do this skill at all. If you’re in fight or flight mode, this isn’t even possible. I like what you said, give yourself a little bit of time and space there to get, only the top part of your brain is going to be able to even have a shot at doing this, because it’s a whole perspective around ownership. That hour is probably to get your biology in line. And then I liked what you said, you were labelling the feeling. I think you said angry, you said dysregulated, but I was sensing there was probably anger there.

Labelling that, and then who am I giving, who’s got their finger on the dial for this anger if I’m at a seven? Because it seems reasonable that you might be between a five and an eight sometimes with what’s going on in your situation.

Admin 2:

Yeah.

Brad:

Who’s suffering there, first of all?

Admin 2:

Right? Me.

Brad:

You are. You’re carrying seven. You’re the one with the seven all over your face. You’re the one with the seven in your shoulders and in your stomach and all over. That’s a good reminder of, is this good for me? Is this where I want to be? And who am I handing over the dial to? Might be somebody I really don’t want to hand the dial to.

And that’s what we’re going to cover for the next skill. These three, I talked earlier, really hard to separate labelling, ownership and expression. I think you were just hinting at expressions too, because that’s the next question. What do I do with this? Where’s it going? And who controls that? That’s a really important question. That’s why we do ownership versus, okay, I have some control here. I know I’m a seven, but what do I want to do with this seven? Because actually what we’ll find is if we can find an outlet for that seven, sometimes it’ll take itself down to a four.

Admin 2:

Right? Right.

Brad:

You want to direct it. Where do you want to direct it? Is that towards another person? You know what I mean? Because.

Admin 2:

Yes, no, I don’t want to direct anywhere else. And I think what’s been helpful is that the awareness piece brings it down much quicker. Now that I’m more aware, I’m handing over that control, I’m handing that over to someone else, and it’s like, Hey, that’s the last person that gets that control. I’m finding that to bring it down quicker. I never think, I just don’t think about the duration other than I know I don’t want it to be long.

Brad:

Yeah. Anger is an interesting one because a lot of times it’s sitting on top of sadness and fear.

Admin 2:

Yep.

Brad:

That one is like, well, you almost want to take it a little step deeper. Whenever I feel anger, I’m always like, is that so? Which is it? What am I really, am I hurt here? Am I left out? Am I afraid that I’m not doing something right? Is there something just a little bit deeper? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes when I connect with that, what it really is, instead of the anger sitting on top, it’s easier for me to sit with that for one thing. It’s a little bit easier to sit with those than anger which is like, I want to go do something and break something. It’s a little easier to sit with sadness and fear for just a minute and decide what I want to do with that.

Admin 2:

Yeah. I had an interesting little aha moment in the middle of a little situation. We had a flight change, and so I was trying to deal with the airline, which in and of itself is a frustration trying to talk common sense with people who don’t speak common sense.

Brad:

Yes, I’m familiar.

Admin 1:

Yes. And then my husband is away dealing, helping his parents deal with some stuff. And he called and immediately I was like, oh, man, am I ever angry? And then when I stopped, I went, Nope. It’s because I was sitting at a seven out of 10 still from just getting off the phone with the airline.

I hadn’t come down from that yet. Then he said something, and then it turned out that my original reaction was, oh, I’m so frustrated. I’m so upset. And then I thought, “No, I’m just sad.” I’m just sad about what’s happening. And then it was weird to be in the middle of a, we don’t really fight, bit of a heated conversation and then to go, “Oh, hold on, never mind.” And he said, “What?” And me, “No, no, never mind. Just, okay, have a good night. I will talk to you tomorrow.” It was so weird to be really aware.

Brad:

Wow.

Admin 1:

At the moment. I thought, “Oh, wait a second. No, no, it’s okay. No, this isn’t you. It’s me. It’s good. I got it.”

Brad:

That’s very cool.

Admin 1:

It was cool.

Brad:

Great job. I mean, that’s really great. You were able, because biology

Admin 1:

Not quite soon enough.

Brad:

No, but that’s often what we hear from kids. Okay. I learned to calm down, but it was right after I hit ‘em in the face, and then I was like, oh, I’m calmed down. But that’s how skill development happens. Sometimes we think of it right afterwards or a little bit later. It’s like, oh, well, yeah, I thought of it, but I wasn’t quite there in time. But that’s exactly what we see all the time with skill development. That’s cool. Yeah. Great job.

Teacher 3:

Well, and I think that’s where we always come across where it’s something like, my pencil broke and it’s now solving catastrophic problems, but it had nothing to do [with the pencil]. But it’s all those things that we haven’t been able to come down from. Same with our kids. And it’s just more and more frustration, more and more sadness, more and more just on top of, until we get to that breaking point. And we never came down all the way down or even down enough. We don’t have time, we’re riding that [dysregulation].

It’s like, what’s going to be that thing that, yeah. And I think that’s, for me, that’s the big aha moment too, is taking the moment when you hang up the phone after a conversation that doesn’t go the way that you hoped it would go, and you’re up there. It’s taking that minute to remind myself to ask, where am I? And is this where I want to be before I move on to my next task? It’s just taking that time to remember that I can live in the waves, but if I’m up here, the next person that walks through my door doesn’t deserve what I’m carrying.

Brad:

Carrying. And if we understand that as a team and together, that’s next level. But when you can support each other and say, go to someone and say, I’m at a seven. I don’t want to be at a seven, and then we can, man, that’s where I see from a leadership perspective, that’s when team regulation, co-regulation, all that stuff can start to happen.

Admin 1:

Just today, Brad, I ordered 30 more of these books, and we’re going to do this with our whole staff.

Brad:

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s cool. Like a weekly study.

Admin 1:

Well, it’s not going to be weekly because we don’t want it to be opt-in, and we only meet once a month, we’re going to have to take it and do a couple in each one, but we can do for a longer period of time, but we want to do it over the next four months.

Brad:

Oh, that’s awesome. You’ll have to let me know how that goes. Or even if there’s a time you meet and you think I could jump in for a second.

Admin 1:

Oh, that would be fabulous. Really cool. Because with the four of us doing it, then we want to do it like this, where we talk about one of the skills, and then we’re going to put them into breakout groups and talk about it. Then come back together, talk about the next one, good. Talk about it, and then lead into the next one so that we don’t, and then our thought was to give them tasks, activities throughout. At the two week mark, here’s a little task you need to do, and then bring back the information from the task so that they don’t read it, set it on their shelf, and then a month later, test it off and bring it to the staff meeting and

Brad:

Yep, yep. It’s really smart. Good idea. Oh, that’s exciting. You start to get those people talking and sharing and supporting each other with skills. It’s just getting a group to go to the gym together. It’s that support and accountability, and these are skills and muscles that we’re trying to build,

Teacher 1:

And we have kids who are dysregulated and we can’t figure out why we’re struggling to help our kids regulate. And then we said, no, we need to do some serious work with our staff about understanding themselves and their own reactions before we can really make any huge systemic change with our children.

Brad:

And the thing about doing what you’re doing here is where does it put the responsibility? It does put that on the adult, on the person. We’re saying, we’re giving you the tools. We’re even going to make time to help you work on this together, and we’re going to support you with it. I mean, we’ve used this before to say who’s on the bus and who’s not on the bus too. It’s like, Hey, we’re giving you the tools. We’re putting it right in your hand. We’re making it pretty easy for you. Come on, come along with us.

Teacher 1:

Yep. I

Brad:

I love it. I love that.

Teacher 3:

And that was the big aha moment because when we saw you in Orlando and listened to what you said, and we were like, our kids need this. Our kids needed this, and brought back the stuff. And then when this came about, and we started week one, thought, “No, we got to back it up.” We got to get the adults to understand this before we can walk the kids through it.

Brad:

Yeah, that was my bad. I should have put that purple book out first years ago.

Teacher 1:

No, it’s all good. It’s all good, because the stuff that we’ve been doing with the kids is not bad at all, and Carmen has done an amazing job of making it even easier for the students. She’s made little slideshows to go with each of your lessons.

Brad:

I appreciate the work that you’re doing. And to get the word out, I just feel like there’s so many people that could benefit. It’s like never ending. I’m always talking to people about how we can help you get these skills and how can I help you learn this stuff?

Teacher 1:

Yeah, exactly.

Brad:

Anything else you want to cover on ownership? I’m sorry, I just got off track there, but

Teacher 2:

I think that’s what we’ve been talking about is the ownership from the adults and what an impact that has. And I think the power of us speaking the same language and having the same philosophy essentially around that awareness of ourselves, and then the kids are recognizing there’s just so much power in, I think us collectively as a school are taking this on. I think our kids, our teachers for sure, but our kids will benefit so much from that. I think it will bring everyone a little bit more at rest, I think. So

Brad:

What do you think about the little challenge? I mean, we do it in the office and around here, even my family, but when you hear somebody or hear yourself, catch yourself saying, that makes me, or he makes me or she makes me. How do you feel about calling each other out on that or just calling it out and saying, really? Do you think you’re at that point with your skill development and with people not being open to feedback from each other around that? Do you think that would work out or No?

Teacher 1:

It’s interesting because as a principal, the number of times I used it with kids would, they’d come in and they’re like, well, he makes me so mad. No, you’re letting him make you mad. You’re upset with the choices that he made. It’s interesting when you go to call out a colleague, an adult.

Brad:

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Or a spouse or, yeah.

Teacher 1:

I think the way this is written and the reflection piece of, I just think it’s well done that as soon as you start going, oh, wait a minute, how do I respond to this? I used to say it to my kids and I’d probably use the wrong language, but when they were little and they’d be, oh, I’m so angry. I said, oh, don’t let them win. You’re letting somebody else win. If you say they’re upsetting you and you let it upset you, then they won. In hindsight, I’m not sure that’s the best wording.

Brad:

Yeah. But you had the point. That was the point. Yeah. You’re giving over control to probably somebody you don’t want to.

Teacher 1:

That’s exactly it. Yeah. It’s surprising.

Teacher 2:

But it’s also, I mean, I would never, because not in the same role as you, but that’s always been the thought, right? We’re in an elementary school K to five, our oldest kids are turning 11, right? 11 tops. And I’m going, but they’re eight. How are they ruining your day?

Brad:

I think that question about who’s suffering?

Admin 1:

Yes. And I liked when I was reading this, I just jotted down a thought. If you own it, that means you can’t also blame it, don’t blame the others. You have to, the ownership takes the blame right out of that equation then.

Teacher 1:

Well, we were talking about that too, right? Where it’s like, I’m sorry you feel that way, right? It’s not like I’m taking ownership of something that I’ve done to you. I’m saying it’s a you problem, not a me problem, right?

Brad:

Yeah. And “I” statements fit really well with this skill too. They really do. Yeah.

Teacher 2:

Yeah. Well, and I think when we take that ownership and accountability and we start to see if our kids are losing it because they didn’t get the marker they wanted, they didn’t get something they wanted, it’s not the, it’s usually never the marker. It’s all the things that led up to it. It’s like that was the thing that finally pushed it over the edge. And it’s that reflection of, okay, what happened before that? How are we reflecting to helping our kids reflect too? And being able to say, I don’t think you were really upset about this. I’m wondering, are you still mad about it, or are you still thinking about trying to help our kids find their way through it? But we can’t help them find it until we’re, we’ll figure it out.

Teacher 1:

Our lizards can’t be driving the bus if we’re trying to make sure that their lizards are not driving their bus.

Brad:

And you mentioned that it’s a capacity issue. We only have so much capacity, and like you said, threat and challenge. Our cumulative, they build and build and build. That’s why we were talking about way back in skill two, about creating safety predictability periodically so that we can keep that. Because you’re right, if you come in at a six already and then somebody says something, or it’s not very far to a 10, but if you come in at a two, we’ve done some safety and calm, our biology’s in line, we’re back down here. The next skill really helps diffuse that too. That is expression, how am I getting this energy out? How much am I carrying around?

That’s why I said these three really go, the emotional skills really go closely together, and it’s hard to separate ‘em out in real life. Labelling expression and ownership like bang, bang, bang. But maybe you’re also, I think you’re ready to get to the next skill, which is expression. What’s that lane? Where’s all this energy going to go now? Where’s this anger going to go? How’s it directed? And who’s the one that chooses where it goes?

Admin 1:

Brad, your experience, do ADHD adults struggle with this?

Brad:

Think about those skills of that fight or flight response. You think about those symptoms, line them up next to anxiety and ADHD. The reactivity, we’ve already got issues with reactivity and impulsiveness, super similar. If they’re hyperactive and impulsive, and then you throw in a lizard brain on top of that, I mean, it just exacerbates everything that we’ve talked about here in terms of who needs to practice and who needs more practice. I can’t think of a group of people that need more practice regulating than A DHD. Anxiety combinations. You almost like a double whammy. You’re hitting on that biology, all the same symptoms, and it’s like three times. That’s

Admin 1:

Exactly what I was thinking. How do we help those?

Brad:

It’s no different. It’s really not different skills because you’re still wanting to promote less reactivity, right? I mean, it’s all the same stuff. You still want to try to stay ahead of the problem. None of these are like, oh, it’s going to cure A DHD. But when you take someone with ADHD and put them in fight or flight, or their stress is way up here because they don’t know how many skills to manage their stress and challenge in their life, it’s just going to be worse.

Admin 1:

But I like just what you said, it just takes more practice.

Brad:

Anybody with, it’s a diagnosable issue. That’s its own challenge, but it’s on top of the regular. Even if we don’t have a DHD, these are all struggles we still have. You put that together with A DHD and the biology makes it really hard, that physical regulation piece. It’s that way with any mental health diagnosis. And that’s why I love working in this. That’s my everyday job. If you throw an anxiety disorder on top of this too, it’s the same thing. It’s like you’ve got a fight or flight system that’s sensitive from trauma or whatever, PTSD, that it’s the same mechanism for getting hit. Fight or flight is sensitive for those folks. They live in threat mode. Our whole practice is these same skills, but how much practice do you think someone with PTSD needs to be safe and calm a lot? That’s where we work all the time, safe and calm. Expression is the same skill, ownership. Those are people who feel like they’ve been victimized. How much ownership do they think they have over there? Not much that’s been taken from them. It’s the same skills, but just a little bit different twist on it. Does that make sense? It’s the same with depression. It’s the same skills, fight or flight. A lot of times with them, it’s shut down, freeze avoidance instead of their fight’s gone a lot. Sometimes you’ll see some irritability, but still they need to be safe and calm. They still need to label sadness. They still need healthy expression and ownership. How much can I move myself from, and there’s upregulation. Sometimes theirs is upregulation that we need. I need to move up from a three to a five.

Brad:

Right? Yeah. There’s down, but it’s the same skillset. It’s just with a different tweak on it based on the diagnosis. Sorry, that’s probably a little bit further than you wanted to go on.

Admin 1:

No, not at all. That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I was looking for.

Admin 2:

Right now, when lots of our kids behave like adults that are riding high jump quick too, they’re misbehaving. They’re doing this on purpose. It’s just an excuse when it’s like there’s not that true understanding right now. And I think maybe this awareness piece will help overall. It’s

Brad:

A really good source of just understanding. And that’s why when I came and did the training with you all, we didn’t just say, here’s your seven skills. Practice some lessons on it. There you go. We dig into the psychology behind it, the biology behind it. I think it provides some understanding that without that understanding, it’s just another set of things I’m supposed to do,

Admin 1:

Right? Yeah. I love this session in August, but I love coming back to it and digging in deeper and internalizing it. Because I think the more we can internalize this with our big people, then we can help our little people. Because I mean, yes, I really want to help the staff, but I really want to help the kids

Brad:

For sure. And like you said, they go together. Can’t hardly separate it.

Admin 1:

Yeah.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Brad (15:26):

Some heavy stuff in this one. Who’s in control? Anybody summarize themes that came out or any insights or light bulb moments, anything like that come out of the groups?

Jenny:

We were talking about big injustices. There you go, Brad. It was a big conversation for us too. I’ll use me as an example. I had a boss that was, well, I was let go, and it was a lot of being, what was being presented and what was happening were two different things. I ended up leaving, which ended up being a good thing for me, but I knew there was still injustices happening around her and around the things that she was doing. Yeah, how do we let that go? We were talking about one that’s lingered for years. I gave an example of how I let that go. I had some closure come from it somehow. But yeah, I don’t know what that closure meant for me. And I think if you can help us understand these big injustices, I mean, you and I spoke about Donald Trump and the fear that he’s injecting into the world right now. There’s a lot of big injustices out there, and it’s hard to own that. Help us understand that a little better.

Brad:

Well, I’m going to say something. Let it go. Let it go. That was your words. That’s not anywhere in here, but I think it’s, it might be a song, but no one’s saying let it go. I would never tell someone to let a big injustice go. That’s not what we’re saying here. If I say that since I said that, what do you think we are getting? What might I be saying about this if I’m not saying Let it go? What do you think?

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I found, for me, when I struggle to let go of that issue, I try to redirect my energy. I’ve found ways to get over some of my injustices by going back to school and learning something new and changing my career. That’s a really big change. I can’t expect everybody to do that. Redirecting that energy into learning new things. When something’s really bothering me, I tend to start looking on the internet for solutions, studies, and things to help explain this injustice that I’m feeling. And that works, but it’s also very time and energy consuming. It’s probably not a solution for everybody, but that’s working for me, because it takes a lot out of my time and energy.

Brad:

Yes. You redirected that expression, and that’s going to be our next skill. But what’d you do with that energy? Did you want to stay and suffer with it? But it’s not letting it go. You didn’t let it go. You directed it somewhere. You found a channel.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I just didn’t suffer with it for a long time. About two to three years probably.

Brad:

That’s always our choice. We can sit there and it’s not enough for us to have a hook in us. We have to twist it a few times. I used to use that analogy all the time, but who’s twisting it? I’m twisting. I can either twist it, the hook’s there. There’s the pain, and then there’s our reactivity to the pain, which makes the suffering worse. We control that reactivity. I like what you said, you directed that somewhere, but who directed it? You directed it. The injustice didn’t tell you where to direct that. You could have addressed that injustice. 40,000 different ways. You chose how to do that, but you didn’t let it go. I just wanted to point that out really quickly. I also like journaling.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

I also like Journaling. I feel like journaling feels like unloading as well. I feel like I’m putting it on the page.

Brad:

Yeah, that’s our next skill expression. I’ve said this a couple of times, it’s really hard to separate these: ownership, expression, and labelling. They really run quickly, but that’s how you got it out, right? Do something with that. Energy board’s got his hand up.

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

Yeah. Just following what was said there in terms of empowerment, that’s what I’ve been struggling with over the last several weeks. It’s not good for my mental health, physical health, family, family relations, everything. Really feeling despair yesterday and what happened this morning, an opportunity to work on a project because I’m ex project manager, type a control freak, working on a small project that’s going to benefit some learning challenged adults, something I’d worked at when I was still at work in my career. I just feel empowered again. And what a relief to do something positive for other people. I’m feeling utterly powerless in this other realm, small incremental steps. But this little project can benefit a whole group of people that would never have seen the benefits of what technology can do. And I’m able to provide that. It was so inspiring this morning to get that phone call. Yes, something positive.

Brad:

Good for you, Gord. That’s great. And this is a whole framework of skills. That physical part, if you’re just getting threat, threat, threat, threat, threat, that’s driving you down into that lizard brain, it’s just going to be reactivity, reactivity, reactivity. And how powerful are we in our lizard brain? Not very. Where do you have control over creative outlets and thoughts and empathy and seeing another person’s perspective and problem solving? All that’s up here, right? When we experience that threat, we go down here into that reactive, just the rat in the maze. Yo running the wheel, running the wheel, running the wheel. This skill isn’t even possible when you’re that threatened. Just the fact that you recognize that you’re able to get calm, you were able to see something other than threat, which is a much more, it’s a balanced view of how things are going in your life right now. There are some wonderful things out there. The other thing, what’d you guys think about that part here? I wanted to make sure I wrote this in the book, that toxic positivity. Sometimes that’s what we try to offer others, or we get back when we’re struggling with this is, oh, just find the silver lining. Oh, just look on the bright side. Oh, you notice that we do that? What’s the meaning? Everything has a purpose, which I don’t want to get too far into, but have any of you encountered toxic positivity before? Naomi? Can you comment on that?

Naomi:

I can’t really comment on the toxic positivity. I mean, yeah, it’s frustrating. Of course. I’ll just comment on Jenny’s comment about the big injustices, and it ties in a bit to one of the reflection questions is a pattern where you tend to struggle. Taking ownership is obviously a big injustice. Or if I can take ownership of my side of it and apologize, but I really want the other person to take ownership and apologize, too.

Brad:

We do. Yeah.

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

That’s where I struggle with taking ownership is when I’m like, I see both sides, and I want the apology too.

Brad:

I used to, when we would work in marital therapy and those things, and what we would say is, you’re holding, sometimes we hold our happiness hostage by saying, I’ll only be happy. I’ll be happy, and I’ll have closure if you do this, this, and this. Well, we’re right back where we started, who can we control? That means we just put our happiness in someone else’s hands that we’re probably in a disagreement with, probably not a good place to put control of our emotions, and they may never do that. Am I going to stay miserable? Am I going to keep twisting the hook? Am I going to stay at a seven until someone else decides? Well, I don’t want them deciding that for me. Jenny, I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit, because I know you’ve directed your energy in some pretty positive ways in some of the challenges that you’re facing. I don’t think you’re letting it go by directing it and being thoughtful about where you’re putting those energies. Yeah.

Jenny:

Well, I think what you were saying is exactly right. I directed it and without thinking about what I was doing and why I was doing it, I did. I went down this path of trying to find community. That was the other thing I was going to ask Brad, as we have a very fragmented society right now. When I say what do we care about? What are common beliefs these days and what are quality communities? What does a quality community look like? Like was said, that’s what I’ve been seeking without necessarily knowing and finding it, which is wonderful. It does exist out there, and I think that’s maybe something to feel at least that what we talked about in our room, and maybe Lynette, you can say it better, is let them, what’s the rest of it? Let them let them.

Tami | Retired Teacher:

Mel Robbins theory “Let them” I can let them be responsible for whatever. But then how do I respond?

Brad:

Yep, that’s exactly right. That’s what we’re talking about here.

Jenny:

Right? But then I also like the question that was put in the chat: how do we move on?

Engineer, MSc Sustainability:

Yeah. I had a really bad roommate a few years ago that would constantly push my buttons and treat me with a double standard. They had ideas for how I should behave to them, and I am ruminated on, okay, they need to apologise to me now because, and they never would because in their mind, they didn’t see us anyways. When you feel like you need an apology from someone, you let them, it’s hard. That’s something I haven’t figured out how to get over.

Brad:

Next week is, and maybe I’ll just lay the groundwork here about out of time, but this skill for next week is expression. In a healthy way, what I usually recommend is we’ve labelled what you feel. I don’t know if you felt angry or sad about that, but you would label that. You would say, okay, this is mine. I’m at a seven, I’m at a six, but here’s what I’m going to do with that. I’m going to express it. I might express it in a letter, I might express it. I want to choose my words carefully. I want to do it in a healthy way. What happens is we’re going to do something with this emotion. If you just think of it, you’re holding it here, I’m going to direct it a certain way, and I want to be really thoughtful about how I do that because there’s healthy and unhealthy ways to express these emotions. And what are you responsible for and accountable for? Not how they respond or what they do, but everything that you do is yours. If you express how you feel in that situation, they may or may not apologise. We’re even getting into skill six, which is your belief system. If you have this belief that everyone should apologise for injustices, we probably are going to have to adjust that when we get to skill six, because that’s not reality. That’s not reality, and we are going to get into irrational beliefs in skill six.

Jenny:

Very cool. Next week, Brad, anything more to think about before we sign off?

Brad:

Nope. Just expression. Great job on this one. This is one that you can wrestle with for a while and I’d encourage you to do that. Just how much control and ownership do we have?

Gord:

It really comes down to that personal power empowerment as well, Brad, doesn’t it?

Brad:

Yeah.

Gord:

Sense of control.

Brad:

That’s about all we have.

Gord:

You can’t control other people, but you can try to control yourself as much as possible.

Brad:

Yeah, and we’ve talked about what gets in the way of that. When I’m in that lizard brain, I don’t see that and I don’t have that control. I lose control. Part of this whole system is what works, but also it’s addressing the barriers to what works. Does that make sense? When you want to get a system that’s going to be helpful, you have to look at what’s helpful and working and promoting the right direction, but also what gets in the way of that. And we’re doing both here. Alright, great. Good work, man. Guys are,

Jenny:

Yeah, this is a lot of fun. Thank you everybody. Cool beans. Have a great week everyone.

Introduction to Skill 3—Labelling Emotions

Jenny | Geophysicist:

This is great, Brad, I was reading your one reflection question today, which I really appreciated, which is that combination of unlabeled dysregulation, if you will, versus labelling your loss of regulation and knowing what emotion you're feeling at just as such a double, I can see the power in those two simple things being so big together in combination.

Brad | Public Mental Health Director:

Yes, for sure. Well, I'm glad you're having the intent of this also too, especially if you're doing it with a group or with a family or partner, is to have some fun with it. I mean jokingly, oh, and if you start to catch each other or use some of the language, it's all in fun. We're just helping support each other along the way. I mean, we do the same thing at our office at work and the people that work on this with me. If we catch ourselves giving way too much control over something or we're not using the framework, we can help each other with it. It's fine.

Jenny:

Yeah, it's good. I asked Chris how he was feeling today and he said, “I'm fine”. I said, “Right here it says you're not allowed to use the word fine”.

Brad:

I'm helping you check in right now. I'm prompting you. Was he able to say something?

Jenny:

Yeah, he came up with other words, it was good.

Brad:

I would say, I do think it would be okay when we go to breakouts if people would talk just maybe a little bit about also how they're keeping up with skills one and two as we add three. That's fine too because we're stacking skills. I don't want to forget where we've been, the other things we're working on as we go.

Jenny:

Okay, great. That's what I'm realizing, and it does seem natural to stack, I can see how you have the order in the way you do because you can't really change something unless you know it first of all. Right,

Brad:

Right, right.

Jenny:

That's not sort of identifying your early warning signs and then now you know that you are in trouble. Now what do I do with that? It's finding safety and then now, well, what am I feeling about that? I see how this is all stacking, there's a method to your madness clearly.

Brad:

Very logical. I'm glad you're seeing that method. There was a lot of value in the order that we do this and there's a reason for all of it. It's very intentional, yeah.

Jenny:

In the work I'm doing too, and I know I've relayed to you the similarities in the sense that we're both in the prevention space, if you will, the work we did last year with the show was to know that order as well. It's interesting. We had the why, who, where, when, what? Instead of the natural way we say it, which is who, what, where, why, how. The course that we took suggested that we do it in the other order, which is the why, who, where, when, why? Well, I've lost my, I'm trying to put it in the same framing. I've lost my regulation. That's the why and then the who. It's like, okay, well I got to worry about putting myself first. Yeah, interesting. I won't try to do the rest until I know it all, but I think there's probably a way to frame it in the same logic. Yeah. Just while we're waiting for people to file in, how is this going through the course again? Are you finding it repetitive? Is there new stuff or anything coming up that's been different?

School Administrator 1:

What I really like about it, because now it's my third time through it, I actually really heard it again and really solidified the ideas, but I like the book and doing the super instead of just learning it theoretically and how I would present it to other people reflecting internally has made a huge difference.

Jenny:

Right. You were learning it in the context of school and now you're learning it in the context of yourself. Yeah.

Brad:

Welcome back everyone. It's been another week of life and challenges, no shortage. I'm sure if your week was mine of ways to apply this information that we've been learning about how to manage challenges more effectively, professionally, personally, relationships, even our own challenges that come from inside our thought processes too. Also, I just want to throw it out there. This is a tool and definitely how I teach therapists how to do therapy, but one thing if I haven't said it, this is also a model that you can take and apply to previous challenges. Bringing up something from two years ago or five years ago and then apply these same principles when trying to wrestle with that would make total sense, and this is again why I work with therapists on this is because to bring someone in and rehash a previous challenge without a new model of skill or anything to do differently with that challenge is really sometimes from my perspective, not super helpful.

And I always say, moving on, we're really just adding on, I don't want to forget where we've been. We were in physical regulation, that's starting with how my body responds to challenges. That's that big domain of we're hardwired. We've got some wiring about how our body's going to respond to this challenge and we've covered two skills there. How do I recognize when my body's starting to do that? And then that skill number two, how can I turn the dial down a little bit both in response to when it's getting too high I can down regulate? We also talked a little bit about upregulating, that biological process, but then we were covering how you can be proactive and preventative and maybe if you know it's going to be a rough week, how can I even get ahead of this, some of these challenges and put myself in a better spot to be able to manage that?

Because I know the challenge, the threat's coming, these skills are in order for a reason. Now if you put that together, it's like, okay, I can recognize when my biological system's kicking in. I can turn it down a little bit, which allows me to use that cortex and that higher level thinking and creative problem solving and all these tools that we have as human beings to problem solve and deal with challenges more effectively. And now it's like, what else is going on with me when this challenge is here? Well, we have emotions. We have feelings about the challenging events in our life. We've really tried to simplify because in my experience, when you start bringing up emotions and feelings, it gets really, I mean there's some people that are just like, Nope, that's not me. I don't do that. I don't have emotions and feelings.

And then there's some people that you could spend all day just rehashing and going from one to another and it gets really grey and murky really quick. It's like how do we bring some order and skill and structure to that mess, that grey area? The way we've tried to do it with this framework is to put it into three skills. Label, we got to put some vocabulary around what we're trying to deal with here. We have words that we can use pretty descriptively and concretely to specifically describe what is this emotion that I'm feeling and then I'm previewing next week, but then who's in control of it? Who's dialing it up or who's dialing it down? Who has ownership of it? And then thirdly, what am I going to do with it? Where's this energy going to go? How can I direct it?

If I decide I can direct it, where do I want to push it? Those are really simply the three things that skills that we're going to learn in the emotion regulation category or domain. Label, ownership, how much do I control the duration and intensity of this? And then expression, what do I want to do with it and how can I direct it? The first one this week was around the labelling. That's the first skill. The thought here, the logic was, well, I've got to know what I'm dealing with in order to be able to deal with it. It provides a couple of things, and these are just a couple of points I wanted to throw out from this chapter or what this skill means to me. And the intent of it was that I can provide some clarity to myself, but also to others.

If I'm seeking support, if I come to you and say I'm overwhelmed, that's a communication that I need help. But it would be different if I came to you and said, I'm sad. Not only does it help you direct for yourself, but it also can help guide support. I would probably do something different to try to help you if you said you were sad versus if you were angry versus if you were scared. It can provide some opportunity for co-regulation in a more clear way. One of the highest priority boxes that this skill checks is it makes an unknown unknown. It takes this sort of grey, overwhelmed, I don't know what I feel sort of uncertainty, which is scary and we know what's the thing that causes the most threat. If you go back to skill number one and two for human beings is the unknown, the uncertain.

If I'm feeling all this, maybe I'm angry, scared and sad all at the same time, and I don't really labelled that, you know what that feels like as a human being, it doesn't feel good. It feels confusing, it feels overwhelming. You don't know quite what to do. I just know it doesn't feel good. When we put labels to it, you can pull away, peel away some of that uncertainty and provide some, and we talked last week about how key predictability is if you say to me, and it also, there's a normalizing factor that comes with that predictability. It's a known quality. And then the normalizing things like, wow, sadness. Okay, yeah, that's a normal human emotion and it's okay to be sad and people can relate to that too. That's what the impact or importance of this skill can do. And it's a starting point to provide some clarity to a motion regulation.

Makes sense, any questions around that? Those are just the points that I hope came through and in real life it's easy. While we're all sitting here making notes and talking about it objectively on paper and we're looking at it on the page, and even if you put it up on a PowerPoint, but in real life, how does this happen? I mean it happens very quickly. We're jumping through all seven, all three areas very quickly, physical, emotional, and cognitive. We just separated it out like this because I couldn't figure out a better way. If you just tell a group of people to go out and play basketball and expect them to get better, that usually doesn't work very well. But if you say, we're going to practice dribbling this week, we're going to practice passing next week, and then we're going to work on how to play as a team and these are the plays we're going to run, and then you put all that together, it sort of looks like basketball. If it feels a little bit awkward to you as we step through this, I think that's because this is really a deconstructive model where we're deconstructing this thing and then putting it all together.

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

From my experience, coaching young kids, young kids, football, it was skills, drills, and then thrills. It had to be in that order. These were 11, 12, 13-year-old kids, and they seem to get that right. How can we quickly get to the thrill part? No, here's some prep.

Brad:

Yeah, we all want a quick fix, right? See, what I'd like to do in our breakouts is do just a little recap of where we've been so we don't lose sight of the skills that we're working on from the previous week and then also cover for the current week. We want to do that, but to make sure we're progressing here and scaffolding things together.

Break Out Session with Gord

Brad (12:00):

What do you have going on?

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

Yeah, I'm retired here. This is south of Calgary and Alberta and doing a lot of work on the climate front, environmental front. This government that we have here is very resource exploitation and we're having a real fight down here dealing with coal mining in our mountains. So there's a number of meetings coming up with the government representatives. These are ministers reporting to the premier. The town halls are coming up, discussions around healthcare as well. I get angry very quickly when I've dealt with these people in past sessions and I completely lose my train of thought. So this course is already being helpful, but next week I got to keep my cool. I can't be the angry man in the room. I'm getting some mentoring from another fellow as well when I have time to prepare.

For example, in the last week I've had some interviews with radio and print down here, but it's all very friendly and they're asking questions. I can take a moment to think about my responses. I can even say to the radio guy, I want to rerecord that part, do it better in the moment on the fly with people all around me and my elected representative being very difficult and obstinate, ignorant, all of that. It gets me so mad so quickly, Brad. I have to keep my cool. I want to get the message across to the people and be a more effective communicator on behalf of my kids, all kids and all animals is what I say all the time. Yeah,

Brad:

Yeah. It's a great message. That's a great message. And I could see how somebody that's threatening that or something that's threatening could elicit that threat response very quickly from you or anybody. I heard a couple of things that you're trying to do, which is very smart. One was practice and we talked about predictability last week. So do you have any idea ahead of time what the questions are or what the areas are to where you can prepare your response?

Gord:

Just from the press releases, there's already things triggering me when I read what's being proposed and these government representatives and ministers, they're just going to repeat the same talking points and they're going to try to get into a debate with me because they can't show any weakness in front of a crowd of people, whether it's virtual or in person, especially in person. So they're going to try to belittle me. They're going to try to trivialize the issues, and that's going to get me even more upset. So I've been thinking, what if I approach it from a humour perspective or a sarcastic perspective, factual perspective, all of that, anything to stay away from the anger,

But it takes practice and it's really difficult. These are very unique situations and meetings. It's not like, I mean the crowd is going to be behind me. Most of them are in opposition to what the government's trying to do. So they're going to be cheering me on and they want to see a professional slick presentation and they want to see somebody stand up that's not going to be triggered as easily and become flustered in front of these very slick politicians who've had a lot more practice than I have.

Brad:

What have you been doing for your safe and calm practice?

Gord:

I do a weekly session here in Okotoks. Just learning more about Buddhism and meditation and breathing and visualization as well. All works when there's plenty of time to do it in the moment, taking a breath, even hesitating a few seconds before I answer. I'm going to really have to be disciplined to maintain that coolness under pressure and to make sure that I get my message across. That's where I struggle the most.

Brad:

Practice, you talked about practice. Do you have anyone to practice with, say, “I am the opposition here and my goal?” If I'm good at debate and I knew this about you, I would do everything I could to trigger you. They're trying to do this on purpose, you already know that and you already know what your goal is to not allow that. Do you have anyone you can practice with that tries to push your buttons?

Gord:

Well, my oldest son is off in Denmark right now. He's always very good at pushing my buttons, but he's not around right now. My younger son is onside with me. My wife could try to attempt that role playing.

Brad:

I don't know how you feel about seeing a therapist, but I know I've worked with clients before that had the same thing. They were in similar situations and they needed to keep a level head, keep their cool, and we would practice in session. I would say, give me the talking points of the opposition here and let me fire some things at you that creates that predictability. If you start to get used to that coming in and then you don't respond, you don't let that because what you're trying to do the whole time I'm doing that is you're just practicing your safe and calm and you change the association between threat to escalation, threat to going up to threat, to staying calm. You practice that association, but you've got to have someone to practice with.

Gord:

That is true. And if that's a good point, if I give 'em the talking points, I've got one of my friends who is in a different city, but he was good at debating both sides of the argument and staying cool and calm, just for the fun of it. He would do it right, and that's a really good point. I could write down some counterpoints and just pretend that yeah, it's the minister or the government representative, point counterpoint back and forth and try not to get upset because they're going to stick to their ground. Brad, I have no false solutions that I'm going to try to change the mind of this person. It's the other people in the room that I'm trying to get. One of my mentors here who's done this for years said, you have to stay calm, Gord, but your role is to get everyone else in the room mad. Right? Right.

Brad:

I understand that. Yeah, you want to kindle that flame, but you've got to do it in a way that's in a certain way. Yeah,

Gord:

And at some point

Brad:

I might. If you're following what we're talking about here, it would be that we really have to up your predictability in that situation, and the only way to increase your predictability is to practice it.

Gord:

It's true. I've taken Dale Carnegie training some Toastmasters as well, which has helped, but it's not really a debating forum. It's more a presentation, being comfortable in front of people, and I am, when I know my subject, I don't hesitate standing up, but I get agitated very quickly. I start speaking way too quickly and I lose my train of thought. I'm just going to have to practice a better cadence like you're saying, and composure, keep my heart rate down, recognizing that, and people ask me, are you safe? Just keep reminding yourself, are you safe? Yeah, I'm safe. There's no real threat here. I'm safe. I'm just talking. I'm with this person.

Brad:

And I know my points that I want to make. You can always, there's little tricks that you can use to buy time too, because I heard you say, I get pressured. I feel pressured. I talk faster. That's part of it. You can always ask them to repeat a question. A way that you can get a little bit clearer on your point is just to say, could you repeat that? Or could you say that in a different way? It's just a tactic to give you a little bit more time to prepare your response and give you a second to breathe and not get drawn into this reactive back and forth.

Gord:

Yep, that's a key point. And you found that as well, right? It has good control of your body and your reaction, then your mind can operate a lot better as well. That seems to be the key, right?

Brad:

Oh, absolutely. Remember we talked about that top brain and bottom brain. You don't want to be down here, you got to be up here.

Gord:

And recognizing as well, Brad, that they're just people. I used to be afraid of talking with senior executives, the president of the company, for example, was very intimidating. You have a coffee with them or a chat in the elevator and they just got a job to do as well. Now I have contempt for these people I'm talking to. I really have to not show that I have to be very gracious and not show that contempt and derision. That will be my downfall as well, because I think they want to be treated as a human being as well.

Brad:

They want to show you as the bad guy and not them.

Gord:

They may not give me the same grace, but yeah, I can't be going for the low. I got to maintain the bar a little bit higher than they propose to do themselves, right? I'm going to try to keep my cool, treat them with respect and just through intelligent comments, make them look like the dumb asses that they are.

Brad:

And also you are an expert on your perspective. They don't know what, that can feed your confidence. You're an expert in your own perspective. They don't know from your angle, be confident in the picture that you're drawing that is better than anybody. I know that because they wouldn't have you up there talking about it if you didn't.

Gord:

Yeah, it's always a challenge to get face to face with these people. They know that they're on the run and the majority of people in this province, it's 4.4 million and 70% are on my side. It's just a matter of getting them to commit to at least an incremental step and evaluating their decisions and maybe reevaluating where they're going. I'm doing some of the reading as well, saying, okay, if you can get even a small win over that meeting and then build on that, some commitment.

Brad:

Gordon, two or three concrete things here because all about being pretty concrete and specific. One thing we covered was you've got to find some time to practice with somebody. Practice this fight or flight kicking in on you and you're able to bring it down in the moment. Just practice over and over. The other thing is I want you to go into that meeting. If you're ramped up for the three days up to that meeting, that's not going to be good. You've got to keep that dialed down this week because if you go in at seven, it's not going to take much to get you to a nine, but if you go in at a two or a three even, you have a lot more capacity to manage that threat. Does that make sense?

Gord:

It does, Brad, and one final question.

Brad:

Take a walk. Take a walk or exercise or whatever those things are that add safety and calm to your life, you're going to have to really ramp that up this week ahead of time.

Gord:

How much does a feeling of love and compassion for others factor into how you approach these meetings?

Brad:

Yeah, that's a good question because it has to balance what you say. I mean, you want to make that point. You want to have that come in a way that's meaningful, but not in a way that gets lost in the upset. You know what I mean? It's definitely your reason for being there. I always tell people to tell you why. What's your reason for being here?

Gord:

Oh, that's great. And starting off with that “Why”.

Brad:

Sure. And it puts you in a good place. Puts you in a good place because you're talking about people that you care about and things that you connect with.

Gord:

That's a very good point. And I do always start off, these are public elected representatives, I always do start off saying thank you for your service to the community regardless. I don't agree with them. The last time I was in a meeting with our mayor, everyone clapped, right? I had to stop and the whole room clapped, right? Yeah. We got to thank these people for being a public service. No. Do they need to also listen to us in a meaningful and intelligent way? Yes, they do.

Brad:

Yeah, for sure. But you threw the ball out. You were respectful at the beginning. I like that. Yeah, and your why is something they can't argue with either. That also gets the crowd on your side, the people, they'll be able to connect with your why.

Gord:

You must be seeing this, hearing this all over the place, Brad, with so much misinformation, disinformation out there. You must be hearing this all the time.

Brad:

Oh yeah. You know what country I live in?

Gord:

Well, our premier here wants to join your country. That's another battle that we're facing. It's crazy days. Wow.

Brad:

Wow. It is very, very much. These next couple of skills I think will also help you label, what is your emotion about this? You're angry, you're sad, you're a little bit scared. I can see you just talking about that too. This is how I feel about this issue and here's why. Just going right down the line of what we've talked about here.

Gord:

Labelling, acknowledging, exactly right. Not just suppressing them, but explaining to the This is how this issue is making me feel, and I'm sure that's going to connect with other people in the room. That's a really good point as well.

Brad:

You're not ignoring it, but you don't have to demonstrate every emotion you can talk about, you can label I'm angry because of this. I'm sad because of that. I think when you're vulnerable like that, it's also harder for them to attack you. They could still do it, but they would really look, it would stand out if you're vulnerable and you call out these emotions and you even say, I get worked up sometimes, but it's because I am sad about this. I'm thinking about my kids or my family or whatever, and just call that out. If you become human and vulnerable there, you see if they attack somebody who's vulnerable, what does that make them look like?

Gord:

That's an awesome tactic. That's right. How come I didn't think of this? You're the genius. So much of it is right there. Right there. It's a matter of putting into practice though, Brad, and keeping that composure and showing the vulnerable side. You're right. I've been scared to do that and I want to go on the attack right away. Well, that really hasn't been working very well for me. It really doesn't really work that way. Based on trends like you're saying and past patterns, I'm going to have to change those to get a different result.

Brad:

It makes sense to try that, I think. Did you have trouble labelling emotions this week at all, or were you pretty good at that?

Gord:

Yeah, that's a struggle. I'm 63. Growing up wasn't really something my dad would encourage. Right? And he wanted no conflict and no conflict in the family, Brad. And to this day, any conflict that I'm anticipating, I can feel it right here in my chest immediately.

Brad:

We don't get angry. We don't really talk about being angry. We just

Gord:

No, just keep the peace. Yeah, keep the peace. And I was the peacemaker in the family and middle child, but acknowledging emotions and then all of a sudden lashing out, that wasn't very good either. That's not healthy. It goes back to patterns that we learned in our childhood. You've mentioned this.

Brad:

That skill six is about expression. How do I channel this? Where do I bring it out in healthy ways? We see that pattern of stuffing it, stuffing it until it just blows up on someone. That's pretty common.

Gord:

They touch upon that in the meditation. Buddhism, classmen as well.

Brad:

Also, that can relate to what you're talking about here with this meeting you have next week if you've been bottling that up and it comes busting out. I think that's something to be mindful of. What are your outlets for talking about your unhappiness around these issues? What are your healthy outlets for doing that?

Gord:

Yeah, just talking with my wife. My wife, my youngest kid I've admitted. I've been out walking on long dog walks and I'll just be talking to the dog, just practicing , just talking to the dog.

Brad:

That's good. He's always on my side. Yeah, that works well. Getting that out. You do have people to talk to. You can write about it, you can tell the dog about it. Some people pray about those things. There's all kinds of things you can do with that energy. I just don't want you to go in there with all, I haven't told anybody all week and it's already up to here and it comes busted out.

Gord:

Yeah, no, you mentioned the writing. I submit fairly long letters to the maximum to our local newspapers at least once a month. I'm a quasi colonist. They love my letters, well researched and it helps release a lot of angst.

Brad:

The day before this meeting, I'd like you to take at least an hour, hour and a half to where you don't think about this at all. Can you do that?

Gord:

Yeah, and be prepared prior to that point, but then just relax and know that, have that confidence. You're saying that it can go well, it will go as well as I want it to go.

Brad:

Go. But we talked last week about setting that cup down for a little bit. It's not going to disappear. The cup's still there. You know where it's at. But you've got to turn this down a little bit because I don't want you to go in there at a seven.

Gord:

That would be bad. And that's happened in the past. If

Brad:

You're just thinking about all these things and how bad those people are and what they're going to say.

Gord:

It depends what, and it really comes back to what's the goal? When I was at work, what's the goal of this meeting? Several meetings during the day. What's the goal of the meeting? What outcomes do I want?

Brad:

Yeah.

Gord:

I can try to influence the outcome. This is the best way to do it. Coming in and screaming at everybody, that's not going to work.

Brad:

I'm glad you recognized that. That's the first step. What sport did you say you coached? What sport with kids?

Gord:

Bantam football or peewee football. Kids, 12, 15 years old tackle

Brad:

Football. Having 'em practice their plays and being prepared. Yep. That's what we're talking about here. Strategy and…

Gord:

And just practicing the fundamentals. That's what we focus on. And then great things will come out of that so you're prepared for the game, right? Don't overthink advice.

Brad:

I love that.

Gord:

Yeah. My son's playing junior football right now. He's the starting quarterback. A lot of pressure on him and he makes sure body, mind, everything's prepared ahead of time so that he can perform. I learned from my kids as well, Brad. It's not a one way thing. It's back and forth.

Brad:

I love that you said fundamentals, because actually what we're learning here, the fundamentals of psychology.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Gord (31:42):

Yeah. Thanks Brad. That was really helpful, Brad. Thanks very much.

Brad:

Yes, you're welcome. It was great getting to know you and learning about how you're applying these skills, that was cool. Yeah, Gordon has a challenge coming up next week where he's going to be talking with some folks and he knows there's going to be some conflict there. We were talking about skills one, two, and three. How can we apply and prepare for that? He's talking about his warning signs. He knows there's certain issues that they're going to elicit a threat response from him. We talked about, well, what's our antidote to that? Safe and calm. And then we talked about how much control he can have over that fight or flight response kicking in. We know a lot about these people he is going to be talking with, we can add predictability to this. A lot of predictability. We talked about one key point might be, does he have someone he can practice this debate with?

He was saying it's important that he stays calm during this, and I really appreciated that he acknowledged, “Hey, this is a sensitive topic for me. I know it's not going to take much for me to go up” [the dysregulation scale]. Predictability, can I have this interaction? Can I give somebody else the questions? They can pretend like they're the other side and shoot those things at me. And while I'm practicing safety and calm, I'm practicing my breath, I'm practicing focusing on what I'm going to say and my response and what the goal is to increase safety. He's practicing , which equals predictability. We also talked about, I don't want him going in at a seven or an eight. What can he do the two or three days before that? Because if you're already at a seven, it’s not going to take much to get to an eight or a nine or a 10. What does he have control over the next few days? Well, he has some control over that dial. That's his dial.

What's he going to do to predictably promote safety over the next couple of days and set that cup down? We want him to prepare, but I don't want him up all night preparing, right? Because if he goes in there tired, if he hasn't set the cup down. Predictability preparation adds safety. He's working on his safety and calm there in relation to that. And we also talked a little bit about skill three. How could he combine? What if he's vulnerable about how I feel about this issue? I feel sad, I feel scared and I feel angry about this. What's going on? And he was saying that they're pretty good at debate and tactics. And if I was them, and this is just me in debate, and I knew that I could set him off and make him look a certain way in front of a group of people, and I'd probably win the debate doing that. We don't want to allow that to happen. If he goes in and says, I'm sad, I'm scared about this, and here's why you put yourself out there to be a little bit vulnerable in a situation, it's really hard for a person to attack that they could, but then the perception, the optics of that would be pretty terrible for them. It's also something really genuine that people can connect with. Those were how we took his challenge and applied skills one, two, and three to that. Thanks, Gord, for letting me use that example.

Gord:

That was awesome. Yep. Thanks Brad.

Jenny:

We talked about again, just how there's a lot of similarity between this and other leadership style training in terms of breaking it down. And it's simple, but it's thoughtful and it's precise. It's very well thought out. And the other thing we talked about is this being a group therapy type session, because Chris recently did, and you can speak to it, but he did go ahead and speak to you.

Chris:

I did an acupuncturist, did a bunch of first responders where we got acupuncture in her ears, and then we basically chatted. A bunch of us did it for stress or PTSD or whatever it was. The group therapy part of it, while we had these needles in our ears, was super valuable. And it's opened up everyone to discuss things. I think that was really valuable.

Jenny:

Our question out of this is how much of this is us doing this as a group and how we, because you brought up a good point, it's like you need to be committed and held accountable in this work, in a sense. Again, I'm using my words probably not the best words, but yeah, I'm just curious. Can you talk a little bit about, for example, would we want to have an ongoing, again, monthly ongoing check-in for the folks that want to help hold each other to this work? I'm just curious in what ways we're thinking ahead, I guess, how do we make sure that we use this, even if we take it into existing situations that we have and go in with that knowing practice going into it. I'm just curious how that can look in your view. Thanks.

Brad:

You're right. I mean the group dynamics here is an added benefit to this as far as having a support group, somebody to bounce ideas off. Every time I do one of these, we learn things from each other. Every class I do, somebody brings something that I haven't heard before, which is awesome. But I think that there's a linear piece to it because if you don't have my part, what I hope to bring is the path that we're walking down. But you can walk it all sorts of different ways together and everybody sort of brings a different step and a different style to it around each skill. And I think there is, you're right, there's group accountability, there's group support that comes with that. There's some really cool things that come with getting together once a week and supporting each other around a skillset.

And it's also something in common, and these are all human things that we each experience every single day. There's a lot of ways to connect and share. It's like, oh yeah, I've felt that way before, or, oh yeah, I've done that. There's a lot of acknowledgement and validation actually, I think. Yeah, that was great of you to notice and call out. One of the things we've done in past groups or different settings or healthcare settings is say we want to get a group together monthly that practices safe and calm once a month or once a week for 15 or 20 minutes. Maybe it's a mindful meditation around something. Maybe it's a walking group, prayer group, whatever it is. It's different, because right, this is skill. This is really exposure and teaching and a little bit of practicing , but the skill development happens through the practice. There's got to be something after this. Otherwise it's seven weeks of “I learned about a skillset”.

Tami | Retired Teacher:

We talked about how we were scaffolding all of those skills together and looked at how the emotions labelling the emotions this week for people, mine were 60-40, more of the negative than the positive. Some people had 60-40, the positive more than the negative, but really found value in naming the specific emotion rather than just naming the overall, being upset about something. Were you angry? Were you frustrated? Were you distraught? Sad? Those kinds of things. We talked a bit about that. We talked about how it sometimes is difficult at the moment, especially when things are moving quickly emotionally when you're teaching school and you've got children that are dysregulated to be able to find that time to calm yourself as well, and to put this into practice. Any thoughts on that, Brad?

Brad:

Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes. And then I get home and it's almost like the day is kept track up here, and then it all comes flooding into me when I get home. It's like, well, that was from nine o'clock this morning and it's six o'clock at night right now. Yes, I do think there is a trick or a way at least to try to build your schedule. And I know it doesn't happen every day where you have five or 10 minutes at lunch or wherever to take an inventory or a check in. But I can absolutely relate.

Administrators and Teachers:

We had a million thoughts actually. We started with just talking about how actually tricky it was to articulate exactly how we were feeling. And then we were really talking about our own accountability of putting it into practice and then wanting to lead it forward with the adults in our building so then we can translate that into the children. We had quite an interesting talk about the multiple steps of how to really put this into practice and reflecting back on exactly how they all link together, looking at our bodies and how we're feeling, and then physical regulation, things that we do for ourselves, and then naming our emotions. It was intriguing to us how there are three separate things, yet they're all one and the same. And linking together the commitment to the accountability of using the work. And we said it's really cool having a group of us together here because we have that built in where we said if we were just one at a time, it wouldn't be quite the same, but we're talking about this on a regular basis because we all have the opportunity of being in the same building together.

Jenny:

Yeah, fantastic. I'm so glad, and I do agree, we talked about that in our breakout room too, how hard it is to label emotions. I think it's, and these things in combination. First of all, your fight or flight system signs early warning signs, and that seems like such a simple thing that we step over and then we have an emotion and we label it with something random. I'm frustrated. That's something I say all the time, and now it's like, well, what am I frustrated about? What am I feeling? I don't know if it has enough feeling to it. Anyway, I think these seem so simple, but yet if they were easy, we would be doing them all the time. I think that's how we make it easier.

Brad:

Yes, they're fundamental. They're fundamental. Yeah. And Gordon and I talked about fundamentals.

Gord:

I mentioned my son and how he prepares for a football game. I've taught him to visualize beforehand. How powerful is that in your experience, visualizing at the time?

Brad:

Based on what we've learned about predictability, I put everything in sort of the lens here, the skills that we're learning and talking about. When you visualize something, think of an athlete, think of a debate when you can practice in your own mind how it's going to go. I mean, we do a lot of that rehearsing, rehearsal is what we call it. That's visualization. You're adding predictability to a situation which makes it more safe. If you're safe going into it puts you in a great position to be successful there, a better position. You see athletes, people step up to the free throw line. What do they do every time before they shoot the basket? They have a routine, predictable routine. They take a breath, take a couple of dribbles, but they do that same thing every time. That's what we were talking about with you, Gord, getting ready for this, your game or whatever you want to call it. The challenge that's coming is how do we practice? How do you add predictability to that situation? And rehearsal and visualization is one really powerful way to do that.

Gord:

Yeah, and Brad mentioned another one. I mean, you can visualize, you can try to anticipate, but there will be a surprise and you can just take a breath and ask, what was that question? Can you repeat that question? And I'm thinking of my new answer in that timeframe.

Brad:

Creating space and time for yourself, because we know space and time when it's crunched feels more threatening. If I can say, could you just repeat that for me real quick, or what did you mean by that? Give me a second to take a pause. Get my thoughts straight. Just using what we know about safety and calm, to create these little avenues to help us be more successful in the face of the challenge. That's what the whole framework's about.

Nature lover:

Surprised just going back into the days, and Tami mentioned she was like 60-40 negative. And I was saying I was surprised because when I reflected on the days, I had a great week, I had lots of time with my partner, and we exercised and had some nice moments outside. I was surprised at how much positive there was. And also that the intensity of the positives were higher than the intensities of the negatives. And I was saying it's interesting that it's like when you reflect in the moment, when you're present that, and this is the practicing gratitude and you're aware of it, whereas we have this negative bias to remember the negatives and remember them worse, right, because that's a survival tactic as well, right?

Brad:

Yes, absolutely. Boy, you checked off a lot there.

Jenny:

Okay, taking ownership of our emotions is next week.

Brad:

Think about who's in control of the intensity and duration of your emotions. Where are we putting ownership and control of that?

Jenny:

Amazing. Okay. Thank you everybody for your contributions. As usual, we'll see you next week.

Brad:

Have a great week.

Brad Chapin | AccuTrain

In episode three of the mini-series on Self-Regulation Skillset training, Brad Chapin discusses psychological safety and emotional regulation, focusing on strategies to manage stress and enhance well-being. Participants share personal experiences and techniques such as grounding exercises, rhythmic activities, and nature immersion to foster a sense of safety and calm. The conversation highlights the importance of routine, self-awareness, and proactive measures in mitigating stress responses. Techniques like breathing exercises, self-talk, and intentional pauses are emphasized for in-the-moment stress management. The dialogue also touches on the significance of understanding personal triggers and the role of predictability in creating a safe environment. The session concludes with insights into the upcoming focus on emotion identification and regulation, encouraging participants to continue building on their personalized plans for emotional well-being.

Introduction to Skill 2: Finding Safe and Calm

Jenny | Geophysicist:

I've gone to a psychologist, right? And it's interesting that we talk about the situations and what we're going to do about this ongoing situation rather than thinking about how I can't control these situations and how do I instead want to start looking at how I'm responding? It's just such a mindbender, Brad.

Brad | Public Mental Health Director:

I'm glad you're getting that because, and there are lots of different approaches to therapy and psychology and working with people, I'm glad you're noticing that this is pretty fundamental, broken down into small pieces. I would go into these classes and people are doing these psychodynamic assessments of these families and this individual who's 50 some years old and trying to say that they could explain through something about their mother or father or this or that, about how all these behaviours came to be. And I just thought, my gosh, there's a lot of assumptions in a lot of that work, and it's like, how do you even know if that's right or wrong or anywhere on the map or even close to being accurate? Part of that was me saying, I don't think I can do that or feel comfortable doing that. I need to be more concrete about what we're focusing on.

Jenny:

Yeah, I think it's going to free me from that effort of trying to link all the moments in my life and how they've led to all of these things and just think more about the ongoing challenges that we face. It's just such an interesting shift in my perspective on this. Yeah, thank you.

Brad:

Not to say that that other work isn't important and fruitful, but yes, there's a lot there. Great to see everybody. I was just telling Jenny, I just came from teaching these same skills to a group of fourth year nursing students, it's always interesting to see how people conceptualize this material in the work and in the place that they're at in their life. These are early 20-year-olds, in their early twenties forming relationships, starting to figure out what their careers are and the challenges that they're facing versus all the challenges that you all are facing and just telling her that each one of these groups is different where we're at in our lives. This first couple of sessions, I hope it was interesting for you to try to examine and step back a little bit and be intentional about looking at how our body responds to challenges, how we're hardwired to do this physically.

That's what the first two skills are all about is trying to separate. Sometimes we get our thoughts and our feelings and our bodies all mixed up and when you start to try to explain that and talk about it, it comes out and it's in all sorts of ways and it's really hard to figure that out sometimes. This process is about separating those, but I know that can be difficult, appreciate you giving the effort to first try to recognize what that feels like, those warning signs that we talked about in skill one. And then this week was about, okay, we have this threat response that we've established. Probably super effective for me in a lot of the social emotionally challenging situations. I find myself in all those internal challenges that self-doubt, those expectations, conflict. We talked last time about somebody not seeing things from my point of view, having difficulty there, these social emotional challenges, the hundreds, the thousands of social emotional challenges that we have in a day.

These constantly ongoing processes. We establish this threat response can get in our way, and then what do we do about that? We've talked about the importance of practicing and understanding this idea of safety and calmness, because we really can't feel threatened and safe at the same time. If we want to turn the dial down on this threat response, say it's turned up to a nine and we live between a seven and a nine, you can imagine how much energy that takes. Probably familiar with the book. The body keeps the score, even if you're not paying attention to these things happening physiologically, they're still happening. You can ask your cardiologist if there's an impact from that, but definitely some things going on there. Safe and calm. I hope you found this chapter interesting. I think there's a lot in here when you think about what equals safety to human beings and the science about psychological safety I think is just fascinating.

Hopefully one of the key points and what I've been doing is just pointing out a couple of the key points and then I want to get you all into your breakout rooms to have you discuss some of those things that you found about what equals safety for you. But to me, probably one of the most impactful pieces of research came out of some material from Bruce Perry and the sequential model for dealing with trauma and his ideas about patterned rhythmic repetitive things and how that equals predictability for human beings and how impactful, if you really want to add safety to a human being's existence or to your own challenging situation, when you bring predictability into a situation, it typically adds this layer of safety because that brain has that switch. It's always looking for threat, but it's also looking for non threat. When can I turn it off?

It has an on switch and an off switch. Predictability is something that's very powerful in hitting that off switch and we all sort of know what that feels like and we use it, but can we be more intentional about using that really powerful factor to create safety in our life? And the answer is yes. I mean, we do it all the time. How do you sue the baby that's upset? What are the things that we do? That pattern, rhythmic padding, singing, rocking, all those things, add predictability to that. That brain sees that and says, wow, the environment's more predictable. It's less alarming. I can kind of turn the dial down a little bit. We use routines. Another thing that we do is make lists. We do all these things to sort of add predictability to our life, but this skill is about firming that up.

The other point I wanted to make, there's several elements and I pointed those out in this chapter. There's also several different activities that we can do to mitigate that threat response. And I like to, you can be creative about it. These are personal, I really want to hear what your ideas are. What works well for you is different, the other key point that I wanted to mention about safety is that when you think about your skills and how you want to be intentional about creating more safety, think of it in two ways. And I often think that sometimes the activities or the skills that you come up with aren't the same for both of these ways. You can use safety. One way is in the moment when I'm experiencing fight or flight in that moment and I'm thinking, this isn't going to be the best for me.

I'm in a meeting, things are getting hot, I can feel my warning signs going off, I need to do something right now, what would that be that I can do in the moment? The other super powerful thing about this skill though is what can I do prescriptively proactively and preventatively? Wow, there's three Ps there. Prescriptively, proactively preventatively because if I can keep that dial down if I can, as the behavioural health guy for a large healthcare system, I'm often the one they called that says, Brad, can you come in and do de-escalation training for our staff? We want to be able to deescalate people. And I'm like, well, we could do de-escalation training, but we could also talk about escalation training because if we know some things that we can do proactively to add safety into a system ahead of time, wouldn't that be a smart thing to do to be able to bring that dial down across the system ahead of time so that you got more people up in that cortex part of their brain, not down in that lizard part of their brain, that reactive part of their brain.

Two ways to use skill number two in response to the moment. And then also what can I do twice a week, three times a week? Or I know this is going to be a really threatening stressful week, maybe I need to do it eight times a week. We do think of it prescriptively at this scale. Alright, what I would suggest we do at this point is go off into our breakout rooms, take a look at the discussion questions at the end of chapter two here, and I'm just going to let your group kind of decide which questions you want to talk through. And one of the really important things I want to hear when we come back is what are the one or two ways that you're going to create safety and calm in your life going forward? Maybe what's already working, but what can you be more intentional about doing regularly? What did you guys find out or what did you think about safe and calm?

Break Out Session with Jenny, Chris, and Amy

Jenny (08:48):

Yeah, first of all, I think it's really interesting how we do some of a lot of these things without even thinking about it. Like you said, being intentional. Like Chris and I have had music nights where we're just like, we pick actually, what is it, the ongoing history of new music. That's something we really like. It's a radio podcast thing and we put it on and we listen to the story of a band or the story of a certain type of music and then we talk about that for a while. It's something that we've done in the past, we've talked about this week when we get off schedule, what that looks like. Chris and I were saying, for example, with his shift work, if he doesn't get a good sleep, then he starts getting

Chris | Fire Fighter, Environmental Scientist:

Sliding for sure.

Jenny:

Then it's like a spiral of worse sleeps if he doesn't catch it and figure out how to mitigate what's going on.

Brad:

Noticing that slide, noticing what's different. And then the skill then is how do we correct what's the correction? How do we get back on that predictable schedule? And that's difficult.

Chris:

I work 24 hour shifts, it's super difficult. I think I had a routine. I think part of it is going into nature, even if it's for a couple hours into parks within the city, that's part of it. I think nature was a really helpful thing and I kind of got off track with it lately.

Brad:

Yeah, is that one of your two? Safe and calm probably would include nature, something in nature for you Chris?

Chris:

For me. It is. It's an important thing. And then

Brad:

Anything particularly in nature or just time and green space, what is,

Chris:

I've volunteered to renaturalize a space in our community. It's like a kilometer stretch. I've planted thousands of trees.

Brad:

So there's purpose too.

Chris:

There's purpose to it, there's purpose to it. That's a helpful thing for me. Of course, a support mechanism like my village of other firefighters who are struggling. And there's a lot of us, I'll be honest, struggling right now with sleep issues for some reason, having trustworthy people to talk about that’s non judgmental. And that's the tough part. I think that having trust with your tribe or your village of people that you can talk to about things.

Brad:

Putting it in the context of the skills, judgement is threatening. Nonjudgment is safe.

Chris:

Is a hundred percent.

Brad:

Yeah, trust is safe.

Chris:

Trust is safe for sure. Having people you can talk to when you're struggling is an important thing for me. And I think as well with other people in my profession,

Jenny:

And he was saying spending time with people we trust. That's something we have recently, we've been spending so much time together just wanting to, I think, find safety, you know what I mean? Because between my work being stressful and his work being stressful in the other way, seeing, like you said, the de-escalation stuff, right?

Brad:

Yeah.

Jenny:

Trying to do preventative stuff, but a lot of people aren't interested in that. There's a lot of feeling that our circle of trust has shrunk a lot, I would say. And I feel like…

Brad:

If you were putting numbers to this threat pile, I mean they seem big. I, they seem like you all are carrying a lot of threat. To balance that out, this whole thing is about balance. That's what self-regulation is. How are we going to balance that level of threat?

Jenny:

Yeah, so based on this week, I went to yoga for the first time in two years. I've always practiced yoga on my own, but I think I needed to be in a group and just feel like it was intentional.

Jenny:

Like I said, Chris does a lot of walking in nature. I go with him and really enjoy that too. I think music is something that, like I said, really brings us together and also helps us. And then the grounding thing, actually, it's interesting, Brad, I'm finding a lot of synchronicity in my life and just this week in part of what we're doing is this bioregional organizing group sessions and my friend sent me a video all about this energy work, ways to help build grounding. For the first time in this exercise, I actually felt my feet get heavy where I felt really grounded so I can do those techniques. Yeah, I just see a lot of things and the distraction, actually, it's really funny. Chris has been, we've been watching a lot of movies just trying to distract from the world. It's been, what do you call it? A marathon.

Chris:

I’m trying to reboot my balance I think is really what it comes down to. And maybe that's grounding or trying to re-grounded, trying to reduce my perceived threats. Like watching the news or getting too much information.

Jenny:

Especially scary information.

Chris:

Information about the world, I guess is the thing.

Brad:

I use this analogy of holding this cup out and how long I've been holding it

Chris:

For sure.

Brad:

Yeah, and if you're in touch with that, it's not saying that it's bad to do that stuff, but it's constant and that system is not built to stay on constantly. How are you able to set that cup down for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes here? And that's what we're really talking about

Chris:

For sure, and I'm starting to figure it out.

Jenny:

Out. Oh, the regular schedule. We don't have a regular schedule, neither of us. And I think this is something so

Brad:

Predictably unpredictable.

Jenny:

Yeah, I mean I guess I should say Chris has an eight day schedule, that is the thing that anchors us, but obviously that's not a normal schedule, do you know what I mean? It doesn't anchor us with the rest of the world. Hi Amy.

Amy | Osteopathic Manual Therapist:

I have to find out what's going on in the breakout rooms.

Jenny:

Yeah. Oh, did you get sent to a breakout room? Is that Yeah. Oh, okay. That's perfect. Well, I don't know how to send her at this point, I think you should just hang with us. Is that okay, Brad?

Brad:

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yep. We're just discussing skill number two, safe and calm. We were talking about what are your two things that really help you feel safe and calm, that add maybe predictability or movement, distraction, all those bulleted elements in the chapter that equal safety. Did you come up with one or two that really work well for you?

Amy:

When I practice osteopathy, I mean we talk a lot about grounding and centering. I often will have people, and it's been done to me for validation. If I focus on a certain thing, what in my body actually does help me be grounded with the ground or be centered within myself? And then there's also being connected beyond in the future. And when I test everybody for those three, I first validate if it's doing something good in their body, which doesn't always, people don't always perceive how it affects them, but the centering one will always improve breathing. We breathe a lot of times a minute. That's huge into biochemistry as well as the core support. For me, the thing that works for centering myself within myself is to think of the area almost even with my belly button, the jejunum part of the small intestine and horizontally, if I think of that, I'll be more centered within myself and then also my breathing quality will improve. That's my prime one. I'll use it even occasionally as I treat it when I want to center myself to make sure how I'm relating in that setting or what I'm doing, but then I'll use it by myself or in social settings occasionally. I think I used it more in the context of work before I started to think like, “Oh, I could use it right now” or “Oh, I could use it here”.

I think that's a super go-to for me, I really dominantly probably if I think that I need to be breathe better, slow down my heart rate, regulate better, I probably almost always will go to that because I know it's been validated for me and I know the huge physiological impact it has. Definitely though if I have a blanket wrapped around me, I'd feel more relaxed and calm.

Brad:

That's a good one too. Yeah, that safety and security.

Amy:

I don't feel like there's a consistent movement that I'll always do. I mean I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth, which stimulates the parasympathetic and then grounds your jaw and your neck, and I do that regularly just as a healthy habit.

Brad:

Cool. Yeah. Jenny and Chris, they identified a couple of things. They do time in nature outside and then some movement, yoga, stretching. Using up that adrenaline cortisol in a really productive way and music is another tool that they use that 's patterned, rhythmic, repetitive. We listen to the same music a lot of times, but they were talking about new music. You got this sort of distraction of wanting to learn something new but also listening to music and maybe some familiar pieces predictability in that. I was going to ask Chris, if you tell me a little bit about planting a tree, to me that also sounds like a really patterned predictable movement that you go through. You're going from one to the next and the next.

Chris:

For sure. I think it's kind of like I'm a big fly fisherman too, and it's sort of like what I found is the same thing with this community project I'm doing is I don't think about anything else except the task. Same with fly fishing. You're not thinking about other things, you're just thinking about the task. And that helps to reduce stress because you're not thinking about your stresses in your life. You're getting a break. Getting a break from the threat. Right.

Brad: Of course, not thinking about the threats, you're thinking of the project.

Chris:

The funny thing is that I'll be out there during the day when I'm off like a weekday and then I'll have some old person not even say good morning to me. They'll say, how much is this costing me? How much is this going to add to my taxes? And I have to sort of control myself. I'm just a volunteer. This is costing you anything. It's happened to me three or four times now where wow. Yeah, it's kind of crazy where

Jenny:

Even his places of safety.

Chris:

Those places sometimes are a threat. I have to be prepared for those things. That's happened to me a bunch of times where people have actually screamed at me, this is costing them money. And I go, no, I'm just a volunteer. I get the trees for free and I do this all on my own. And I ask them, would you be willing to help? And they never say yes.

Jenny:

Although we're starting to get more people. It is coming around, but this is the reality of the

Chris:

World. That's the struggle with the world that we live in.

Brad:

That's a great point. I go to the gym to relax and everybody there is just telling me all their threats. And that's a really good point you make is safety, sometimes we really have to seek it out. We're going to have the best of intentions and it just, yeah.

Chris:

That's the problem. I'm always prepared in the end,

Jenny:

Having to be prepared.

Chris:

I'm always having to be prepared for threats and that's sort of my struggle because I think my experience is that there's always a threat. That's the problem

Brad:

With

Chris:

What's going on with me, I think

Brad:

Caution you on that word always. And I think that might just be where your work is going to be, Chris.

Chris:

Correct.

Brad:

I feel like you're not setting that cup down for five or 10 minutes here

Chris:

No, it's hard.

Brad:

It's going to catch up to you.

Chris:

Yeah, I'll give you an example. Me and my crew, there's eight of us or nine of us went training and then I give the start a safety meeting and I go, just be careful. No one gets hurt. And then my rookie who's only been on a month, broke his finger. There's always, even when you're doing certain things, there's always,

Jenny:

Always, you're saying the “always” word.

Amy:

Always, but that's how I feel. Yeah, I started focusing on how often I say always or never or everyone or no one. And just to even say most of the time or much of the time, it gives space for that reality when something is different. And it also helps people who are unique and they don't fit the whole group. They had that little place to be seen because we didn't say anything. And most of the time I'll try to catch myself and then just say many times or most of the time or sometimes or often or very little or whatever, and just try not to say never, always, none at all.

Brad:

This is all skill six, we're a little bit ahead on that. But yes, anything on safety? What else do you think about safety? We also wanted to talk about in the moment some things I could do and I think breathing and those kinds of things. In the moment versus what can I do a couple of times a week, three times a week, what do you think

Amy:

About that? The couple of times a week goes into that thing about being in nature. That reminded me of when you said Chris and Jen, me, Jenny mentioned that I deliberately moved near a river. I read once that they did a study of comparing people anywhere in nature and people in nature near free flowing water. And the people who were near free flowing water had better mental health effects. Then I wanted to start more often being near free flowing water. I ended up moving literally a four minute walk from a river. I try to go to the river as many days at least once as possible and occasionally twice. That would be that preventative, healthy environment, downregulate. For me that centering, thinking of the abdomen in that one spot that's in the moment, but being often by the river is my preventative health optimization thing.

Jenny:

What about Brad, if I may, finding safety in the moment. We've talked about these events that are tense for us and I can't put my earphones on and start listening to music. Don't. When I look at this list and my go-to’s, I don't really have a in the moment kind of this is how I'm going to come. I mean, that being said, I am taking this positive intelligence training and one of the things they teach is rubbing two fingers together or rubbing your hands together. Something just to sort of ground yourself in the moment. Anyway, I'll stop there. What are your thoughts on “in the moment” stuff?

Brad:

Those are great, the grounding techniques, but almost everything we teach involves noticing first. That's why we do skill one. But as soon as you catch that early, and that's why we are doing this early. At an eight, somebody even trying to remind you to calm down at an eight is not going to go well. I dunno if anybody has ever asked you to calm down at an eight, but it doesn't go well for me. All this work around skill number one is early detection for that reason, but it usually involves a pause, some kind of a cue word that you can say to yourself that whether it's I need to excuse myself from the meeting for just a second, can we take a break step away? It involves stepping away from the threat for a moment. You can't do a skill if you don't have time to do it.

One of freeing yourself up from this illusion of the pressure of time and space because there's very few times what we've found. There's very few times that you, in a socially emotionally threatening situation, that you can't take a break, that you can't take a pause. It's just that when people are going at it or we're involved in this challenge, sometimes we don't think we can step away. And that's our own rule. It's no one else's, it involves a pause, but I've seen people do finger counting. You can do diaphragmatic breathing where you're putting pressure on that vagal nerve. You can do that at the table with no one noticing. There are mantras that people use to do that. You can sing that song in your head. There's all kinds of different ways to do that at the moment, but I think the key thing is to pause, give permission for pause.

Jenny:

Yeah, I think that's massive for me in particular, you're right, I don't often recognize that a thing can end and come back at a better time. Yeah. Thank you.

Amy:

Another good thing to do is humming the vagus nerve, the glossopharyngeal cranial nerve and the hypoglossal nerve. They have the throat, but the hypoglossal is a parasympathetic nerve.

Jenny:

Amy, why don't we save this for your breakout. You can offer this in your round. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. Okay,

Brad:

I froze.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Jenny (26:56):

Oh, okay. I'm going to close the room and put us back together. Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a chance to dive in on safety. We certainly did and Brad can offer some reflections, but yeah, what I'm hoping we can do now is Brad's going to lead us off here and we'll just go around. I can help select people and just give what you've learned so far from the whole thing. And then from this week's to your discussion you just had some key takeaways or things you want to add about 90 seconds each. We probably have time for everyone and then a few questions after. Go ahead Brad. Thank you.

Brad:

Oh no, that sounds good. Yeah, I'd like to hear the couple of safe and calm activities that you came up with. We had some great discussion about nature movement music, but I'll let Jenny and Chris talk about theirs and Amy about what they shared in their group. But yeah, 90 seconds, I think it's a good place to do this kind of a round table just going around the room 90 seconds on skills one and two, just because we're going to kind of leave this domain of physical regulation, we never really leave it. We're going to keep coming back to it. It is kind of a natural point to collect because we're through with the physical regulation skills at this point. What did you think of combining threat response detection and then safe and calm practice?

Amy | Osteopathic Manual Therapist:

For me to try to stay more moderate and have a healthy balance, I can easily be passionate and have a higher heart rate and breathing rate. I go by water quite frequently. I deliberately moved within a four minute drive of, or sorry, four minute walk of river, the elbow river. I go there almost every day and occasionally twice a day. And sometimes it's just like six minutes by it, sometimes it's 20. Another thing I do to stimulate the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system to down-regulate, which can be occasionally humming in terms of the moment. If I want to center myself within myself, which is a little different than grounding to the earth, but I've done a lot of experimenting with myself and clients I work with on what will help breathing be better quality. And I find that whatever picture helps someone center within themself, which is different for everyone. For me it's about thinking horizontally, about the level of my belly button, which is the middle section of the small intestine. If I think of that horizontally, I'll be more centered within myself and then my breathing quality will be better and it'll also help slow my heart rate because breathing and heart rate are very intimately related. That's probably enough for me.

Jenny:

Perfect.

Teacher 1:

What I find is I need a routine to follow so that I can, because what I do is help regulate others and I need to find that. I find it much easier to do that when I'm staying very calm obviously, but I need to exercise in the morning before work. I'll do a good 30 minute walk and some yoga and stretching and that seems to fill me up enough to be able to cope, cope with what comes at me when that lizard part of my brain is reactive within family and stuff like that. I find myself taking a breath and asking myself, are you physically safe right now? And if I'm physically safe, then I can think better how to respond without fighting so much or wanting to because I have a pretty good fight response if I don't stop and think and then that always leads to hurt and I try really hard not to go there.

School Administrator 1:

I also use exercise as my proactive way to stay on top of things because I know I can carry my stress and that can cause me lots of dysregulation. And then we were talking about the moment of stress. Sometimes it's our distraction here at the school level, sometimes as an admin is just going for a walk and it can be the physical act of walking or it can be getting distracted by cute little kindergarten kids just depending on the day. Did you want to add to this?

School Administrator 2:

Yeah, I think for me, I'm finding the stretching piece is becoming really, really important. And I noticed that I always leave it till the very last thing of the day. Trying to find the time to incorporate that breathing slash stretching throughout the day I think would be beneficial for sure. And I think in my role helping to regulate kids, it's kind of the revolving door. It's the next kid that comes, that's the next place that I go. I don't really have an in the moment relief in the classroom. So

Teacher 2:

I think I use a lot of self-talk. I usually ask myself, well it started years ago, my husband would ask me when I was getting elevated and usually telling him a story, wrote something that happened at school, and then I would be going on and on and on and then he would just say, well, does it matter? And that comment used to fill me with rage and I would say, of course it matters. Did you not just hear me? And then I would really think about that and not be so hotheaded and say, “Yeah, no, it doesn't really matter.” Now, I actually ask myself that question, he doesn't even have to ask me anymore. I guess I can thank him for my self-regulation.

School Administrator 2:

And I think too, remembering when other people are bringing things to the table that it's not about us, it's not a personal attack. I think it's important to remember that it is theirs and not taking it on as ours.

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

Yeah, interesting discussion. Our little group about staying in the moment, getting those repetitive preemptive activities and yeah, of course I do that a lot with exercise, walking the dog, getting back into nature, walking barefoot in the forest if I need to. Just appreciating nature, reconnecting. But what I struggle with is in the moment when somebody's coming at me and that last comment about not taking it personally, that's very good. And I read a coping mechanism where if I deem it to be insulting or offending, alright, don't react right away, try to stay calm, take a breath, and then ask the person, can you please repeat that and be ready for them to repeat it and then ask, what do you mean by that? And here's my reaction, is this how you wanted me to feel? Try to be a little more clinical about it, I guess, and not overreact.

Maybe I misinterpreted the message entirely and I tried that once with my son and he was surprised that you have to repeat it, okay, now you have to repeat it and then you're going to be held accountable to explain it. I think I'm going to try to do that in public as well and see how it works. Otherwise the lizard brain will take over, I'll feel offended and say something stupid and then it just escalates. Deescalating Brad, those are the challenges. Deescalating situations. I was a project manager for years and years, took way too much personally and yeah, came home a mess at the end of the day. Anxious, yeah, I should have learned these skills years and years ago, but never too late.

Jenny:

Never too late indeed. Wilson, you're next please.

Wilson | Fire Department Mental Health Lead:

For people who don't know me, I have PTSD, I've had it for about three or four years now. I have a lot of things I do for self-care and a lot of things I do to look after myself that I didn't realize how many of them fall into this category of pattern and safety. Recently I'm a hunter, I recently started doing archery and I find that really soothing. The whole point of it is to try to be exactly the same every time and you have to control your breath and do all that good stuff. I have a surface dog turbo right there. He's with me all the time and I take him for walks and I like to listen to the sound of his claws clicking on the concrete. That rhythm does it for me. I find it really soothing and I fly fish I really like.

I talked to Brad about this probably about a year ago. I don't know if you remember Brad, but I got to have a chat with you and we talked a little bit about some of the stuff that I'm doing and I talked about fly fishing. You're like, oh yeah, it's the rhythm kind of a thing. And I never thought about that either. It's just neat. I'm even finding, I always thought of it as chaos versus order, but it's really, it's chaos versus predictability that makes me feel safe that I'm learning today, that I'm learning now. I know I like the house to be ordered now, which is ironic if you ever knew me as a young man, that wasn't ever a priority. But now that's something that I have to do. And then I guess for me in the moment, acutely I use a lot of breathing, I use a lot of breathing separate from acutely stressful situations, again, because of the rhythm and the predictability, but I use the physiological sigh a lot in the moment.

And then other things, I'll remove myself from situations and go meditate if I have to. Even if it's just for a couple of minutes, I'll go do that. And those are the things I find to help me. And then of course my dog, if he can sense I'm getting dysregulated, he'll just give me a little poke on my thigh and just be like, Hey, you're safe and I'm here. I can engage him and we have our little routine, he gets his little treat and then I can engage him and get some nice tactile grounding just from petting him and stuff like that. And he helps me out a lot with some of those acute stress responses. Yeah, that's me.

Jenny:

Thank you, Wilson. Welcome. That's so nice to meet you and thank you for joining us in this. I'll go next. I'll let Chris go or do you want to go?

Chris:

No, go ahead.

Jenny:

Okay. I was saying in the opening, I'm not sure who heard, but Chris and I were realizing how much of the work that I've done. I've gone to a psychologist and it's interesting to think of this work so differently from the psychologist. I'm telling the situations and the circumstances of what I'm carrying and then I'm coming back and resharing the story rather than looking at what are the ways that I'm being challenged in my life and how can I just manage those challenges rather than trying to own this story and control this story in some weird way. I wanted to reflect that. That was sort of our takeaway we were talking about last week. And actually it was really funny, last week you were Brad talking about how we have this adrenaline from situations, and both Chris and I were noticing we were pacing on the main floor last week, especially even after this conversation and we're like, wow, look at us.

We're doing the things that were, and I've noticed my foot more in situations and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go for a walk. I think just like you're saying, recognizing and translating it, which is really powerful just to have that moment of acknowledgement. And then for us this week we talked a lot about music. Chris and I will again, like Wilson you said, without even really knowing it, we'll be doing these things to find this rhythm pattern. One of them is we'll put on an ongoing history of new music. It was a radio show that's now a podcast and we'll listen to this and analyze this band or music or whatever we're talking about, and it's something we got away from. I think it's very easy to forget all of these things that we do naturally when we get challenged, is what I'm guessing that is. And then I want to say one thing that came up in here that Brad offered us. I said, what do you do when you're an eight or a 10? That de-escalation phase? And what Brad offered is you take a break and I think that like you were saying, and Brad you can correct me later, but usually in an emotional situation there is opportunity to take a break. I think it's really important. Thank you Brad, for putting that in my head. I'm going to stop there and let Chris go.

Chris:

Me and Wilson work for the same fire department, different roles or whatever, but I am a big fly fisherman and I find that numbs my brain where I'm just concentrating on the moment or living in the moment. Stuff like that and some other stuff with nature, and I'm trying to do what Gord mentioned, it's those, it's that acute sort of social stress. We have a lot of strong personalities in the fire department that I work for. Sometimes there's a lot of judgement and I'm still a technique. I'm going, well, I'm trying to work on what Gord mentioned is when someone says something really judgmental to you, it's like, Hey, can you repeat that? And then it gives you a pause of 10 to 20 seconds on how to respond. And I think that's something that going forward I'm really trying to work on in my profession and in sort of the social very strong personalities that I work with for sure as well.

Tami | Retired Teacher:

Thank you. One of the things that I've done is Qigong and stuff. Just learning that, putting your tongue at the back of the roof of your mouth between your front teeth is something that's really calming because it kind of completes the circuit in your body. I do a lot of breathing, breathing in and holding for 10, breathing out and holding for 10 and then holding it for 10 is something that really helps me as well. We were talking about how people's opinions of us sometimes can trigger us and one of the things that always comes to my mind is Eleanor Roosevelt's quote is, your opinion of me is none of my business because it says a lot more about you than it does about anybody else in your sphere. And I do a lot of self-talk through things when things are getting anxious, I'll do rubbing my arms or rubbing my legs to just kind of bring myself back into the physical body and back into the present moment and sometimes rocking right. Those are some of the strategies that I use. And thank you for this opportunity to share.

Gord:

Tami, you repeat, can you please repeat that quote from Roosevelt?

Tami:

Your opinion of me is none of my business.

Gord:

Very good.

Jenny:

Chris wrote it down. That's a great one. Thank you Tammy.

Support Staff 1:

Thank you. Okay. I would think some of my strategies are walking and Wilson, when you're talking about having a, needing a clean space, I wouldn't have thought of that as a felt safety thing, but I need that safe for the most part. My teenager has now gone to university, it's way easier to keep it clean, but I have a clean space and I can't relax. If it's not really clean then I need to do something about it. But I also have a routine that I do when I get home every single time. Routine is important, that clean space, I like to walk, I like to pray, I like to read, but those are things I would use for safety for sure.

Jenny:

Fantastic, thank you so much.

Teacher 3:

I really enjoyed the discussion today I had with the group of teachers because I'm also a teacher and my takeaway from them was we were talking about how we can handle kids being dysregulated and it rolls off my back and I don't even think about it and they can lose their mind, but when it's an adult I tend to take that more personally. And one of them was like, well, I just kind of think of them like the kids that are just regulated. It's the same thing, it's just a bigger body. And I was like, that's really, I was sitting here thinking that's a super good thought. I really need to start putting that in my mind a little more. But yeah,

Brad:

A couple of things to think about. Please practice. You are forming a plan here, hopefully you added one or two things to your plan so we can keep progressing on this tailored plan that you're building. Also, one thing I didn't talk about but is directly related here is, and you might just spend some time thinking about the connection of patterned, rhythmic, repetitive things to unhealthy habit formation. There's a lot of things that we do, pattern rhythmic repetitively, predictably that can feel soothing and safe and calm to us, but may fall into this category of not too good for us in the long term. And you can kind of think of, I mean a couple of quick examples, smoking some of these other things that we do, that's a place where you might want to say, ah, that's serving a purpose, but I might want to replace that behaviour or try to work on that with one of these other healthier behaviours that you identified.

I wanted to put that out there. Getting ready for next week, we're shifting into emotion regulation. I don't think next week I always underestimate this next skill dose. Maybe I shouldn't say anything, but the next week is all about just identifying emotions, being intentional about “What am I feeling right now?” And for me, this was hard for me and I think it might be challenging from what I know about a couple of you so far, it might be challenging for you too to spend time thinking about what you're feeling right now in the moment and putting a label to that. A lot of times we get overwhelmed by this sense of I just feel overwhelmed. Or we use words like stressed out or anxious and I would like you to practice this skill is about being more specific and concrete about what you're actually feeling. Good luck with this skill next week and please keep practicing skills one and two. These stack on top of each other.

Jenny:

Perfect. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you. Have a great week. See you next week. Take care for now.

Bonus Discussion (text only)

Anonymous:

The first week, Brad, I said that you were trying to find the name, but I was the one who said I'm really bad at regulating. The support staff member and Tami can probably verify that because I'm in tears within moments talking about something that I can't even identify what the threat is. I had a question for you first because I missed last week unfortunately, but it's like what possible service do tears and feeling that rush of emotion, what does that do for you in a survival sense?

Brad:

That's such a good question and there's been some discussion theoretically psychological evolutionarily, biologically what purpose in tears. Some people talk about it or release it, some people talk about it as proactively flushing the dirt out of your eyes before you get into a scuffle with a grizzly bear. That's the threat. And some people theorize that it's a signal to the rest of the tribe or the group that something's wrong and I need support. I don't know if anyone has the perfect answer to that, but I think it could be one or all three of those, something that has passed down from generation to generation, in some way it's been effective.

Anonymous:

No, I think it, I've kind of accepted it's part of my personality and I did really find this chapter useful because my life does not have much structure at all. I thought that was really useful and I'm going to try to take that on and see if it helps to set a time to wake up and do journaling. I used to do that journal for half an hour, do a 20 minute walk, and then I do a lot of exercise and a lot of it is rhythmic, cross country skiing, mountain biking, road biking, hiking, camping and all of this. And also scheduled weights classes now. But I think I need more structure in my day and I'm going to try that and see if it helps in a set bedtime. I've recently, I've told Jenny, but I recently deleted Instagram and Facebook off my phone because I found I would get sucked into that dopamine scrolling through reels and I was disgusted to see Zuckerberg and Musk up on stage with Trump that I don't want to participate anymore as much as I can. I've done that to try to free some time up. And then the plan is to have a set bedtime and actually read a book rather than scrolling. The only other thing that I would ask is when I have this strong response, how do you identify? Most of the time I don't know what it is. I assume social anxiety, but I really don't know.

Brad:

This whole framework goes together and I'm guessing, and I don't know you and you're not my patient, but it's going to hit some in skill five and some in skill six are going to be connected to this because psychologically that's where we often define what's threat for us is our thoughts, our thought processes, our rules for living, our beliefs. And that's getting a little ahead of where we're at right now. Right now what I'm wanting you to do is you're doing a good job of clearly identifying, recognizing this process and also understanding it's a normal biological process in response to the threat that your body has. You're also really doing a good job of articulating safety, which is what I want you to, when we're working with people who are having a really strong physiological response, I told our group, we get very prescriptive about safety. We might be saying, Hey, you need to do something that's encouraging and promoting psychological safety six times a day if that's what it takes to try to get ahead of some of this. And it just depends on where we're at in our life and how much threat we're trying to balance here. It seems to me, and I don't want to overstep, but it sounds like you're balancing trying to hold a lot of threat or navigate a lot of challenges right now.

Amy:

Somebody said, I try not to take things personally and I have a line, life is personal. And what I mean by that, there's a big spectrum of personal and we process the world personally. You could have 10 people who fell off a two story building and one cracked the thigh bone and one cracked the shin bone and one cracked a toe and another didn't crack at all. They have resilient bones, one landed on a piece of glass and they have a gouge. And if we have an open scar and somebody comes by and scrapes it, we don't get to decide that that scar doesn't affect us. But what we could do is mentally be in a state where we're stimulating something that makes pain be less present, but somebody still scraped a scar, which will always be different than somebody scraping something that's not a scar.

It's like if somebody smashed something over and it broke and it belonged to a dead relative, the fact that that broke is personal because it's a dead relative and I can't get it back, but their motive might've not been personal. There's a big difference between saying with someone's motive personal, and did this rub against all of my sense three nerves in a way that it's stimulating something for me that it wouldn't stimulate to someone else that doesn't have the same open wound or doesn't have the same, their dead relative didn't own that piece, they just bought it at a secondhand store. I think personal is on a spectrum and I think when we feel something intensely, I think there is a piece that's personal, but sometimes I think our society likes to blame somebody. Immediately, if it feels personal, we also tend to time motives and intentions is personal at the same time and the amplification of personal will be a lot less.

If we can separate those and say something that interacts with me personally and it feels icky, I might still be able to have a safe relationship with them. This might not have been deliberate, this might not have been towards me. And I think that nuance is valuable because sometimes we don't even give ourselves permission to say that that scrape on an open wound was meaningful because we have to not take it personally. This is a way to kind of say there's a spectrum and there's nuance in what personal is. And then even with processing things like when things are surprising, we might be more likely to cry. I process with tears or my breath because I don't have a memory of feelings. And I know other people in my field the way they process when they work with people. Breath can be a big thing, but tears is often a surprise because if you think of visual memory, if you have a bike and a car and they're five feet apart and you see them and then you see them four feet apart and you see them three feet apart, if you forgot where they were five feet apart and you forgot where they were three feet apart, you might not see that the trajectory is about the crash.

The same thing with a kinesthetic or feeling memory. If we only feel in the moment and we can't feel where it was two seconds ago or a day ago or a week ago, we can't feel a trajectory. For people like me, that means that more things are a surprise and it's not because you can't name an emotion as well. It's because we can't stack the feelings in our being the same, to see a direction something's moving emotionally. That's a separate thing than being able to name sadness or anxiety and fear. It's being able to feel the nuance of the trajectory of a moving relationship and impact and feelings building. It jumps from it being subtle to suddenly being strong and we couldn't monitor the progression. Sometimes that could be a reason for some of us as to why we might be more likely to suddenly cry or suddenly feel something intensely. And people think it came from nowhere and it's because we couldn't process the nuance of where the direction something was going on a feeling level.

Jenny:

Feelings are next.

I think that's perfect. Brad, was that a good sort of segue to what's coming next?

Brad:

I'm ready to see what comes next. Yep. And staying focused on the skill each week.

Introduction to Skill 1: Identifying Early Warning Signs

Jenny | Geophysicist:

Hi, Brad.

Brad | Public Mental Health Director:

Hello.

Jenny:

How are you?

Brad:

I’m doing okay. It’s been an interesting week. I’m glad we’re here to talk about challenges.

Jenny:

Oh wow.

Brad:

How about you?

Jenny:

I feel the same. I’ve had a very full week and it’s very tiring. Yeah.

Brad:

Tonight I have a town hall meeting here and I’m about an hour away from our home office in another town. It’s a town hall meeting where the community’s trying to come together around mental health issues. I’m one of six, I think, panel members, but that could be interesting how that goes.

Jenny:

Thank you. That sounds like a lot. I can just imagine that this took a lot for you to be here too, thank you.

Brad:

Oh yeah, you’re welcome. I am really looking forward to this. I was just sitting here reflecting on what we should try to cover tonight with people and just recognise that everyone is carrying so many challenges here, and to sit for a minute and examine that process. I’m really curious to see what people have to say. A very important piece of self-regulation, self-talk is good.

Alex:

Oh yeah, it’s huge actually. It’s a sign of intelligence.

Brad:

I read that too and I circled it and printed it out and gave it to my family to make sure they know that. That’s okay. Hi everybody. Great to see you all again this week. Got a lot going on and I know you all do too. Always relevant I think. And I was actually looking forward to just getting in a breakout room myself. Even though this is not group therapy, there are definitely elements of this that would be consistent with working on challenges in that sort of setting. Hopefully you see that consistency there week to week as we’re moving and progressing through skills. This first part, this physical regulation piece, and of course there was only three pages of actual reading for you to do, which I’m super happy about and you probably were too with your list of other chores this week.

But that contained in that is this whole idea of physical regulation and our body’s response to challenge. We talked about the three different areas that we’re going to go through, physical regulation, emotion regulation, and cognitive. Our body has a response, a hardwired built in response to things that it sees as or perceives as threatening or challenging. And you can probably tell by the way I use that language in the book, I see threat and challenge as pretty synonymous. I know we could probably split hairs on that, but when it comes to the body’s response, it detects a challenge and that is in this realm of threat. I have a response, I need to do something about that. If you put that into some real life context, and this has been going for however long human beings have been around, we can debate that.

But this element of safety and trying to survive threats has been an ongoing evolutionary process for human beings, our species for a long time, and thankfully we’re pretty good at it. If we weren’t able to detect threats or our ancestors weren’t very good at that, you wouldn’t be sitting here with us today. Somewhere back in history, they were able to say, wow, that rumble in the bushes over there, that’s not good. Or those berries I ate two weeks ago, I’m not going to eat those again. That was not a good effect. I’ll do some foreshadowing here around something called the negativity bias, but why and how we are built to be so good at detecting threats or the negative or looking for problems in our environment. It’s actually a survival mechanism. The thing I want to highlight before we go into what the questions are and the takeaways I wanted you to get from this, this is probably the number one takeaway when you look at that fight, flight or shutdown system and its response to threat.

It doesn’t know the difference. And this was a game changer for me in my own personal life. It does not know the difference between an existential threat like a dangerous animal, 20 yards from you versus a social emotional threat. The feeling of loss, for example, a conflict with a loved one, feeling left out, being late to a meeting, being cut off in traffic. Someone disagreeing with you about a core belief that you have that you feel so strongly about that this is the right thing to do and they’re coming from a different, that’s a threat. And the body really doesn’t have a mechanism in here that says, oh, that’s this a threat. That’s a threat. What we’re finding is more of just an on off switch to different degrees. It can go up and down, but it’s more like a dial. And once you hit that switch, it’s on. If you think about your day and all of the different threats that you’re encountering, and we can get into this idea, I want you to think about this when you’re in your breakout groups, but how many social emotional threats do you encounter in a day? What do you think? Hundreds. Probably. They’re coming.

Jenny:

Chris said, “a lot”.

Engineer, MSc:

I said millions to myself. It was like the first time I’ve ever heard talk about somebody disagreeing with a core value as a threat. I’ve never heard anybody say that, but that’s true. I feel that. And I thought I was crazy.

Brad:

When I used to do well. I still do some relationship counselling. To me, this isn’t also an individual, this is groups, this is group dynamics because a lot of our threats come from how we perceive other people or how other people perceive us and how we get along or don’t get along. I was also going to follow up on that with probably the most, the majority of our social emotional threats come from ourselves, our thoughts, our fears, our inadequacies, our thoughts of failure, the things that we bring in and borrow from the future threat that we can borrow threat from three weeks from now about something that may never happen. We see this all the time. My mom used to talk about it as borrowing trouble. We can borrow…

Alex:

Trouble from catastrophizing, right?

Brad:

Yeah, it’s very much, and if you just put it into this threat language, right? We’re talking about the same thing here. Today’s threats are right in front of us, but I can borrow threats from three weeks forward. I can also, here’s another thing you can do. If that’s not enough for us human beings, we can go back and dredge up the threat from two years ago from a conversation that we had with somebody. Now not only do I have today’s threat, future threat, I can bring past threats and I’ve got all this stuff on my head in my backpack carrying it around. I want you to think about that. That one statement about the body doesn’t really know the difference between a physical existential threat, a dangerous animal in front of me versus a thought of inadequacy feeling left out of a divisive conversation with somebody, somebody violating one of my core values or principles.

The body’s going to respond with this intense, and the thing is to start thinking about is how effective, hopefully you read this and you started to outline some of these symptoms that you’re having, but how effective is it going to be to have this gigantic physiological response in a time or in the face of a challenge that requires something completely different? A completely different response than this gigantic physical. Because if you think about being loud and being scary or hiding and running away or all of these things, and you might be in a meeting with somebody and you push yourself away from the table or your voice gets loud, or they can see all this on your face about how you’re not liking what they’re saying, how effective are you going to be in accomplishing your goal there? It really comes down to how we want to be effective.

We want to manage these things effectively. My partner that I work with also trains on this, he’s pretty big in performance based regulation and how this impacts our ability to manage our energy effectively. I want you to think about that as you talk about this in your breakout sessions too. But how much energy do you think this process takes from you and other people? And the last thing is, remember last time we talked about one of our primary goals and self-regulation or improving our self-regulation is managing this thing called reactivity. In the book where we’re talking about that top brain and bottom brain, that’s a concept you really want to get familiar with and remember and share with other people. Please, if you have a chance to do that. I think it’s one of the most life-changing pieces of information for people to understand that this is a normal process.

We all have those parts of our brain that get engaged and cause us to do these different things. But that bottom part of our brain when we feel threatened, that top part that makes us a human being or that higher level thinking, creativity, problem solving, all that stuff is up here. When we feel threatened, that bottom part of our brain takes over that lizard brain, the old brain, it only has one goal. Eliminate threats, get away from threats, keep us safe. And it’s very short-term focused. And the last thing is, it’s built to be reactive on purpose because that’s the part of our brain that kicks in when we’re in danger. If you are in danger, it makes perfect sense that that part of the brain takes over and you move quickly. You say things quickly, you do things quickly to survive in that moment.

And that makes a lot of sense. 10, 15, 20,000 years ago when most of our threats were existential physiological threats in today’s world where for the most of us, for of us over 50% of the threats you encounter, and I’d say for most of us, it’s probably like 90, 95% of the threats you encounter in a day are not physiological existential threats. They’re social emotional, they’re online, they’re in a meeting, they’re in relationships, they’re at work, they’re all those kinds of things where it doesn’t make sense to have a gigantic physiological response in the spirit of skill training. That’s just a little bit of background on what the skill is about. We really have to practise this. The first skill is all about self-awareness and recognition. What my goal for you is, do you know one or two? These are the questions I want you to talk about in your breakout session, the one or two specific symptoms.

And if you’ve got three or four, that’s great, but I really want you to know the one or two specific physiological symptoms that you can be more aware of when your fight or flight system is kicking in, what is it? How do you know and how would you describe it? And what I don’t want, what you don’t want to write down is, well, I get anxious. I really want us to be a lot more specific than that because that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. Does that mean that your fist ball up? Does that mean that you want to leave right away? Does that mean that your breathing gets dysregulated and upset? Does that mean that you have stomach issues? Does it mean that your shoulders are up to your ears? I want to know. I want you to know specifically what that means for you that you can recognise.

Because once we start to do that, that’s the principle of skill training. It’s something that we can specifically describe concretely and start to measure and practise and see how we’re doing with and increase self-awareness around. Describe your symptoms to those in your group if you feel comfortable doing that, hopefully. Name a couple, describe them also like you to think about if you noticed any patterns in your behaviour over the last week, if you’re more of a fight, more of a flight or more of a shutdown kind of a person, what are your tendencies? We noticed some differences in people and I think it’s interesting to talk about, am I different in different places? Am I different at home than I am at work or am I different around my friends than I am at my coworkers and family? Definitely some insight to be gained through that discussion. And then also, what does your fight look like or what does your flight look like and what does your shutdown look like specifically

Jenny:

Brad, can you distinguish between fawn versus freeze for us?

Brad:

Yeah. When I think of fawning, and I didn’t put that in there to simplify it is a fourth. I usually say fight, flight, freeze or fight flight shutdown. And then there is a fourth one called fawning where what that feels like to me when I’m at work is like, I’m just going to stay off the radar this week. I’m going to do whatever it takes. And maybe none of you know what that means, but it means that my capacity for managing challenges is zero and I want to not experience any more threat this week. I will try to blend in with the environment like a deer fawn with spots and hope that the threat doesn’t smell me or see me or detect me at all. And I’ll survive that way. There are different contexts where people will fawn. Also, there’s some trauma and abusive situations where people learn to fawn to please the thing or the person that’s threatening them. There are other capacities, but at least in my life that’s what that means to me. If that’s something that you can apply here, that would make total sense as well. Keep track of themes that come up if you would, and then we’ll ask the groups to report those themes back.

Break Out Session with Jenny and Chris

Chris (13:39):

I’m a captain on the fire department in our city here in Calgary, I’m constantly in fight [mode]. I’ll say fight flight mode. There’s lots of firefighters like that. And for me, I know the physical things is my stomach for sure is a problem. That’s my number one thing. And a lot of it is I think I’m really good at anticipating where the problem is going to go in, let’s say an incident at my job. I’m really good at planning ahead of where, as Wayne Gretzky says, as I’m Canadian, where the puck is going to go?

Brad:

Yeah.

Chris:

I’m really good at that and I’m really good at when an incident happens, a really bad incident of where things could lead. I’m always two or three steps ahead of the game. The problem with me is that in social settings, I analyse everything to death. I would have an emergency scene, which ultimately causes me physical symptoms. Did I say the right thing or I worry about that stuff. And you’re right, I worry about stuff that I said three years ago that can haunt me going into the future, which causes me physical symptoms, which acute symptoms are probably stomach and digestive problems.

Brad:

I’m just thinking about the energy that takes.

Chris:

It takes an incredible amount of energy.

Brad:

Wow. Wow.

Chris:

A hundred percent. I was a wildland firefighter for 10 years, and now I’m a structural firefighter for 20 years.

Brad:

Yeah.

Chris:

That hypervigilance has caused me a lot of physical symptoms for sure.

Brad:

Thank you for sharing that and I hope we, we probably should keep the same breakout rooms. I definitely want to talk to you and come back to skill two. How do you set the cup down? I’ll be curious because it seems like you’re carrying the cup all the time.

Chris:

A hundred percent. That’s my problem. And lately it’s affected. It’s affected me and some of my peers as well. We’re all in our fifties now. I think there’s an extra something going on there, as well, with that.

Brad:

Yeah. Have you done some reading on things like cortisol and some of the biological impacts of chronic stress? Do you think you feel some of that or ?

Chris:

I have, and I’m trying to deal with the cortisol causing me lots of sleep issues and shift work as well, right? Shift work my age.

Brad:

It catches up after a while.

Chris:

It catches up and there’s, at least in my profession, there’s this expectation of perfection.

Brad:

There’s job judgement.

Chris:

Judgement, job judgement. Then you become more hypervigilant so you don’t make mistakes, which causes other issues I find.

Brad:

Or tendency to make more mistakes when you’re reactive and you’re hurting and you have less energy. Correct. Yeah. Stomach, what else? Is there anything else? Do you notice tension, body tension? Do you get headaches?

Chris:

Yes, I do get headaches due to stress for sure.

Brad:

Do you carry any of that in your shoulders? Do you notice?

Chris:

Oh of course. Yeah, for sure.

Brad:

Okay. I know that’s just common with what you’ve described. And then you’ll get that there’s a couple of muscles that connect up through the back of the head and then that’s often what leads to that pain sometimes or an increase in pain, even if you’re susceptible for other reasons, it’s going to complicate that. But for sure. Anything else? Stomach, headache, you notice anything else as far as fight-flight.

Chris:

I do all four things. I’ll be honest, I’ve got just some arguments for those topics that I find that are important to me or I’m passionate about. I’ve done the flights where I’ve isolated myself basically being a Pacman, I call it like you say, fawning, I call it pack manning, just staying within the pack and not just worth it. It’s just really not.

Brad:

Yeah, this is one of the patterns I see sometimes with men and women too, but maybe in our younger days we fight more than we’ve sometimes said things and we know our fight can be pretty ugly. We’re not going to do that. We don’t want to hurt other people, we end up just turning off, disconnecting and withdrawing and isolating. That’s a common pattern if you understand that all of this is normal human species response to threat. And it’s like sometimes I think we think we’re more involved than we are, but these things are still right here in our everyday life in our bodies and we see it all the time and feel it. It’s just that we don’t talk about it and describe it and learn to do anything with it. I appreciate that. Anything from your side, Jenny, on those?

Jenny:

Yeah, I definitely have a fight tendency. I’m a one hit wonder when it comes to my physical response. I am a fighter. Even you had me thinking even when I take it away here, you said what do you do with it once it happens? I’ll take it away and I’ll have those guilty feelings and then I’ll want to reengage. And then even then when I reengage, I’m generally not in a place where I’m calm still, I’m fighting again. And then, it’s like this, I want to try and deal with it. I keep engaging in an unhealthy way is what I’d say.

Brad:

Because it’s threatening to carry that guilt too. You see that cycle all the time and then that threat begets threat, begets threat and you just get in this vicious cycle and yeah, and it just keeps making it worse.

Jenny:

When you talk about core beliefs, what I’m working on, they tell me I’m political and they tell me that they don’t. People just don’t want to hear about that, don’t talk about it.

Brad:

The threat there is not only are you having a disagreement with these people, but these people are also your connection, your support. It takes the threat and magnifies it, not just as a disagreement but also as a loss. There’s a loss there too, we can rate these threats as big or small. This is giant.

Jenny:

This is giant, this is an 11. I can think of, I thought of, a different example which was like a three. But the symptoms, when you talk about my symptoms, I definitely feel like a gut punch. And then when you talk about my response, my voice gets allowed right away. Especially in those 11 situations. It’s like I have no time. When you talk about response time, I’m all reaction. It is like I give less than three seconds and I’m saying this is something, how can you expect me to believe that? How can you, you know what I mean? Things like that. And the inability to think clearly comes in there too. Being in a room where people are saying things that I don’t agree with. Let’s say I find my foot will start to shake. If my legs are crossed, my foot will shake. I’m anxious to get in there and say something.

Brad:

We have a release of adrenaline along with cortisol. When you’re sitting in a chair, that adrenaline’s supposed to help you fight the bear. There’s no bear. You’re sitting in a chair. What do you think that adrenaline’s going to cause movement somewhere? It’s got to go do something. You’re going to start shaking. We do these, we call ‘em, they look strange. It makes no sense. We’re not solving anything, but your body’s just got a huge dose of energy boosting chemicals. We see all kinds of different movements from people. That’s a really good call out. I want to make sure we hit that with the group.

Jenny:

And I do get, I’ll find a lump in my throat sometimes too, and I can get, yeah, I definitely can feel my heart pounding in my chest sometimes, in certain situations it’s like I can feel it in my throat. That’s how much I can feel my heart pounding. And then yeah, it definitely affects both of our sleep, I would say.

Chris:

For sure.

Brad:

Yeah, I can lay down and go to sleep and then all this threat comes in my head. We have a poem or a joke that we tell about its sleep time, but here comes all this threat to bed with me and adrenaline. You’re not going to sleep with adrenaline. Your body’s thinking there’s a bear there, but there’s no bear.

Jenny: Welcome back everyone.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Brad (22:11):

Probably an unfair question, but any of you have stomach or gastrointestinal issues? No, you don’t have to raise your hand. That was a silly question. I know some people do because there’s sure a lot of products sold in this world for that. Anyway, what happens is when we experience a threat [our thoughtful brain] shuts down, it stops processing because energy is diverted away from that system to our major muscle groups because you’re getting ready to fight a threat or run from a threat or hunker down. Energy is diverted away from these processes that aren’t as important at the time. Like processing that sandwich that you had a half an hour ago, really not that important compared to if you’re not going to survive the next 20 minutes. That system shuts down. That sandwich is sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, and then the system has to start up all over again. And then you get the starting and stopping and starting and stuff. And I don’t have to describe what that feels like and looks like and sounds like, but it’s uncomfortable.

Gabrielle:

I think, not thinking clearly. Just this inability to really think rationally from multiple vantage points at a given situation because you’re overtaken by this really strong need to defend yourself.

That’s all I need to go from that one. Thank you. That top brain, bottom brain right there. Where do we need to be at? The neuroscience in the last 25 years tells us when we look at your brain and you experience a challenge or threat, your body’s fight or flight kicks in that top part of your brain. The cortex, the higher level thinking that makes you a human being with compassion, forethought, reflection, ability, relationship ability, all that higher level problem solving part of your brain shuts down the bottom part of your brain. That lizard brain, that old brain, that reactive brain, that survival brain picks up tremendously. Who’s driving the bus when you get upset? It’s the lizard. And that’s why we sometimes say hurtful things to people we care about. That’s why we have trouble making sense out of other people’s viewpoints. We’re not interested in hearing anyone else’s viewpoint when we’re in the lizard brain, when the fight eliminates the threat or gets away from the threat. That’s it. Great description. Okay, there’s two of the systems. What else do we’ve got?

School Administrator 1:

How about neck pain?

Brad:

Yes. We’ve got a musculoskeletal response. Are we tight and tense in the face of a threat or are we loose and relaxed? We’re tight and tent. We are getting ready for a fight here. What happens when muscle tension is going on for 2, 3, 4 or five hours? Anybody get that creeping up the back of your neck here? Headache by Tuesday or Wednesday, Monday on a rough week, right? When you have tense muscles, our muscles aren’t built to be tense for hours and days and weeks and months. That creates pain. Yes, the third system. Good job. Y’all are killing these. You’re just knocking ‘em right out. Okay, let’s go. What else?

Alex:

Lumping the throat.

Brad:

Yeah, lumping the throat is really interesting. One pass. I don’t really know. I’ve seen some different theories on that one. I don’t know what the purpose of the lump in your throat, if a bear is chasing you is really going to do

MC:

Well. I think “lump and throat” is just hiding. If you’re under threat, you want to hide.

Brad:

From talking or making noise.

MC:

That’s how I feel if someone starts yelling at me, I just hide because I don’t even want to.

Brad:

Excellent point, excellent point. That could be to keep maybe a baby from making noise if there’s a threat around or maybe that just stayed with us as evolution. Very interesting. In our group, we talked about this extra restless movement that we get, like a leg shaking or a toe tapping or any of you pin clickers out there. I know the woman in the office next to me is a pin clicker and a hundred percent accurate. If I hear her pin clicking over there, I can say what’s wrong? And she’s working on this significant problem over there. Something’s happened that’s catastrophic. We were talking about the fourth response here is a chemical response to threat. You are doped up with adrenaline and cortisol when you experience a threat. That’s to give you energy to fight the bear, get away from the bear, whatever you need to do. But if you’re sitting at your desk chair or in your car or on the couch with your family and you’ve got this dose of adrenaline, where’s it going to go? It has nowhere else to go but into these sometimes what we would consider useless, unusual patterned, rhythmic, repetitive movements just to be used up. We’ve got brain, we’ve got musculoskeletal, we’ve got…

Alex | Former Co-Host, Artist, Strategic Communicator:

Body temperature regulation.

Brad:

Temperature is a really interesting one. I think some have theorised that that’s just a response to all the processes going on internally. You think about everything we just described, that’s a lot of processes going on in the body all at once. It could make some sense that that’s going to heat us up quite a bit. The other couple that I wanted to hit on were, does anybody have noticed breathing change? Change in their breath, either more rapid breathing or does anybody recognise that they’re a breath holder? That they hold their breath in stressful, challenging situations. Go ahead.

Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:

Very shallow breath. Sometimes.

Brad:

Yeah, shallow breathing or even breath holding. It’s interesting. It’s like why would I hold my breath? How could that be adaptive in a threatening situation to hold my breath? Well, just like I think it was Mary that was saying earlier, it could be to stay quiet if you’ve ever spent enough time in the woods around predator or prey. There are times that you’re close enough where they can hear you breathing and that could be a survival mechanism to not breathe for sure. And the other one that I wanted to make sure we hit on was pulmonary. Some people explain that this blood flow, they can actually feel their heart beating almost clear up into their head or their chest or their neck. Yeah, like a fish flopping in their chest sometimes it’s described as, this exercise, good job. It sounds like you all nailed it.

This first skill is raising awareness about fight or flight. Because like I said in the first session, you can’t regulate something if you’re not aware of it happening, right? The first step in self-regulation is self-awareness. What I’m hoping you’re able to do is take one or two of these that are specific to you and take that to your personal plan at the end of the book. And that’s what you want to fill in that first box with under warning signs is how do you respond? And this is where I think this is much different than a lot of other frameworks where you’re working on creating change because in other frameworks, warning signs and triggers are more focused on external things that are going on. You noticed we didn’t talk much about what’s triggering you. And I think that’s one of the things that really is a different process here. There are a lot of those out there if you want to look for that. We could spend a lot of time talking about the different problems and triggers and challenges that people have. Or we could spend a little bit of time talking about the process that happens when human beings experience challenges and try to get correct.

Gord:

Brad, can I ask that question?

Brad:

Absolutely, yes.

Gord:

One of the questions here was my symptoms more consistent with fight flight or shutdown behaviours. And I wrote down all three because it depends on the situation on who I’m facing or what I’m facing.

Brad:

Yes. Yeah, yeah, I hear that a lot. I do think sometimes we have some nuances about, we were talking in our group that sometimes people have learned different patterns. If you know that your fight is pretty ugly, you’ve learned that in your younger days especially, and you’ve hurt people that you care about when you get upset sometimes we resort to, I’m going to be more of a shutdown. I’m just going to leave because I know if I engage in my fight, it’s not good. It’s not good for me and other people. There are some changes that we make over time, but you’re right, we can be all three, we can be all four. We can fawn, too.

MC:

I just want to highlight that. We had a really interesting conversation about fawning in our group, talking about actually how fawning is a way of staying safe. If you are under threat, you’ll just go along in order for the threat to end. Sometimes under coercion or especially looking at size or power differentials in physical situations, fawning is actually a way to protect yourself.

Brad:

For sure. All these are survival mechanisms. You’re right. And they’re perfectly normal. I think the other thing to think about here with everything we described is the completely normal human process of how to respond to challenges. It’s hardwired. And I also think it’s really interesting that we’re not really taught how to manage these things, but they’re intense and they’re impactful on our relationships, our lives, our ability to succeed in different areas with challenges.

Gord:

And I did find I reacted differently at work than I did at home as well.

Brad:

Interesting.

Gord:

Yeah, that’s still a pattern. But I’m retired now. But it was very much a struggle at work, how to manage other people versus how to manage my family. Interesting.

Brad:

There’s a lot of places to do a deeper dive here if you’re interested. What equals threat to you? That’s a very interesting tunnel to go down. It’s very insightful. That’s a personal journey that you can take. Knowing your hot buttons for sure is helpful as a human being, but it’s still going to come back. You’re still going to come back to the same process to manage, right? It’s still going to be this fight flight shutdown. It’s still going to be the same process that we have to learn to manage no matter what the trigger or threat is going to be. Feeling like, oh my gosh, okay, I noticed all these things, now what am I going to do with this stuff? Well, that’s why we have step number two coming this next week.

Gabrielle:

You mentioned this notion of how thread is defined and how thread is experienced. I know, and I’ve worked with plenty of people and I think I’ve been that on my own. I’ve lived it. And when you’re exposed to cumulative traumas over and over and over again, these are real traumas, not just social emotional [threats]. These are real threats constantly. Like the threat of violence.

Brad:

Yeah, physical threats.

Gabrielle:

Yeah, physical threats, threats to the constant name calling, the bullying, all of that kind of stuff that oftentimes you are exposed to as a child. And then to try and have never learned self-regulation skills later. And you try and then the addiction comes in. But then for people who are recovering and only learning self-regulation later in life, when dysregulation has been imprinted on their brain, where are there any other resources? This seems like something that we would encounter just in I guess our regular day-to-day life where we’re not exposed to or don’t have that background. I wonder if there are any other resources real quickly, Brad, that somebody who is profoundly affected by cumulative trauma and has just hyperactivated stress response. Where can they go? Could this trigger disassociation?

Brad:

And here are two things I would say if we started out with kids for just that reason because we know people are exposed to this early in life and the longer you go with it, like you said, these effects are just going to get worse and worse. We have pre-K curriculum, elementary curriculum, middle school, high school curriculum, teaching kids how to manage this stuff when it comes up and what this is about because it can really feel like you’re losing your mind if you don’t know that this is a natural, normal process. It’s very uncomfortable too, we all know what it feels like. It’s overwhelming, it’s confusing. You’re seven years old or 17 years old or 27 years old. It’s difficult. To answer your question, I think there is some hope for kids and teaching young people how to do this and also parents to help their kids with this.

But what you’re talking about, I feel like is more at that clinical level to where they would need some one-on-one. And I would hope it would be somebody who would have some foundational understanding of what we’re trying to work through here. But you’re right, you can’t do that level of clinical operation in a book. This is a way to expose people, share the skills with people and practise together. You might be thinking, where do we go from here? It’s really simple, I told you this whole framework is super logical and step by step for a reason. If we are saying to ourselves, and we’ve accepted this idea that this threat response in today’s world is really not helping me, especially if it goes unmanaged or unchecked and it’s just doing its thing and it’s been reactive my entire life and it’s caused me to hurt people and not think clearly and have a stomach ache all the time and be stressed out and not get good sleep.

And there’s not a lot of benefits that I can think of from this, especially over a chronic long-term period. If we’re looking to turn down the threat response, what is the opposite of experiencing a threat? What do we need to create? And that’s how logical it’s, the opposite of feeling threatened is feeling safe. Chapter two and skill number two is all about what are the most impactful ways for human beings to create safety in their lives. I’ll leave you with that and that’s what chapter two is about and that’s what we’re going to explore next week.

Introduction to The Gravity Well | Brad Chapin Self-Regulation Skillset Training Program

Jenny | Geophysicist:

Welcome. We have Brad Chapin who’s about to lead us off on our first week of self-regulation training. Take it away, Brad.

Brad Chapin | Public Mental Health Director:

Yeah, thank you so much, Jenny. And for everyone already doing your introductions here, there was one person I was going to write her name down who said she was terrible at this, but I don’t know if there’s anyone more terrible at this than when I first started with this. This has become my passion topic and I love that everyone introduced themselves. And then Jenny, you listed off all of our different professions and work and backgrounds and that and all I kept thinking throughout that was, “I’m so basic” and “this information is such a basic level” that I just kept thinking “we’re all human beings”. That’s where we’re going to be coming to this information, at least from my lens. I’ll be honest with you, this is the first time we’ve done a group like this. I’ve taught several classes like this that we hit on the skill, a skill a week, but never virtually like this with a group of adults from all kinds of different backgrounds.

I’m just as curious as you are as to how this is going to go. And I also see myself more along with Jenny here as facilitating this conversation. But I did want to thank Jenny, and I want to thank everybody for taking some time. I know time’s our most precious and valuable thing, thanks for getting the books out to everybody and coordinating all that. I do want to say first off that this book, this adult book, “my bad”. It should have probably come first, but I have several other books and curriculum guides out there for kids and tools for children. And I remember thinking when I first started out as a clinician working with adults, I always wanted to, I just kept working and working hours with these adults who are really dysregulated and struggling at the mental health center. And I was like, man, we need to get to these people earlier in life because they are pretty set in their ways and these patterns of behaviour are pretty instilled once you’ve been responding to challenges in a certain way for 30 or 35 years, it’s more difficult to change.

And I thought, well, I want to keep getting younger and younger and working with these kids. We put out these curriculum guides for middle school, high school, elementary, and then pre-K. I thought, wow, we got the problem solved. And then COVID came around. I’ve been in mental health for 25 years in the clinical side as a director of inpatient and outpatient services for a large healthcare system. And about two months into COVID, our administration said, Hey, we know your background. Can you do anything for our staff? We’ve got burnout, we’ve got people leaving, nurses leaving the profession, people who’ve been here for a long time and seen a lot of things, aren’t able to manage this level of challenge effectively. Can you do anything to help? And took this framework that we’d had a lot of success with proven success, research-based success with kids, and just upscaled it to adults.

Probably for the last three, four years, I’ve spent more time working with adults on how to integrate, learn, practice, this basic skillset and effectively reduce their perceived stress, which has been really cool to see happen. And then the more I’ve been talking with school districts around this idea, it’s like, yeah, if the grownups aren’t doing very well, how are we expecting them to get these skills to kids in a meaningful way and be able to co-regulate and help that development increase? Super happy that we have everybody from different backgrounds here and I can’t wait to hear some of the stories that go along with how these skills are manifesting. A couple of things I want to throw out right off the bat, this book, hopefully it didn’t take you very long to read. Sometimes I think it’s harder to make something brief and simple than it is to make it complicated.

One of the things we heard, and when I’m working with nurses or educators, first of all, I see a lot of parallels and people are carrying a lot of stress in both those professions and other professions too. But that if you go to a group of people, even if you’re coming from a place of helping, if they can’t even see the plate anymore, what they’ve got on it with their personal and professional lives and the challenges that they have, and you come and say, man, you’d be doing a lot better if you could do these 10 other things, just not going to happen. Part of this whole process was how do we bring something to people who are already in this really dysregulated, pretty awful state, that doesn’t seem like more for them to do or at a level that’s just overwhelming to even get started to feel better.

And I see that a lot in the, of course, when I come from a behavioural health background, how do you get someone at this? They’re just so far down, low, no energy, nothing seems to be going well to get to move forward from that stance. I hope that you found it easy to read, quick read. There’s a lot in there if you want to dig into the information in those words, in those chapters and in those sentences, there’s thousands of pages of research behind that if you want to dig deeper. But there was a really strong effort to make this simple to get through. I want to throw that out there. I also want to qualify this, that you can make this a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Sometimes I end up with pretty intelligent, pretty high level, highly educated, highly motivated achievement, striving folks in my training and in groups like this, I know we’ve got some of those in here, and you can really make this difficult.

I always tell people, don’t overthink this. There was a lot of effort in laying this out the way it’s laid out. Please try not to ruin it by getting caught up in overthinking it. Okay, I’ve put that out there and if I see that or hear that, I’ll probably say something about it. I’m pretty straightforward when it comes to that kind of stuff. And I’m also just here to try to help. The other thing is set your expectations appropriately in going into something like this. I don’t know of any of your professional basketball players or anything like that, but if we put this up against another skillset and you had one session on it, I’m not sure how good you would expect yourself to be in skill development with that. None of us will ever be perfect at self-regulation. That’s actually not the goal here.

What we’re trying to do is become more aware and make some improvements along the way. The journey to me here along this, you’re going to learn things, but you’re also going to be experiencing things. You’re going to become aware, more aware of things that you haven’t been aware of before. And that’s important. That’s important stuff. There’s spaces and places in here too, I hope this thing gets marked all up. By the time this is over, I mean write things in it, make notes in it. It’s yours. This is your plan for you. This isn’t real gold on the front either, don’t be afraid to mess it up. What stuck out to you as if you look at that first introduction piece, those first 27 pages where we’re looking at this idea of challenges being a human thing, lack of skills, formal training in this area, what stuck out to you? Anyone can chime in.

Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions

Professor Gabrielle Weasel Head (07:11):

I mean, definitely “challenge” is a human experience. And one of the things that really resonated with me is this notion of balance and walking in balance because I’m Blackfoot. That is our whole paradigm, our cultural paradigm. That’s a way of life. And it always has been for thousands and thousands and thousands of years long before the bearing straight theory, which has since been disproven. Tens of thousands of years it has been, that’s our way, is “balance” and not just [within]. It really goes with the idea of balance within balance without, if you are not balanced with yourself and valuing yourself, you will not value the land that you’re on. You will not value, will not take care of that land as if it is completely part of you. It’s that balance that really resonated with me. And the challenge aspect, that challenge is a human experience because absolutely it is.

But so is sacrifice, and pain. Your book and the points you make is how do we naturalize this and normalize it in such a way that the emotional regulation piece that also is naturalized and normalized and emotions are naturalized and normalized even. And I’ll say it right off, even entering into the zoom space, into the virtual space, seeing that I’m the only indigenous person here and with the history of colonization, all of that. And one thing that dysregulates me is racism. That’s what completely, it’ll dysregulate me. And I need to be able to determine what is a threat and what isn’t a threat because it’s irrational to go into every space and think these people, oh, they’re going to see me, that I’m the only native here and they’re not going to value me because that’s really been my experience growing up. It’s incredibly complex and I think the way you have distilled it, you’ve distilled very complex neurophysiological processes that are in the happening in the brain, that are part of spirit that are connected to the environment, and you’ve been able to distil them into these skill sets, domains that are very accessible.

That was my impression in reading this. It’s that awareness, almost hyper self-awareness, knowing yourself, knowing yourself in order to know your environment because of our energy, and I think physics is finally now really there’s this evidence, empirical evidence that we’re all energy, everything is energy. But this is something that as a Blackfoot woman, this has been taught to me by our elders, and this is in our ceremonies. For thousands of years, our ceremonies have actually been a tool of emotional self-regulation, spiritual self-regulation, physical self-regulation, all of that. I’m coming at it, looking at it from this Blackfoot paradigm lens. It’s interesting to see that we’re all going to enter into this through our own holistic, embodied experience. Yeah, it’s just the first 27 pages accessible, easy to read. Good. Yeah, it was great.

Brad Chapin:

Everybody on this call and off this call has their challenge story, and has their whole backpack full of stuff. They’re carried around into every zoom meeting, into every meeting, into every interaction relationship. It’s full of challenges. And I have heard being a therapist, I mean, that’s my job listening to all kinds of challenges from all kinds of backgrounds. And what is interesting there is that as human beings, we do some very similar things about trying to manage those challenges. If you just look at that process of how does a human being manage challenge, and we understand, I’m glad you pointed out balance as a theme, what research tells us is that when an organism or a human is balanced, we have the best chance of managing that challenge in a successful way when we get out of balance. Then that question, and this is a really, those of you that know me and have talked to me, this is a completely logic driven system.

The question then becomes, if balance helps us be most effective, what are those things that throw us out of balance? What keeps us from being balanced? That’s a really, really important thing. And you probably noticed in that first chapter, we focus some on this other key term called reactivity. Reactivity really gets in the way of a human being, being balanced and responding in a balanced way. When you look at the self-regulation training model and the skills that we’re going to step through, it’s really good to keep those two principles in your mind. Balance is the goal, and reactivity is one of those things that’s going to be in my way. There is no self-regulation without self-awareness. There is always this piece of understanding and then there’s the skill training that comes along in the practice that goes with that.

I wondered if anybody picked up on this idea of not really being formally prepared versus the vague advice that we often get when we’re dealing with challenges. How are we equipped to deal with this massive, these social-emotional challenges are huge. Loss, grief, anger, threat, self-doubt, jealousy, all these things. How’s a 7-year-old or a 17-year-old or a 35-year-old formally equipped and prepared? Is there a class on that that I missed somewhere? I mean, I think that that’s a really interesting concept. When you look at a group of individuals and they say, I want to do better. I don’t want to be dysregulated, I don’t want to suffer like this. And yet when we’re in these really challenging situations, what is it that we dish out for each other? What’s offered, what do we fall back on? It’s a lot of words that I’ve come to.

The conclusion is we dish out a lot of words and we receive a lot of words when you’re really, really challenged and really, really suffering. And I put those in there, some of those examples, my favorite one is just hang in there, keep your chin up tomorrow, be a brighter day. These are all the things that we say. It’ll get better. Time heals all wounds, all these things. And I think that bar is set really low, but I think we can do better than that when someone is in a challenging state. That’s what gets me excited about this is that skill development can lead to improved outcomes way more than just a cliche or another meme up on the wall can do for you. That’s why I’m excited for you all for the next six or seven weeks here together. I know time’s running here and I want to hit on a couple of things.

I want to make sure I get a couple of things that I wanted you to pay particular attention to, but that vague advice piece is one. We’re going to improve on that. We’re going to do much better than vague advice. There’s an element of in your challenges, in your list of challenges, your personal list of challenges, there’s an element of controllables versus uncontrollable that I want you to, hopefully you picked up on that, that we went through that much of. We do an exercise, usually when we’re teaching this course in nursing school and to teachers is list your challenges out on the side here, some of the big ones, it’s finance, it’s relationships, it’s job, it’s other people, it’s traffic, it’s weather, all kinds of things that you have in your backpack. And then we ask ‘em to put a U or a C next to that.

It’s uncontrollable versus controllable out of that list. And almost every time, well, every time that we’ve done the course, the list of uncontrollable challenges is much greater than the list of controllables. And then you start thinking about, “Where am I putting my energy?” I’m putting a lot of energy in trying to control these uncontrollable challenging situations. If you think about this whole concept of me, a human being responding to challenges, you need energy to respond to challenges in your life. You only have so much capacity to manage challenges as a human being. If you’re spending over half of that time on uncontrollable challenges, how much time and energy does that leave you to spend on the things that you actually can do something about? And then the next logical question is of the controllable problems, what do I do with those? How do I know how to manage those challenges? And that’s where the skilled training comes in. I wanted to make sure that controllable versus uncontrollable is something that’s out there, and we’re going to focus mostly on what we can have some control and influence over where we can maximize our time and energy.

Jenny:

Gord offered a Blackfoot elder in Okotoks told him no one listens to the angry man in the room. That’s that. This is my, I will say one of my challenges is you want something to change. And like you said, it’s an uncontrollable potentially situation, but you’re still trying to influence that situation. It’s trying to make sure that you, because people will describe me going, oh, and then I ask a question, I shoot my hand up or worse when it comes to somebody close to my family where I stay controlled. And like you pointed out in these books or these conversations with you,

Brad Chapin:

Appreciate that because passion, we’re not going to make a whole bunch of robots here, make people not have emotions. And that’s not what we’re doing here. And you won’t ever hear me say, I like numbers and I like rating scales and those kinds of things. If you are involved in a topic or a challenge where you’re at a level eight on a scale of one to 10, you’re not going to hear me say you shouldn’t be at a level eight. The question I want you to ask yourself is, are you an effective person in that challenging situation at a level eight? Is that where you want to be? How effective is a level eight for this challenge? What’s your behaviour look like? What do you sound like? What’s your face look like? What’s your internal processes feel? Who’s suffering, at a level eight? I won’t tell you what number you should be, but the whole process is really geared around if you recognize that level eight’s not effective and you think a level three is more effective, how do you get there and how do you make that happen?

MC Breadner | Energi Media :

I just wanted to make one quick comment on how much for me, this was generationally taught. I was taught by my grandma, and then especially as a woman, I think there’s a gender part of this. You have to be happy. You have to be a people pleaser. And it’s like my grandma was like that. My mom was like that. I was taught to be like that and how hard I’m trying to fight right now to not raise a daughter, to be a people pleaser and not to raise a daughter to say, “It’s okay. You’ll figure it out. Anyways, I just wanted to add that about the generational complexity and how hard it is to break this pattern in my life.

Brad Chapin:

Is this mc that’s talking? Yeah. Wow. Really powerful. Thank you for bringing that up. And I really want to think broadly about the challenges, the challenge of being a people pleaser. And the other thing that came to mind when you said that is just because someone looks calm on the outside does not mean they’re well regulated. I mean, those two things are not equivalent. You can be an absolute wreck on the inside. And I know probably several of exactly what I’m talking about here, but we can cover it up pretty well. And that’s also not what this framework is about. You’ll notice that the whole emotion regulation piece is about identifying healthy expression, ownership of emotions, and it’s going to come in sequence. We’re going to get there. I’m super excited about that too. Does anybody else have anything quickly? Thank you for that. These are great comments. I appreciate it.

Jenny:

This is about a broader educational awareness over the years. We’re starting with ourselves and then we’re getting into organizing as a community and then getting into organizing on the landscape and then ending with treaty education from Gabrielle. There are many ways to enter and exit. Thank you to those who are here for this and for those that are participating in other courses throughout the year, and this is all meant to feed and stack on each other and make it lighten the load for all of us. Yeah.

Brad Chapin:

Yeah, one last thing I wanted to say. This work, you can get into some deep places. We are asking you to be introspective. You could get into touch with some challenging situations that bring up some stuff as we go through these skills. I just wanted to encourage this, it seemed like a really great group, supportive, safe environment, but just reach out if there’s things that come up with that.