In episode four of the mini-series on Self-Regulation Skillset training, Brad Chapin continues the discussion on emotional regulation and the importance of understanding and managing emotions effectively. The conversation highlights the power of labelling emotions to provide clarity and predictability, which can aid in co-regulation and support. Participants discuss the challenges of maintaining composure in high-pressure situations, such as public debates, and the significance of practicing safe and calm techniques to manage emotional responses. The dialogue emphasizes the value of group dynamics in learning and applying emotional regulation skills, suggesting ongoing group support and accountability as beneficial. The session also touches on the role of visualization and rehearsal in preparing for challenging interactions, underscoring the importance of predictability in fostering a sense of safety. Overall, the transcript illustrates a structured approach to emotional regulation, focusing on labelling, ownership, and expression of emotions to enhance personal and professional interactions.
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.
