In episode five of the mini-series on Self-Regulation Skillset training, Brad Chapin outlines emotional regulation, ownership, and expression. The conversation begins with participants sharing personal experiences of fear and anxiety, particularly in response to global events and personal challenges. The dialogue emphasizes the importance of labeling emotions, taking ownership of one’s emotional responses, and finding healthy ways to express these emotions. Participants explore the concept of control, discussing how external factors often influence emotions and the need to reclaim personal power by managing one’s reactions. The conversation also touches on the challenges of dealing with injustices and the role of community and support in emotional regulation. The session concludes with a focus on the upcoming topic of expression, highlighting the need for thoughtful and healthy emotional outlets.
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.
