[E170] Dads Talk About: Guilt and Shame

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast, where we come together to discuss a healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities. I'm JD. Wilson and I am your host. And today on the show, we've got one of our favorite people in Memphis, Shadberry, who is going to come and talk with us today about guilt and shame, amongst a bunch of other things. Mo Oninger is also here. Mo is also going to talk about guilt and shame with us. And so we wanted to have a few dads on just to talk about particularly just parenting guilt and the role that that can play in our parenting as well as just in our personal lives as well. So if you are a mom, don'tune out. We think this is helpful content for everybody, even if it is just dad's talking today. So all that said, let's get into it now. Here he is, Shad Berry. And Moaninger. All right, so, Shad, you're here with us. [00:01:02] Speaker B: I am here in the flesh. [00:01:03] Speaker A: This is our first, I think, all in. No, it's not. We just a few weeks ago had Beckett and Jesse together, so I'll stop saying that. But we have not been in studio with outside guests in a while, so. [00:01:14] Speaker B: We'Re glad you're here, man. So good to be here. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Mo, thank you also for being here. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:01:20] Speaker A: If you've been listening to the show, kind of as they air, it's November of 2023. We are just coming off of our biggest anything that we've ever attempted, having the Investing in Hope event, which Shaq got to be there with us for it. And so we are all, if we look tired, accurate, we are tired. But it's been a whirlwind of the last couple of weeks and has been really great. So we wanted to have Chad on today. Chad, we've known each other for a while. You guys know each other for an extremely long time. And we wanted to talk about parenting guilt. And one of the reasons we thought of you is yeah, this is what I'm interested in. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah. How did you think of me? [00:01:56] Speaker A: Not because we thought who's the person who needs the most guilt because of their parenting, but we thought of people we know who have done the work. You're somebody who has done a lot of work to become aware of yourself and your past and how it affects your present and all that. And so if you don't mind, will you just kind of share for people who don't know you, the few that are out there who you are, kind of what you do now and then maybe your intro into any of this awareness we're talking about? [00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, just thanks again for having me. I can't stop smiling being in this room. Mark Ottinger is a hero of mine. I've loved my time working with you, JD. There would be no berry without Mark Ottinger. And I think when Mark was the college pastor at first Van, you sent me a postcard unlike none I'd ever received before, where you reached out and said, hey, I'm going to be reaching out to you. And you showed interest in me and pursued me. I don't know if I don't think I was engaged at the time. I think to be married and you just expressed interest and value in me. That really changed me and continues to change me. So I'm just really grateful for your abiding friendship. And so this is a lot of fun to be here at MFCC. And this has been your heartbeat since I've known you. You modeled what it means to care for foster children and the orphan for the least of these, and that's been your example. And you'll always hold a very dear place, you and Tana both, and mine and Veronica's heart, so really significant and a lot of thoughts and memories and feelings flowed through my head and laughter, stories know, that's really where my journey began. I think probably the most important part of the story to share in terms of my background and how I got into the work that I'm doing now. It really starts with the origin of a failed adoption. For us, it's no exaggeration to say we pursued adoption because of Mark and Tana's example. We lived two streets over from them when we were in Colonial Acres or Mayfair Park and watched you guys go through a process that blew my mind, watching that happen in real time and watching all the ups and downs and joys and pains and seeing these little lives be welcomed into a home with all this intentionality. And Veronica and I got you know, I came from a family where the younger you were when you accomplished anything, the better it was supposed to be. So we got married and bought a house and had kids, like, all within a six month period. We crammed it all into I hit a midlife crisis early as well. I did everything fast. We had had our 6th pregnancy, which ended in our second miscarriage, and that really put us on our heels. I was also in the process of leaving a family business. I'm the youngest of eight. My four older brothers were in the business with my dad. And then we decided to pursue adoption because why not? Everything else was the waters were already super smooth. And so we started internationally, ended up domestic. Mark guided us, walked alongside of us through that process. And long story short, after leaving the hospital with our recording in progress, the birth mom nine days later changed her mind and revoked her surrender. And we handed him back to her on the 11th day. And I was struck by the reality, more poignant than ever, is that you can't love at an arm's length distance and simultaneously protect yourself from pain. To sign up to love is to sign up for pain. And I describe that as the moment that God tore the calluses off my heart. Meaning, up to that point, I was pretty moralistic. You don't chime in here, Mark. You don't know piling on. I was pretty moralistic. I was very phariseeical in the sense that I was proud of how I behaved and what I did do or didn't do and judgmental of others that did and thought that if I could work hard enough and do the right things and say the right things and be the right way, and things would work out. And that physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, just put me into the fetal position, figuratively and literally. And I call it God's severe mercy because it was severe, because it was painful. To take a phrase from CS. Lewis, it was severe because it was painful, but it was merciful because it woke me up, and I needed to be woken up. [00:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:30] Speaker B: I was very disconnected from my heart. So that I tell people, some people walk into counseling voluntarily. I got pushed into it. I didn't want to go. And I realized and now looking back, realizing how absolutely vital that has been in my journey and how much because from a parenting perspective, everything up. I had one tool. Basically it was like discipline, which basically equaled spanking. It was like you put kids in time out, you control their behavior, and if you get big enough, loud enough, strong enough, they'll eventually comply. Right. They may hate you forever. So it was like this control and power mechanism, and, man, that was exhausting and not working. It's been a very long the more I learned, the more I realized, the less I know, the more humble hopefully I'm becoming. But, yeah, that's where being introduced and I need to haven't formally participated in an ECC training, so you can sign me up for that. But my own counseling journey and my own heart work and taking responsibility for that has been monumental transformational for me and impactful on my relationships, specifically in marriage and family. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Why don't you share kind of what you're doing, the work you're doing now? You talked about going out of the family business, and you went into probably a direction you never thought you'd be going. [00:07:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Nothing I'm doing now. Well, some of the coaching, I think, was probably on my radar to some degree. I think I've always been in the people business, people development. Like, I've always been drawn to what I call unleashing the flourishing of human potential. Just playing a part of that always excites me. So I always find myself gravitating toward these topics. In 2014, Tim Holler and I co founded Cardia Collective, which is a practice management company that helps manage practices for licensed professional counselors and coaches. And so I didn't want to become a counselor. I still don't, although I'm very intrigued by it. I also was blown away by the process it takes for counselors to become licensed and build a practice and manage it. And I like the business, the systems, the structure and the framework. And so it was a good marriage because we were able to create a framework where we could help therapists get licensed, establish a practice, build that in a sustainable way. Lots of ways to do it that don't in sustainable. I mean, emotionally and financially, you got to have both to do well and good. So that's been really rewarding work since 2014. And then in 2020, that morphed into a partnership with another mentor of mine. Mark and I knew and met about the same time. Ken Edmondson which brings emotional, mental, relational health into the business world, into the organizational structure, into the heart of a know how do you lead at a high level and perform at a high level without falling prey to the occupational hazards that tend to be customary know, familial loss and sacrifice, physical health, emotional health. So bringing that into that space has been a lot of my recent work and effort, and it's been a lot of fun. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Awesome. So today we're talking about guilt, right, in parenting. And so I think we talk about it, I mean, probably every single time we talk about parenting that there is the work of parenting, which, like you said, a lot of times we're starting out. It's just controlling kids. That's the idea. And then very quickly, the more work you do, you realize you've got to unpack your own past, your own baggage, everything that's going on with you, specifically with guilt. You talked about growing up in kind of a high achievement type family and setting, and this is not time to put your family on blast. Obviously I love you genuinely. It's not when you're growing up and you are also a very driven, fun person. You love to achieve stuff. You love to get stuff done. What role did that play as you then began to kind of have your world flipped upside down? Where did that guilt sit with you? And then how did you begin to work through some of that? [00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah, one, I think for me it became important to differentiate between guilt and toxic shame, which through my own journey and has been a major delineation, I think that we have to make a lot of what I experienced was toxic shame, which is the idea that being human is not enough. I had to be more than human in order to matter and belong. And I think that is customary with a lot of what we would call a performance based identity, that my identity is based on and rooted in performance, that I have a self worth that depends on what it's it's like instead of it being I have intrinsic value and worth. It's like I have intrinsic value and worth. If well, in our context, for me, I've never lived anywhere outside of Memphis. So I can't blame the rest of the world. But in our context, it felt very much like your value and worth is very much connected to the behavior of your children. Yeah. Which puts you I mean, I think I started out for various reasons, not only because of my family of origin, but in addition to it's like you're on a ladder. From day one, I was on a ladder, felt like I was on a ladder. Often self imposed of, this is what it's supposed to look like. This is the path it's supposed to follow. So when you bring that and if it doesn't, guess whose fault that is. It's mine. So I'm the problem. But that's not in a responsible way. It's just a I'm the problem because I'm not doing a good enough job or they're reflecting poorly on me. So a lot of what I carried, which was still catastrophic in a lot of ways, was this toxic shame, which was the sense that I've got to try harder, do more. It just pushed you to push harder, to get louder, to get bigger, to get more stern, to get more aggressive. And I'm summarizing a lot of that. That's not all I was but when things weren't as I thought they ought to be, then that kind of monster would come out. Guilt is reserved for when I have failed my ethic, when I've failed my value system, when I've failed my moral code, when I've failed my conscience. And I've violated those things because I think, mark, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but those need different things. Like toxic shame needs one thing. Guilt needs forgiveness, period. I have wronged you. I have behaved in a way that's not consistent with my know, so so that needs forgiveness, which is one set of one experience, relationally, because I can't demand it. It can only be received. But toxic shame is a whole nother line of work that if I don't deal with that, then my kids will inherit it. I will hand that to them. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:42] Speaker C: Unpack it. Unpack it. [00:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:45] Speaker B: So toxic shame is I'm talking to the experts on this, but I've watched my kids and you've seen your kids come into the world fully expecting the world to accept them, love them, believe in them. I envy my children who'd come into a room and be like, I'm here. Of course you're happy to see me, and of course you love me, and of course you'll change my diaper. Of course you'll wipe my nose. You don't care if I'm snotty, dirty, stinky, smelly. You'll pick me up, swaddle me. You will move toward me in my most disgusting state. And so you see, kids do that. That's what we do naturally. That's how we're made in a secure, attached environment to show up. Like, guess what? I'm snotty and poopy and gassy. Aren't you? Yeah, actually, I am. I just hide it better than you do. I don't wear a diver anymore. That whole idea of if I don't so what do we do then? And I'm I'm using some easy, low hanging fruit here, but just for the point, what we start to do is you show up snotty and say, Clean your nose. Don't come in this room again until your nose is clean. Change your own diet. Hey, if you're going to do that or come in like that, wash yourself up. Don't come in here that way. So that is a way of shaming, right? So I pass on my own shame when I'm working with people or talking to people, coaching people, that toxic shame came from somewhere. Now there's a healthy side of that shame which embraces and is humble about, oh, yeah, this is what happens to humans. Yeah, this is a human experience. This isn't, man, why is my nose so runny? Why do I always have to do biological things like go to the bathroom? I got to figure out how to stop that. We jokingly. Say, like, okay, stop blinking. And so I try to tell you that, yeah, after a few minutes or seconds, you can't think about anything else but not doing this thing that your body is made to do. And so you could carry that all the way out to just common mistakes and missteps. So for Dads, like taking this back to Dads on this whole toxic shame thing, one of the most freeing things someone said to me was like, oh, yeah, you've never done that before. How would you have known? So even repeating that to my kids when they asked, it was like, I don't know. I've never had a 21 year old. I've never had an 18 year old. I've never had a 14 year old. Yeah, never had a seven year old. I've never seen this before. I never read this anywhere. So I do think the humility part and I'm talking too much. No, you're good. The humility part is when I am my healthy shame state, guess what I'll do? I'll ask for help. When I was in my toxic shame narrative for ten years, I didn't ask anybody for help. There's no way I was going to tell you. And as close as I'd gotten to Mo, there's still things I'd still hold back, because I was like, yeah, I can go here. But, dude, if he knows this, if I tell him this now, he's the safest person on the planet. But not knowing how much people are different and how safe people are and what they can handle or can handle, so we learn to hold on. But if I'm in my humble state and I say, man, I messed up. I yelled at my kid, I got angry. I slammed the door, I cursed. I called him a name, things that you're like now, that would put me in the guilt category for me, but when you don't know or don't have answers, don't know how to respond, when I'm in my humble shame state, I can say, who could I ask about this? Who could I talk through this with? What training is available? What coaching might I be able to find? Right? So it's a big deal. Guilt. [00:17:40] Speaker C: Let's talk about it. Yeah. [00:17:42] Speaker A: This is why you're really here. Talk about all the guilt. [00:17:45] Speaker B: I jokingly said before the episode, I was like, so how did you all land on me for the guilt episode? Guilt. When I have violated that code of conduct, my values framework, which another challenge for all of us. I don't think many of us go through the exercise or take the time to define what we value, like what's aspirational and what's actual do we name that value and then define that value and then tell people this is what it's like if you experience it. So that's maybe a whole nother train of thought. But when I violate those things and I treat somebody in a way that is not consistent with what I say I value or honor, then what do I do? [00:18:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:33] Speaker B: And I think this is such a beautiful it's such a beautiful relational process. When I'm in a healthy state of shame and I tell anybody I'm in relationship with, the longer you're in relationship with, the more likely it is I'm going to hurt you. Right. I will hurt you. There's a difference in hurt and harm. Harm is that more kind of abusive, whereas hurt is a natural occurrence in the midst of relationship. But if I hurt you, then the proper response is to ask for forgiveness more than an apology. I'm sorry to be sorrowful over your behavior is good. It's a good first step towards asking for forgiveness. To ask for forgiveness is a much more humble, heart posture. So when I live in toxic guilt, which I think is probably a little bit what we're talking about, this chronic state of a sense of I'm guilty all the time, toxic guilt is basically I need to self punish, self flagellate. Like, I need to punish myself repetitively because I haven't been able to receive forgiveness that's been offered. Yeah. So there's a major hang up, right? If you've offered forgiveness, and we all know people in our lives that maybe are still apologizing for things, and maybe you're still apologizing, man, that time I'm still so sorry. I was still so sad about that. It's like, man, I forgave you. So that's not about you. It's about how open am I to receiving that forgiveness? So part of the question for us is, have I asked for it? Because a lot of times that's a very courageous, vulnerable thing to do. Yeah, I wronged you. I don't like how I handled that. It's not aligned with how I want to be. It hurt our relationship, fractured it, whatever. I need your forgiveness, and I will wait for you to give it, to offer it. I can't demand it from you, which is a very uncomfortable my kids will oftentimes it's okay. It's okay. No, it's not. It's not okay. And if you forgive me, I'll receive it and appreciate it. But just to the audience of like, are you carrying around guilt and still punishing yourself for something for which you have been forgiven? It's a great exercise. Make a list of the things that you are still guilty. Guilt is a great emotion because then you can actually experience the freedom of being forgiven. So it's a lot to unpack. Can I add a add dude? So another component of this that I think is really important, that I think needs to be on the table is where grief fits into this. A lot of times what I experience when I am feeling this sense of toxic, chronic guilt, I've failed, I've missed it. I didn't do enough or I did too much of the wrong thing. It's really grief. Just beneath the surface of that grief is this honoring emotion. Because as parents, as dads, we're losing all the time. There are losses every which way. As kids get more independent, as they make decisions we don't have control over, as they move toward other people in relationship, there's just little losses, and losses are normal. That's good. Anything you say yes to, you're saying something, no to something else. There's always a loss. So I think we also have to really contend with and do business with what are we grieving? Because when we're in denial of our grief, then something has to be blamed. So then I need to blame myself. I villainize myself. I villainize them. You moved away, you talked to them, you went there, you did this, you did that. You didn't do what X, Y, or Z or I didn't do this, it's my fault. Versus going, oh, man, it's really sad. I can't protect them. I can't help them. They didn't ask. If only they had asked. If only they had known. Whatever it could be the appropriate response to all that is just like, oh, that's so sad as a dad upset, all that yes, this morning. It's every day. [00:23:02] Speaker C: It is. [00:23:03] Speaker B: And that doesn't make you pitiful. That makes you human. It also means that you've attached well, that you cared. Well, that's the thing. The only way to not be sad is to not care, to become apathetic, which is another problem altogether, which we try. [00:23:20] Speaker A: I've tried so much easier. I'm kidding. For me, I don't think I realized until kind of going through this process of learning more about myself. I don't think I realized how deep of a separation I was keeping between people that I loved the most and my true self, who I really was. Because if I don't care as much, if I don't allow them in as much, then it doesn't hurt as much, right? When there is sadness and hardship. But we're living in a world, and so we're going to have hardship, we're going to have sadness, we're going to have heartbreak and have things said that will hurt us and things that we will take the blame for that are not ours to take blame for. And like you were just talking about, especially with kids as they get older, my brother recently just had a baby, and so we were with them. And holding the baby is the best, especially when it's not your baby. You're just holding baby and just enjoying that peacefulness and that quietness. They're not calling you names. They're not disappointing you yet. So we were just joking about how you go from physical parenting where you are just meeting needs physically, and it is exhausting. You're doing that all the time. That transition happens to more emotional parenting where kids are getting dressed by themselves and usually going to sleep by themselves. There's not those same intensity of physical needs, but the emotional toll is gigantic. And that's when a lot of those tiny little emotional paper cuts are coming all the time. And what you're saying is really important. I think I have to remind myself, like Mo was saying on a daily basis, has to remind myself of what is guilt, what have I in some way filled my kids in, which are going to be numerous things every day, and then I need to kind of go and own with them and model that, taking responsibility. And then what are the things that I have absolutely no part in, that I just need to be able to grieve and be there with them in the sadness and not go in trying to strong arm fix everything. And so I think that was one of the key things for me in unpacking that guilt and shame within me was I had to be able to learn, and I'm still learning every day how to just be sad with our kids and not offer up. But don't worry about it. You know what? Let me tell you on the positive side. [00:25:45] Speaker B: And think about what you're modeling by doing so I described a little bit of my early development as basically what I didn't realize I was doing was trying to escape my own humanity. I needed to become superhuman. Part of what we're modeling is just how to be human. What I want for my kids is the freedom to be comfortable in their humanity, in the sense that you can't be more than that. So the emotional responses are very appropriate. You're not knowing your sense of I made a mistake. Your sense of I've done something wrong. Yeah, that's so human. That makes sense. Versus what I tended to do is react to it in a more controlling way of trying to get a different result. Protecting themselves or protecting me. [00:26:36] Speaker C: Yeah, which is so ironic, right? I mean, when you think about we're trying to control behavior, all right? It's behavior modification, right? But it's not the heart. [00:26:46] Speaker B: I can't even control mine. Like trying to control. [00:26:52] Speaker A: Mo. I mean, I wonder. You've obviously been teaching the agency classes in Memphis for a long, long time, and you get the same questions from the mean. If we're going to not pick on dads, but highlight dads, a lot of the same questions at the same time, are there some things that as we're talking about this, you think about those moments and classes that you've had of themes that continue to recur with dads. [00:27:17] Speaker C: Obviously it's interesting because, first of all, everything that I'll say pertains to me. But I was just with two of my kiddos over Thanksgiving break at a water park, and it was so interesting watching the difference between the moms in the water park with the kids and the dads, the amount of dads that were okay sitting in the hot tub while their kids were like, little kids, right? Who knows where going down, water slides. [00:27:53] Speaker A: The dead man's drop. [00:27:56] Speaker C: In the wave pool. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. But to me, it was such a picture of how dads just zone out emotionally on their kids. And then when their kid doesn't act the way they should, the amount of dads that were just so mad at their kids or yanking them here or doing this and it kind of was it was a little overwhelming. For me because I had not been in an environment. Because it's stressful, it's loud, hundreds of. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Kids, it's winter, and it's an indoor water park. [00:28:33] Speaker C: Granted, it was a lot. It was a lot. But I was just like, just be attuned, just be present with your kid. Just know what's happening. They're not a bad kid. They're overwhelmed, and you're not fully present with them. I think just hearing Shad talk was, again, we're human and there's work we need to do, and we're messy. And the beautifulness of guilt, like, so often we think guilt is this bad thing, right? But it moves us toward forgiveness. And I'm sorry, but interesting, I was on an elevator with the dad. I was thinking about guilt because I knew we were going to be talking today. And the dad was like, I'm sorry, but if you would have listened to me, you can't even go in with the sorry. You have to justify it. Every time I'm on here and we're talking about dads, it's like, man, you've got to do the work. Our kids need us to do the work. And the beautifulness about repairing, saying, I'm sorry, we know from the brain is that it actually rewires. So it is this beautifulness of us saying I'm sorry that releases dopamine and all those things to begin to allow emotional, spiritual, all those things, neurological development. [00:29:54] Speaker A: I would say. [00:29:55] Speaker C: Shad, the question we always get, like when I get up and share and I share. About my God's group and all that sort of stuff. We got listeners all over the country. We got dads that are we may have wives that are elbowing them saying, you need to do this. [00:30:10] Speaker B: What do they do? [00:30:11] Speaker C: That's always the million dollar. But where do I start as a man? Where do I begin this work? [00:30:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question, and I think as I answer that, I want to add one other reality of I mean, there's so many beautiful aspects of this, but that guilt leads me to asking for a legitimate need, which I think is another lost art of relationship and humanity. We don't know what we need. Men stereotypically have the tendency to minimize, deny our own neediness. One of the things that has been one of the most freeing pieces to surrender to is how needy I am. I'm just a very needy person. And in the past that would be so insulting, and now it's like, well, yeah, of course. And human beings are made to have needs and meet needs, but if I don't know what I'm needing, then I'm going to demand that everyone around me guess. And so I'm placing all this expectation on other people because I don't want to face the vulnerability of asking for it, whether that's forgiveness or just presence or time or attention, comfort, like legitimate needs. But I still need it nonetheless, right? I'm lying to myself and everybody else. Nobody's John Wayne but figuratively. So you all have needs, but then we resent people. So for men to just surrender over the fact that women are not more needy than men, like all these comparisons we make of men and women, most of them are so unfounded. Mostly the difference is agreeableness and aggressiveness. Everything else is relatively consistent across the bell curve and the gender. So you have the same needs your wife does. You're going to express it differently and more uniquely. So I think for men, just be aggressive about asking for help, even if you don't know what kind of help you need. So loneliness, if you feel any sense or twinge in your being that your connection with your kids or your wife is not what it ought to be, go ask for help. If you feel any twinge, that there's more and you don't know how to get it. And if you're trying to control your external environment and if you're more focused on changing everybody else and shuffling the deck with the people around you than you are of looking internally first and asking, here's a great question, two great questions I asked that are scary. One, what am I contributing to what I don't like? And two is asking people that you care about is, hey, what's it like to be in relationship with me and not respond defensively. I just say just, all right, what's it like for you to be in relationship with me and be prepared to receive that from people you trust that you believe aren't trying to hurt you or harm you, that they actually want more with you, but be aggressive. So, I mean, very practically, you've got counseling and therapists find out anybody locally, online that's so of much availability, ACA adult children of alcoholics dysfunctional families is a huge, free, powerful resource that dives into the depths of and people. I talked to somebody yesterday, they were like, my parents never drank. I said, it's not about the alcohol. The dysfunction of relationship and the lack of secure attachment. The traits of whether they drank or not are the same for people that grew up in dysfunctional homes and we didn't learn how to be secure in healthy relationship. And so anyway, those are some very immediate but even just finding Chip Dodd always said, 99.9% of the world does not care what happens to you. It's your job to go find the 0.1% that do a lot of us take on that victim mindset of men. Well, no community, they don't care. They didn't reach out. They didn't invite me. All this blame game, it's like, you go find them. Go find them. They are out there. Find them and tell them the truth about what's not okay with what's going on inside of you. Because of all the power, the freedom. We're all afraid that if I tell the truth to somebody that they're going to run from me. And what I've been learning is like, people yeah, stop vulnerability. [00:34:30] Speaker A: Well, even to bring it back to parenting and teaching our kids that no few parents ever walk into a dirty diaper and like, are you serious? You pooped in your diaper? [00:34:44] Speaker B: I mean, I probably did, but that was more about me than them. There were a few of those. [00:34:55] Speaker C: I got a call. [00:34:56] Speaker B: Can you handle this? [00:34:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't mean to up your back into your hair kind of blowout. If we would just remember the way that we love our kids. And the baby analogy is perfect because it typically is before you start to get to that point of insecurity taking over, there is something hardwired in us to we're okay taking care of a baby. Like if a baby crying, do I need to feed them? Great. Feed them. We'll feed them, take care of them. That same intensity of attentiveness, it changes because the needs change and morph a little bit, but has to stay there with our kids as they grow. Right. And so when there's a big behavior, we talk all the time about seeing the needs behind the behavior. Right. So when I have a preteen or a teen come in with the big behavior, which doesn't happen in our house very often, but for other people who do, when that happens and they come in with that big behavior, my gut reaction because I'm an imperfect human is going to be either to roll my eyes or to get frustrated or to try to match the intensity back. Like, don't come in the room that way. Like, hold on. Come in. You can talk to us. And if I remember, if they were coming in crying, I would typically melt immediately and say, hey, what do you need? So if I can begin to translate those things to see big behavior as a communication that they're not sure how to get across, it can help me to then go to them a little more softly and then say, hey, what do you need here? And to be secure in their needs too, even though those needs are being communicated sometimes in ways that are bigger than we're prepared for. Or one of the big shifts for me was when those big behaviors come, sometimes they're coming in ways that are ways that I would have been chastised for growing up, right, or that societally we would not be cool with now. And to be able to lean further into that, to accept that as an express need then is implicitly sending a message to them of and there isn't anything that's too big for them now. Inappropriate behavior is inappropriate behavior, and it needs to be dealt with, but it needs to be dealt with in the proper way. And if we know the brain science when that behavior is going on, logical brains shut down. So we got to get back to a place of restored relationship and then address those things. And so I think that has been a hard thing to remember in these seasons of preteens and teens, but something that, you know, this whole message is bringing us back to. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And what you're describing too, I think, the legitimate so John Townsend has a book called People Fuel that I really like because he took basically put human relational needs, these relational nutrients, into four quadrants. It's a great reference guide because if you were to ask me what I needed, I wouldn't have been able to describe it. But these quadrant, one needs of presence. What you're describing is acceptance of I accept you without judgment as you are. Our relationship is not at risk, right? So the behavior is not going to threaten our relational connection. Now, it may break trust. It will have an impact and consequences naturally that have to be restored or rebuilt, but the relationship is not at stake. And so being able to offer that now for me to be able to offer that has demanded that I go back into my own story, the more in denial I was of my own. So if I'm committed to becoming more than human, then guess what I have to do? I have to lie and minimize my humanity. I have to brush over and minimize the things that hurt me, impacted me, the losses, the breakups, the pitfalls, the failures, the sin, whatever. And I've got to minimize, massage, create some narrative when I can go in eyes wide open back into that story, then I am far more capable still not as much as I want to be, but far more capable to be present and available. But you can't teach somebody. It's not something you can just cognitively learn. You've got to go be present with yourself. [00:39:13] Speaker C: And it's not a one time or a six week course or it's an. [00:39:18] Speaker B: Ongoing takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Yeah. [00:39:22] Speaker C: And even I know we've talked about babies and diapers and all that, but parenting there's this notion that at 18 we launch them out and we're done. Right? [00:39:39] Speaker B: Who gave us that idea? [00:39:40] Speaker C: That is a bad idea. [00:39:42] Speaker B: Maybe if they. [00:39:46] Speaker C: My encouragement to dad is like, man, just do the work quicker, sooner rather than later. Your kids, your wife, your friends, they need you to be fully present. And we always say that trauma. It has interest and you can work on it now or you can work on it later and that's great, but there's going to be interest later. And unfortunately it affects our kiddos. And so I just say for the sake of your kiddos and you're right, do the work now as dad and I are navigating young adults, launching out all the things. [00:40:33] Speaker B: We'Re still dads and needing that care. Because I think this is other part of the narrative. For those of you who may find yourself resisting this, needing that type of care, support is not an indictment on you. It doesn't mean you're failing. If it's not hard, it means you're probably not trying. So if it's hard and you're failing good, at least you're trying. Needing help doesn't mean that you've and in our occupations and careers, we don't necessarily turn our nose up at getting trained or developed or educated. But for some reason in some of this interior space of the heart and of relationship we look down on that often, I think. It doesn't indict you. It doesn't mean you've failed. It means you're normal and human and it's really hard. These are wild waters to navigate as parents. Can I add one other thought too? I think the other idea that is really important for us as we think about our and view our parenting through a particular lens is thinking about longing. Longing or craving is such an interesting word of this idea. There's a part of you that longs for things to be how they ought to be or maybe were originally intended to be and they never will be this side of eternity. And so the other thing I have to accept and surrender to is that when things happen that don't align with my longing my longing for a place that I call home where everything works the way it ought to be where I'm appreciated. Probably more desire to be worshipped where I'm appreciated for what I've done. And only the good is seen in me. And my kids respond lovingly. And my wife is so proud of me, which she is. But I long for this place called home where everything just works. And so when I try so some of the pressure when I try to make heaven on earth, so to speak, and I try to bring home here instead of move toward home, I create a lot of problems and know, generally create things for which I'm guilty versus the expression again from Chip of Life on life's terms that when bad things, hard things, challenging things happen, it doesn't always have to be somebody's fault. It's not your failure. It's like, oh, yeah, of course that broke. Of course that failed. Of course a guy this morning, transmission went on his car. All sorts of things happen. So your longings are great because they point towards your hope, but just make sure you recognize that that's what they are. They're longings. They're not entitlements to the here and now. [00:43:22] Speaker A: That's really good. It's great. That might be the place we need to settle on land. It yeah. All right, Shad. Thank you. [00:43:30] Speaker B: Thank y'all. Love being with you guys. Let's do it again. [00:43:33] Speaker A: Let's do it. So that was our conversation with Shad and with Mo. And just really appreciate both them joining us today and just thankful for Shad's friendship and all that he shared today. So you can check the show notes for more information on him and the work of cardia and all the stuff they've got going on. We can also would love for you to know that all of our episodes now are on YouTube, both for our Tuesday show, which is the Empowered Technique Podcast, and as well as our Friday show, Carpool Q A. You can find them all on YouTube, as well as hundreds of hours of resources from Dr. Karen Purvis and our team with teaching on any variety of topics you could ever want to find. You can also find all of our episodes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And so with all that said, for Mo, for Shad, for everybody here at Etc. For Kyle Wright, who edits and engineers all of our audio, for Tad Hewitt, the creator of the music behind the Empowered to Connect podcast, I'm JD. Wilson, and we'll see you next week on The Empowered to Connect podcast.