June 4, 2024 • 44 mins
Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids
Episode Number: #23
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon discusses the importance of raising emotionally intelligent kids. Jon shares personal insights and practical steps on how parents can foster emotional intelligence in their children. Jon also opens up about his recent break from podcasting, the challenges he faced, and how taking time for self-care has impacted his parenting.
Timestamps:
- 00:00 - Introduction and Jon's return to podcasting
- 00:34 - Focus on topical episodes and the importance of emotional intelligence
- 01:32 - Understanding and processing emotions
- 03:31 - Personal updates (Why I ghosted)
- 08:43 - Step 1: Recognizing and understanding emotions
- 17:56 - Step 2: Naming and labeling emotions
- 30:03 - Step 3: Expressing emotions in a healthy way
- 36:00 - Encouraging kids to express their emotions
Key Takeaways:
Jon's Three Step Process for kids
- Recognize Emotions: Check in with your body to identify physical signs of emotions.
- Name Emotions: Labeling emotions helps in processing and understanding them better.
- Express Emotions: Find healthy ways to express emotions, avoiding explosive outbursts.
Links to Resources Mentioned:
- Dr. Mark Brackett's work on emotional intelligence
- Whole Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
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Episode Transcript: The full transcript of this episode is available here.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to this episode of the whole parent
podcast.
It has been a long time since Ihave recorded an episode of
this podcast and I am so excitedto do that today with you,
wherever you are, wherever youare listening.
It's been a minute and I'lltalk about that in a moment, but
before I get to that, I want totell you what we're talking
about today, which is raisingemotionally intelligent kids.
(00:23):
We're talking all aboutemotional intelligence today.
It's a little bit of adifferent episode we are in.
Is this season two?
Does this count as season two?
It's been so long since I'vereleased an episode.
I feel like it should be a newseason, but we're not going to
make it season two because thatwill just massively confuse me.
But in these upcoming episodesI'm going to do a lot more with
(00:45):
talking about topical ideas.
I've gotten some reallypositive feedback when we've
done some topical things, and so, yes, we'll still do parent
questions on occasion.
Yes, I'll still have guestepisodes, but I really want to
focus in on some topicalepisodes, and this topic of
emotional intelligence andspecifically the importance of
emotions, is so central to methat in a book that I have
(01:10):
recently turned in the finaldraft of, or something close to
the final draft.
I don't exactly know thepublishing process so well that
at this point I know exactlywhat is the final draft or is
not, but what I assume to be.
Basically, the final draft hasan entire chapter devoted to the
concept of emotionalintelligence and fostering
(01:30):
positive emotions.
And before we even get intotalking about emotional
intelligence, the first thingthat I want to say to anyone who
is listening is that if youfind yourself to be a person who
struggles with emotions, I getit, I understand it.
I've worked with so manyparents for whom this is the
(01:51):
case If you find that sometimes,or if you are still under the
impression I hope you are not atthe end of this episode but if
you're still under theimpression that some emotions
are bad not that some emotionsare uncomfortable, that is true
absolutely but that someemotions are uncomfortable, that
is true Absolutely, but thatsome emotions should be avoided
at all costs I hope at the endof this episode you will no
(02:11):
longer feel that way, becausepeople who do not process
through, engage with, understandtheir own emotions become
people who are driven by theiremotions.
Somewhat paradoxical, but thisis what we're talking about
(02:43):
today, and why teachingemotional intelligence to kids
actually makes your job as aparent much easier In the short
term.
It may be more difficult thanjust shutting down your kids'
emotions.
We'll talk a little bit aboutwhy parents often default to
shutting down kids' emotionswhen those emotions feel
triggering to the parents, andwe can't get into all of that
today, but that's a big point inthis.
(03:04):
But what we first have to sayis that all emotions are
information, and so I'm going toreference a couple different
people throughout this episode,people who I would love to have
on this podcast, although Iguess I don't even know if one
of these people is still alive,but one of them I know is still
alive, and he's a person who I'mreally excited to try and bring
on the podcast at a future date, if I can get him, if anybody
(03:28):
has a contact, please send mesome information.
But before we do all of that, Ido want to give a little bit of
update on my life.
Basically, the last two months,I have taken a break from
everything whole parent related,except for the membership that
I run, and the reason why I havenot taken a break from the
(03:49):
membership is because that's myprimary commitment.
So if you are a member andyou're listening to this and
you're like, oh, but you'vestill showed up at group
coaching and you've still beenanswering questions and DMs and
you've been still responding tothings, yeah, of course, because
that's our paid community.
But to the general populationof, like Instagram, tiktok,
podcasting, podcast audience,all the amazing podcast
(04:11):
subscribers if you haven'tsubscribed to this podcast,
please do so and the email listI've taken basically a two month
break, with a couple ofexceptions, and the reason why I
chose to do that is basicallythreefold.
Number one there's somethingreally big going on in our life
that I'm not going to share onthis episode but that I will
share in a future episode.
So that's number one.
(04:32):
There's big stuff going on inour life and challenging things
going on in our life and becauseof that, that's been taking up
a lot of my energy and time.
Number two I never intended totake a break, but my mental
health and my just physicalexhaustion related to posting
constantly for basically twoyears caught up with me and all
(04:53):
of a sudden I realized you knowwhat I haven't posted in a week
and I feel great.
And for the next, thensubsequent like seven or eight
weeks I basically did a coupleof you know here are their posts
but otherwise didn't, and so itwasn't something I really
planned.
It was something that my bodytold me hey, this is what's
going on, this is what you needright now.
(05:15):
And then I listened to my bodyand that's a big part of why I'm
doing this episode as the firstone coming back is because part
of that is awareness.
A lot of people don't have thatawareness.
That's actually an awarenessthat I've had to build over time
.
That's not something that I,you know, innately had to like
know when that was happening.
And then the last aspect of ofthe break, or why I did the
(05:37):
break, is because I reallywanted to spend some time and I
didn't know that this was goingto be the time.
But then, when, the longer Iwent without creating content
and creating podcasts, the moreI realized I had the space to do
this, to plan break from allthings, whole parent, because I
still had deadlines with thebook and I spent countless hours
working diligently on that.
(05:57):
And so if you're excited forthat book coming out in well,
roughly, probably six months now, maybe seven months now then
you know it's a time well spentfor you.
(06:18):
And so that's the last twomonths.
If you've been like, oh, where'sthis guy been?
Why is it, you know, does henot just care about us anymore?
Does he not care aboutparenting anymore?
No, nothing can be further fromthe truth.
I did need to take some timefor me, absolutely.
I hope that you guys appreciateand respect that it allows me to
show up in big ways for you, inthe same way that if you're not
(06:40):
taking time to care for yourown mental health, your own
physical health, your ownemotional health, you're not
going to be able to show up foryour kids.
And I don't mean to soundpatronizing in this way, but you
can't pour into other people ifyou can't pour into yourself.
That's what I'm trying to saywith this.
And so, as just as much as youknow that to be true, I hope
that you'll appreciate thatthose of us who are creating in
(07:02):
this way need that space to dothat too, that those of us who
are creating in this way needthat space to do that too.
And so you know a couple ofdifferent reasons why, but I did
want to give you a heads up,because it's kind of weird to
just ghost, and maybe you didn'tnotice.
Maybe, like I, have this ideathat people are keeping tabs on
me and and wondering why I'm notposting it in reality, like you
don't have any clue and youdidn't even realize that.
And if that's the case, youknow, hey, I'm.
(07:24):
I'm glad that your life is notlived on the social media places
, wondering whether yourfavorite creator is going to
post today or not, or if I'myour favorite creator, or if any
creator is going to post todayor not.
Please don't do that.
And so it probably is a goodsign of your boundaries and
mental health that you're not.
But in this time I have gottento pour into my kids in an
(07:44):
incredible way, and that's whyit wasn't a four-week break, it
was an eight-week break, or aseven-week break is actually
because as I was doing it, I waslike, oh my gosh, I'm becoming
such a better parent.
Like sometimes helping peopleparent better makes me a worse
parent, not because I don'tthink about it I do it wrong,
but because I spend so much timethinking about and doing this
(08:06):
and on my phone that I'm notpresent with my kids as much as
I could be, and so I reallyappreciate the last couple of
weeks of just they've not been alot of soul searching, they've
just been a lot of fun with mykids and really appreciating
that.
So thank you for those who arelistening to this episode and
who didn't just like unsubscribeand tune me out because I was
gone for a minute, all right.
So we're talking aboutemotional intelligence today and
(08:32):
I'm going to try and do that ina not two hour episode.
I'm going to try and break thisdown into something that you
can take away in the next 15 or20 minutes here, not going on
and on and on forever because Icould talk about this forever.
Number one many of us and on andon forever because I could talk
about this forever.
Number one many of us wereconditioned by our parents,
whether consciously orunconsciously, whether they knew
they were doing it or not, tonot feel certain feelings.
(08:54):
We were conditioned to believethat having certain emotions and
having certain internal worldexperiences were worse than not
having them.
And if you grew up in areligious framework, this is all
the more the case.
And I'm not going to get intoreligion today.
(09:14):
I don't think that that'shelpful in general, but just
know that if you grew up in areligious framework and you're
saying, man, this is so true forme, and maybe your partner
didn't.
And your partner says, well, Idon't know, maybe it's kind of
true for me, that's not uncommon.
So, generally speaking, peoplewind up learning as children
(09:34):
that certain emotions are to besought after, not just because
they feel good and they're niceto have, but because their adult
caregivers tolerate and orcelebrate those positive
emotions, while other emotionsare just to be avoided, to be
ignored, to be repressed, andthe fruit of that becomes that
(09:56):
as adults, we often do not knowwhat we're experiencing.
And so if you want your childbecause ultimately this episode
is still talking about parenting, we're not just talking about
ourselves but if you want yourchild to be able to express
emotions in a robust way andname those emotions and
understand those emotions, whatwe're going to talk about is
(10:16):
being an emotions detective,which, by the way, comes from Dr
Mark Brackett, and he is theone who I'm trying to get on my
podcast.
So if you know him, please hitme up and let me know If you
have a contact so I can get MarkBrackett on my podcast, because
he has this concept of being anemotion scientist, what I call
being an emotion detective andthe idea behind this is that you
become a person who isscientific about your emotions,
(10:39):
not totally removed from the,that you don't feel them, but
that you're analytical aboutyour emotions.
You ask the question what aremy emotions trying to tell me?
And if you want to do that foryour kids, you have to first
begin by understanding that youprobably were conditioned to not
do that yourself, and even ifit wasn't your primary
caregivers who did that, it mayhave just been society.
Certainly, for men there is avery harmful cultural stigma
(11:02):
that men are not supposed to beemotional.
Sometimes there are certainexpressions of emotion that are
deemed societally okay ortolerable, but crying grief,
sadness, for men especially, isvery, very frowned upon
historically in what you mightcall toxic masculinity.
Even though that may be thecase, it's important to
(11:24):
understand that even if itwasn't your parents, many people
have been conditioned to notexperience emotions.
Similarly, women experiencethis in different ways.
Women are not supposed to beaggressive in any way or
assertive often and those areoutward expressions, often of
inward experiences, and thoseare often demonized you look
(11:47):
prettier with a smile, which isthis very harmful thing that
many people tell to not onlyadult women, but also young
girls, and so the idea that allemotions are valid or that, as I
say in my book, there are nobad feelings, that this is the
first aspect that you have tointernalize yourself.
And you have to internalizethis because if you don't
(12:07):
internalize it, you will not beable to teach it to your
children.
One of the other principleconcepts for my book is whatever
is modeled is mirrored, and soyour kids, the primary way that
they're going to learn to beemotions detectives, that
they're going to learn toexperience the broad range of
emotions and then express thosethings in healthy and not
destructive ways, are bywatching you do it.
(12:31):
And so the first thing that youhave to take away is that all
emotions have a place.
Unconvinced of that, up untilthis point in the episode, all
I'll say to that extent is whatwe know is that if you do not
(12:52):
process certain emotions, if youavoid, repress certain emotions
, that that repression is notbenign, it is not unharmful,
over time that will build up andit will come out in some way,
whether it comes out in somesort of explosive outburst or
whether it comes out in somesort of self-destructive
behavior or numbing thoseemotions that go unprocessed, do
(13:18):
not just go away because wedon't process them.
And so I'm not saying that youhave to lean into every single
sad feeling and make yourselfcry over everything, but if you
are purposefully ignoring andrepressing any emotion that you
deem to be undesirable,eventually that will have
(13:38):
consequences.
That bill will have to be paideventually, and the way in which
it will be paid is often wellout of your control.
And so if you're a person whodoesn't want to be seen or who
fears being seen as overlyemotional or out of control,
emotional or not actingrationally or logically,
(13:59):
understand that the mostirrational people, the most
illogical people, are the peoplewho don't express their
emotions in a healthy way andthen eventually express them in
an unhealthy way.
In other words, if you do notwork through your emotions,
they're going to work throughyou and you're not going to have
any control over that at all.
So, with that being the case,with the truth being that there
(14:22):
are no bad feelings, how can weeffectively help kids other than
just simply modeling emotionalintelligence and emotional
resilience and emotionalexpression to them?
How can we help them do it?
And I am going to offer you athree step method to helping
your kids process their emotionsand become more emotionally
(14:43):
intelligent.
All right, before we get intoemotional intelligence and the
three-step process, I want totake a really, really quick
break here, super, super short,to just say, if you haven't
subscribed to the podcast, ifyou haven't gotten email updates
I don't know if you knew this,but you can actually sign up for
email updates to this podcastwhere, when every single new
episode is released, there's anautomatic email that goes out to
(15:04):
people who are on that list.
Just let me know if you want toget on that.
If you're already on the emaillist, there'll be a link at the
bottom of the next email for youto join that email, the podcast
notification list.
If you haven't subscribed andif you haven't shared this with
a friend, please do that.
And the reason why I say thatis not just because I want the
podcast to get out and get tomore people so that we can have
a keep doing it and have apositive impact on the world.
(15:26):
I truly believe that there areprobably dozens of people in
your life who would greatlybenefit from listening to a
podcast like this, from hearingfrom the guests that we have on
this podcast, hearing some ofthe different ways in which we
process these things, to learnto process their own emotions.
In fact, if you have a youngadult in your life 20 years old,
18 years old, 30 years old evenwho doesn't even have kids, you
(15:50):
can share this episode withthem and say, hey, you know what
?
This is a show about parentingand you're not a parent yet.
Maybe this will be relevant toyou someday, but we're.
This is an episode aboutemotional processing and
labeling and becoming moreemotionally intelligent, and I
thought that you could bebenefit from that.
So if you have not done thatyet, please do that.
Subscribe, make sure thatyou're rating it and reviewing
(16:10):
it on whatever podcast platformyou're getting it on Apple
podcast, spotify, whatever I'llgive an update, hopefully in the
next episode, of whether Appleor Spotify is winning on reviews
.
You guys have been doing a goodjob of competing against each
other.
I don't think that we shouldmake our kids compete against
each other all the time,especially not siblings.
But, hey, members of the wholeparent nation, if you guys want
(16:31):
to compete against each otherand see who can get the most
reviews, then I think that'sfantastic, but I'll let you know
who's winning in the nextepisode of the podcast, but in
this episode, you know, get tojumpstart on that rate and
review If you haven't already.
Share this with a friend,whether they're a parent or not.
I really think that so manypeople would benefit from a
message like this.
All right, let's get back to theepisode.
All right?
(16:51):
So step one of becoming moreemotionally intelligent is to
recognize and understand youremotions.
So, with everything I'm goingto say here, I'm going to give
you an example of how you can dothat with yourself first, and
then how you can do this with achild, because if you can't do
(17:15):
it with yourself, it's going tobe incredibly hard for you to do
with your child.
In fact, I would say it'salmost impossible for a kid to
learn to be emotionallyintelligent when their parent is
insistent on remainingemotionally ignorant.
And at the very end of theepisode, I'm going to tell you
why emotional intelligence is soimportant.
I probably should have donethat at the beginning of the
episode, but yeah, first, firstepisode back, so you guys can
(17:38):
give me a little bit of a breakhere, okay, so recognizing and
understanding emotions the firststep to to understanding any
emotional expression is torecognize that you're having an
emotion.
A lot of times parents, when Italk about this, will kind of
like snarkily say oh yeah, Iknow when I'm having an emotion.
I don't think that that'salways true.
(18:00):
In fact, if you've ever comehome from a really hard day at
work and taken out yourfrustration on your partner,
that was the result.
I'm not saying that that's notnormal.
I'm not saying that everypartnership has experienced that
in some ways.
I'm not saying that you're abad person, but that is an
example of a person who has notrecognized their emotions.
(18:23):
So until you realize orrecognize that you are having an
emotion, that you areexperiencing emotions, you
cannot begin to process thoseemotions.
And so a lot of times thatlooks like just checking in with
yourself and trying to identifythe physical manifestations of
that emotion.
Do your shoulders feel tight?
(18:45):
Are you clenching your jaw?
Are your fists balled up tight?
Are you clenching your jaw?
Are your fists balled up?
Whatever the physicalmanifestations of your feelings
are, you have to recognize thosefirst.
This is why, when I counselpeople who are in deep grief
environments, say they lost achild or a parent or a partner,
(19:05):
one of the first things I tellthem is to begin to check in
with their body and how theirbody is responding to that grief
.
A lot of times people will bein shock.
They won't even realize whatthey're feeling.
They're feeling deep loss andgrief and despair even, but
their body knows it, so they'llget really tired or they will
not be able to sleep or theywill not be able to eat.
(19:25):
These are the physicalmanifestations.
Your body often knows what'sgoing on.
Your physical body will knowwhat's going on Even when your
neocortex, your prefrontalcortex, the part of your brain,
the logical part of your brainthat's trying to be consciously
aware of your environment andsurroundings and internal
feelings, is not aware.
And so if you feel that sinkingfeeling in the pit of your
(19:48):
stomach, I mean that's a reallyclassic one that most people can
learn to identify.
But there are so many others.
And so beginning to recognizelike, oh, I am having an emotion
, that's the first step fix forthis.
(20:10):
There are plenty of groundingexercises that you can use to
get your prefrontal cortex backonline and move through these
emotions and process themadequately and effectively.
But just the way to recognizeit is just do a body check.
So just start at your toes,start at your fingertips,
whatever works for you, start atyour head, start at your neck
and just work your way aroundyour body and feel how your
different bodily systems feel,check your pulse, check your
heart rate, check your differentbodily systems feel, check your
pulse, check your heart rate,check your breathing.
(20:33):
A lot of times, when we are inhigh stress environments, when
the emotions that we'reexperiencing are producing a
fight or flight response in us,whether or not we realize it,
we'll start to breatheunconsciously out of our mouths.
We'll stop breathing out of ournose, we'll stop breathing
slowly, our heart rate willincrease.
Those are the ways in which youcan check in with your body,
(20:55):
and even if you wear like alittle heart rate monitor, you
can just look is my heart rateelevated right now?
You know, there's simple stufflike that and you may not even
be aware that you're having anemotion, but oftentimes you are,
and so the first step inunderstanding, recognizing,
gaining emotional intelligenceis realizing that you are having
emotions all the time.
In fact, your emotionalprocessing center as a human
(21:16):
being works much faster thanyour logical brain, which means
that, basically, you're justgoing through the world, feeling
things and then rationalizingwhat you're feeling or creating,
justifying, in some cases, whatyou're feeling or creating,
justifying in some cases whatyou're feeling as a response.
And then the flip side to that,which could be part two.
Not only are you going torecognize I am having a feeling,
(21:37):
but then you're going to checkin with your body and say, okay,
which feeling am I having?
And that's going to take alittle bit of introspective
awareness.
So that's not only checking inwith your body in the moment.
It may be.
Looking back into the past Acouple minutes, what just
happened?
That coworker just came up andtold me something.
How did I experience that?
(21:57):
Oh, I just got this email fromthis person and I find the
thoughts, the sentence from thatemail, that was kind of a shot
at me.
It's just kind of bouncingaround in my head.
My partner just came home andsaid something kind of snarky
about how the house looks or how, or how I look or whatever.
Like how, how am I appreciateyou know, taking that in, I mean
(22:17):
, I, I'm having an emotion, I'mhaving feelings.
Okay, what feelings are they?
It is very hard, especially withthose very disorienting
feelings that send us into ourfight or flight response, to be
able to check in in the momentand say what is this coming from
?
And sometimes it can be comingfrom things that that happened a
long time ago.
I had a pretty disorientingearly may that that was part of
(22:42):
my taking time off.
One of the things that kind ofspurred that on late April,
early May, was that in early Mayis the anniversary of when my
best friend from my childhoodcommitted suicide, and so that
time of year, even though it'snot something that happens in
the moment, is experienced in mybody and I will have emotions
of grief and loss and I'll haveto understand those emotions.
(23:03):
And oftentimes I will notrealize that those emotions are
associated to something thathappened years ago, but
something in the weather.
Realize that those emotions areassociated to something that
happened years ago, butsomething in the weather,
something in the time or season,something in my subconscious
recognizes the time of year andI have those emotions and so I
have to realize that.
But I often can't understandthose feelings in the moment.
But first we have to recognize.
(23:24):
You don't have to be able tovery specifically name it and
label it yet, because that'sstep two.
Before we get there, let's talkabout how we can do this with
kids, so with a kid, instead ofhaving them identify when
they're having an emotion, whichcan be a very, very difficult
thing for a child to do.
We are going to be the ones whosay oh, I see that your face
(23:47):
looks really mad right now.
Oh, I see that you're crying.
Are you sad?
Oh, I see that, and actually Iasked that as a form of a
question.
You want to try and avoidasking open-ended questions, but
you can kind of ask more closedquestions like that.
But oh, I see that you're kindof tense.
Are you feeling a littlefrustrated right now?
You're, you know, kind of tense.
(24:07):
Are you feeling a littlefrustrated right now?
And you know, the thing is weactually can see the things that
happen to our kids, oftentimes,not all the time.
You know your kid might be atschool or something.
You might not know what theimpetus for that frustration is,
but kids, kids can be kind ofopen books if we're willing to
see them.
And a lot of parents struggleto do that and I understand that
(24:27):
, like we're not with our kidsall the time and kids can kind
of be closed off, especiallyolder kids middle school, late
grade school, high school but ifwe're pretty attentive and if
we can kind of put our cellphone down, which I know.
I know I'm not trying tocriticize anybody's parenting.
I understand I the last twomonths I've spent a lot of time
away from my phone, but even injust the last week or so,
(24:48):
getting back in whole parent, Ifound myself on my phone more
with my kids.
It's harder to process with themand check in with them.
I know that's just true for theage and generation that we live
in.
But the more we can beattentive to that, the more we
can see the emotions that ourkids are having.
And then the much easier casesare the ones where we know what
happened.
And so when we see that ourkid's tower just got knocked
(25:10):
over and they're reallyfrustrated about it, or our
kid's ice cream fell on thesidewalk and they're very sad
about it, or we say no togetting that toy at the grocery
store that our kid really wantsand we know that they're going
to be disappointed about it, wecan actually say like, oh, I see
that in your body, this is whatyou're experiencing.
And kids sometimes push backand say no, I'm not, and that's
(25:31):
okay, you don't have to.
Yes, you are, and create apower struggle out of nothing
but just drawing their consciousawareness to the ways and the
actions of that their body isgoing through can be extremely
helpful.
So instead of asking them to dothat in the short term, we're
going to do that Now.
If you want a way to help yourkids recognize their emotions,
(25:53):
the other way that you can dothat is you can go through this
three-step process after theemotion is passed, with your
kids, and this is the thing thatwe're going to talk about.
Kind of another piece of all ofthis is that you can always
process later, and in fact it'sway more solidifying,
educational with your kid whenyou do that, so you can
(26:14):
recognize it in the moment.
I can see that your fists areballed up and your face is kind
of scrunched up and you lookvery frustrated.
You can start to do that in thefirst part and then an hour
later, two hours later, even thenext day.
Kids have pretty good memories,at least in the short term.
They can usually remember whathappened yesterday pretty well,
(26:34):
even young kids and people don'tthink that, but that's true.
If you're willing to engage akid at their level, they can
remember usually, and so I havea kid that goes to my church.
He knows every single logo ofevery single car.
This kid's not even four yearsold and he can name every single
(26:57):
car logo.
Right, my own kids have crazythings.
My, my son, my oldest, at twoyears old, could name every
single dinosaur, likeAnkylosaurus.
You know Pachycephalosaurus,like, he knew the entire name.
He knew like what they werelike, he knew what they sounded
like.
According to some YouTube video, they can do that.
You know the kids.
Kids know every character.
You know my, my four-year-old.
Some of the first things thathe ever told me about are like
his creative prophecies, right,like that.
That.
That can be.
(27:17):
Kids have incredible memories,if, if we allow them and focus
in so we can process later to doyou remember yesterday when you
were tense, when your body gotall you know tight, when your
body got all tight, when yourfists balled up and when you
wanted to hit right?
We can say those things in thelooking back in the future and
those can help our child tolearn to recognize emotions,
(27:39):
which again is the first step toemotional intelligence
recognizing.
Now that we've done that, thenext aspect or the next piece of
this is to name those emotionsand the way that Mark Brackett
says this at the Center forEmotional Intelligence, is
called labeling.
The way that Dan and Tina saythis in Whole Brain Child is
name it, to tame it.
And the idea is that when weput our physical feelings into
(28:06):
words we actually process thosewith our whole brain.
That's why their book is calledthe Whole Brain Child.
That's my favorite parentingbook, if you didn't know and
Tina was the last episode thatwe had before I took the break,
but in that episode we didn'treally talk about this.
But their first book that theywrote 12, 13 years ago whatever
(28:26):
that book, the Whole Brain Childwas around this concept that
you can actually connect kids'whole brains, that the brain can
kind of be fragmented we talkabout this a lot in the podcast
with the limbic system and theneocortex or the prefrontal
cortex interfacing.
You know your emotional centerversus your logical center, but
also you have your left andright brain and you have kind of
the part of your brain thatputs things into language and
(28:48):
the part of your brain that'sjust kind of abstractly feeling
and that through that process ofreintegration, that loop of
connecting the feelings to words, for those feelings that can
become incredibly powerful.
And we know from therapy andfrom years of research into
therapy, that the ability to putthings into language transforms
(29:12):
the way the brain manages thoseemotions.
This is why some of the primaryways in which you process
trauma with a person, whattherapists do, what counselors
do, is they get people to tellthe story of that experience,
including naming and labelingthe emotions that are felt
during that traumatic experience, and that actually allows them
to move through it.
Well, on a much smaller scale,if you're going to be in control
(29:35):
of your own emotions and ifyou're going to teach your child
to be in control not to notfeel, but to be in control of
and express that's where we'regoing with step three, in a
respectful and controlled waytheir experiences of emotions
they have to first be able tolabel them so that they don't
become blowups, and so labelingor name it to tame it again, as
(29:58):
Dan and Tina say in Whole BrainChild, is this process by which
we actually put words to thoseemotions.
Well, john, why is thatdifficult?
That shouldn't be difficult.
No, I'm frustrated right now.
Well, it is difficult becausemost people's emotional IQ, or
emotional or EI, emotionalintelligence, as Dan Gold, or is
it Dan Goldman yeah, danGoldman who came up with a lot
(30:21):
of the emotional intelligencestuff in the 90s.
As he says, a lot of peoplereally have a very small
emotional vocabulary.
And then Brene Brown studiedthis in Atlas of the Heart,
which is her book, where it'slike an atlas of emotions and
she goes through labeling all ofthese different emotions that
people experience and givinganecdotes about it.
It's a great book, not aboutparenting, but just about life.
(30:43):
And in Atlas of the Heart shedoes some research where she
realizes that most adults canonly name a handful of emotions,
and so the reason why labelingcan be so difficult for many of
us is because we don't even havean emotional vocabulary where
we know what a feeling is andputting it to words.
Now, if somebody else expressesto us a feeling in words I was
disgusted or I was jealous orwhatever we usually know what
(31:07):
that means.
We're not unintelligent peoplewho don't know what words mean,
but very often adults will notknow what jealousy feels like in
their body so that they mightbe able to label that, and so
things usually just get lumpedinto I'm happy, I'm sad, or I'm
angry, I'm mad, and or I'mafraid Right, and sometimes
(31:29):
afraid isn't even in there, it'sjust mad right, like sometimes
when I get afraid it feels likeanger, because it's only
recently that I've been able tostart to label emotions
effectively through therapy,through journaling, and so the
process to learning how to labelyour emotions is actually
pretty pretty much harder thanyou might think it is going to
(31:49):
be.
And my, my hack for that iseither, number one, you can go
to therapy with with a therapistwho's going to walk you through
the emotion labeling process,or you can go and just get
yourself a pen and paper orwrite in your notes app on your
phone and just write out aconscious stream of your
experience and thoughts, becauseoftentimes putting things down
(32:10):
into words, whether that's inthe context of a trusted
therapeutic relationship, whichI also should say could be with
a trusted friend.
And I'll tell you from personalexperience I've had a therapist
, I have several friends who aretrusted emotional processors
who I can kind of word, vomit myfeelings onto and try and make
sense of them.
Even though I am a verbalprocessor and I am an auditory
(32:30):
learner, I learn things best byhearing them, even though I am
obviously a very talkativeperson.
I have a podcast where I justtalk to myself, for sometimes,
you know an hour.
Even though those things can betrue, putting it down on paper
is by far the most effectiveform that I've ever experienced.
And I'll go so far as to say Idon't know a single adult,
(32:51):
certainly children.
There are children who for whomthis is not effective because
of developmental level.
I don't know a single adult forwhom, when they really invest
in the journaling process, thisdoes not become their best way
of processing emotions, say, forexample, hey, you really need
(33:16):
some skills development aroundlabeling of emotions.
But once that therapistcolleague, whomever, builds that
repertoire and language,oftentimes it's through
journaling that the most goodwork can be done.
And I'll give you a window intome.
This is very kind of intimatepersonal detail, but I actually
have scaled down my therapy,where I don't go to therapy as
much anymore.
I journal more, because I'vefound that if I replace the time
(33:39):
that I was in therapy, whichwas like every other week, with
a journal, a prolongedjournaling session, my mental
health as a whole is better andmy therapy sessions that are
less frequent wind up being morefulfilling and more helpful too
, because I'm not just coming upwith stuff to bring to my guy,
who's also a Dr Dan.
I've talked to three Dr Dans onthis episode, which is funny.
(34:01):
Anyway, all of this to say,journaling is one of the really,
really amazing hacks, and youcan teach your child to do that.
Oftentimes, with a child, itmight be easier to draw out
their emotions, to draw out whatit feels like to be angry or
disappointed, but those are thetypes of kind of secondary,
complex emotions that you wantyour child to be able to label
(34:23):
and that you want to be able tolabel yourself, because once you
can put words to those things,then they can become.
You gain so much power overthem.
Our brain doesn't exclusivelyprocess through words, but does
a great amount of its processingthrough storytelling and images
and words, and so maybe it'spainting out your feelings, if
you're a particularly visualperson.
(34:45):
But those processes by whichyou can label your emotions, put
words to what you're feeling,become incredibly profound
experiences.
And so that's step two.
If step one is to recognize,step two is to really understand
by putting a label on thatemotion, and then step three and
this is really important is toexpress that feeling.
(35:08):
And so how do we express thatfeeling?
That can look a whole lot ofdifferent ways for a whole lot
of different people and I'm notgoing to tell you how to express
your feelings.
What I am going to say is that,with you and your child,
expressing your feelings isdifferent than letting your
feelings completely pour out ofyou and run you.
If you're getting to the pointwhere your feelings are
(35:28):
overwhelming you and blastingout of you and you're hurting
people and breaking things,you're doing things that you
regret later.
You put your hand through thedrywall or something like.
We got it.
We got to get back to step onerecognize and label before we
get to that point and sometimeswalk away.
Part of recognizing andlabeling is knowing when you've
(35:50):
had enough and you got to stepback right.
This is an important part ofparenting, but understanding
that recognizing and labelingare one and two.
Now we're going to go on toexpression.
Expression can look a lot ofdifferent ways.
Expressing looks likecontrolled expression.
So it looks like I'm going togo to the gym and I'm going to
work out.
It looks like you know I needto go for a walk after work.
(36:12):
It can look like processingwith your partner hey, you know
I need to go for a walk afterwork.
It can look like processingwith your partner.
Hey, you know I'm feeling allthese things.
I've done all this journalingand now you know I don't know
what to do.
But can you help me to come toa conclusion?
It can look like confrontation,going to a person and saying
you've wronged me.
You know, this hurt.
I didn't like that.
Those can be good things.
That can look like crying right, we, we should cry.
(36:36):
If you're a person who findsthat you can never cry, let we
got to talk about that.
Right, we got to figure thatout.
What's that coming from?
Feel like you're not allowed to, or where's that?
You know, if you can't cry at asad movie, that's one thing.
If you can't cry when you loseyour, lose a parent, or lose a
best friend, or lose a belovedpet, then like, then, then we
got to, we got to figure out why.
(36:56):
That is what's going on there,cause there are no bad feelings
and so expression's going tolook a lot of different ways.
But understand this it's not anoutpouring, it's not a bubbling
up, it's not an explosion, it's,it's a, it's a very thoughtful
way of going out and seeking theappropriate outlet for that now
(37:16):
recognized and labeled emotion.
And this is where we get into.
Hey, if you find yourselfconstantly getting to that
explosive level of like it justbuilds up and builds up, and
builds up and builds up and youcan't take, you can't do any
more.
And so then you just drinkyourself to sleep.
Or you can't do any more and soyou binge watch Netflix, not
one time, but every night, for amonth.
(37:38):
Right, you can't take anymore.
You exploding, your partnerexploding your boss, or you
drive 115 miles an hour down the, down the highway.
Those are are ways in which wecan see already we haven't
recognized, we haven't labeled.
We have to do more work aroundthat, because those are not
expressions, those areexplosions.
So those are your three-stepprocesses and with your kids,
(37:59):
with this last one, the key hereis to give options.
Hey, are you so mad right now?
Yes, I'm so mad.
How about you stomp your feet?
That's a good one.
How about you rip up some paper?
How about you draw a picture?
How about you go run as fast asyou can?
Right?
Mr Rogers has a song about this.
You know, I'm, I can stop, stop.
Stop when I'm mad.
(38:19):
Because he's, because it'sabout expression, I can go out,
I think.
In his song he says like I cango gather a few friends to play
a game of tag, right?
Maybe that's what you need todo.
That's what I do with my kidsSometimes.
When I'm beat, I just need torun with my kids.
That's not an explosion.
I'm not throwing them around,I'm not hurting them, right, I'm
(38:39):
playing with them.
But I'm playing hard.
And the reason I'm playing hardwithin reason is because I need
that outlet.
And so, again, this is the wayin which we can walk our kids
through.
Hey, what do you want to dowhen you're upset?
Do you want to cry?
That's okay, crying is okay.
I will say if you don't know howto do all this stuff, you are
never going to be able to beempathetic.
(38:59):
And that is, in my experienceof counseling couples, the
biggest predictor of a couple'ssuccess.
People say communication.
Sure, that's true, but reallyit's empathetic communication,
it's empathy.
Can you perspective take foryour partner?
If you can, you're going tohave a successful relationship.
Personality has almost nothingto do with it.
In my experience, there arepersonalities that make it
(39:20):
easier for a couple to last ornot.
Shared interests that can makeit easier or not.
Job, healthy work-life balancecan make it easier or not.
But empathetic communicationrises above A person who is
truly able to take theperspective, in other words,
outside of experiences of abuseor profound mental illness,
(39:43):
which may make it impossible forboth partners to do that
effectively.
When you have two partners whoare both able to empathetically
communicate, that's the greatestpredictor of lifelong
compatibility.
And so empathetic communicationis massively important, not
only for your child's long-termrelational success, not only for
your long-term relationshipwith your child, not only for
(40:03):
your child's long-term business,entrepreneurial, career success
.
Basically, in every aspect oflife, emotional intelligence is
going to lead to positiveoutcomes for you and your child.
So don't remain emotionallyignorant.
Take all the things that we'vebeen saying here.
Take this three-step process.
You can learn more about it.
I'm sure you can Google it,read some good books about it.
(40:24):
Take this three-step processand begin at very least doing
these three steps with your kids, and I promise you the result
is going to be profound.
All right, that's all we havefor you, or I have for you.
It was no.
We today, just me on thisepisode of the whole parent
podcast, all about emotionalintelligence and teaching your
kids emotional intelligence.
If you want to know more aboutthis, I do have an upcoming book
(40:46):
, if you're not on my email listyet, please be on that email
list.
I talk about this extensivelyin the book, as well as a lot of
other amazing things.
I talk about this extensivelyin the book, as well as a lot of
other amazing things, so thatbook will be available at some
point in the next six to eightmonths and, yeah, until then,
this has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
Thank you so much for listening, and I am glad that we are back
(41:09):
.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the whole parent
podcast.
It has been a long time since Ihave recorded an episode of
this podcast and I am so excitedto do that today with you,
wherever you are, wherever youare listening.
It's been a minute and I'lltalk about that in a moment, but
before I get to that, I want totell you what we're talking
about today, which is raisingemotionally intelligent kids.
(00:23):
We're talking all aboutemotional intelligence today.
It's a little bit of adifferent episode we are in.
Is this season two?
Does this count as season two?
It's been so long since I'vereleased an episode.
I feel like it should be a newseason, but we're not going to
make it season two because thatwill just massively confuse me.
But in these upcoming episodesI'm going to do a lot more with
(00:45):
talking about topical ideas.
I've gotten some reallypositive feedback when we've
done some topical things, and so, yes, we'll still do parent
questions on occasion.
Yes, I'll still have guestepisodes, but I really want to
focus in on some topicalepisodes, and this topic of
emotional intelligence andspecifically the importance of
emotions, is so central to methat in a book that I have
(01:10):
recently turned in the finaldraft of, or something close to
the final draft.
I don't exactly know thepublishing process so well that
at this point I know exactlywhat is the final draft or is
not, but what I assume to be.
Basically, the final draft hasan entire chapter devoted to the
concept of emotionalintelligence and fostering
(01:30):
positive emotions.
And before we even get intotalking about emotional
intelligence, the first thingthat I want to say to anyone who
is listening is that if youfind yourself to be a person who
struggles with emotions, I getit, I understand it.
I've worked with so manyparents for whom this is the
(01:51):
case If you find that sometimes,or if you are still under the
impression I hope you are not atthe end of this episode but if
you're still under theimpression that some emotions
are bad not that some emotionsare uncomfortable, that is true
absolutely but that someemotions are uncomfortable, that
is true Absolutely, but thatsome emotions should be avoided
at all costs I hope at the endof this episode you will no
(02:11):
longer feel that way, becausepeople who do not process
through, engage with, understandtheir own emotions become
people who are driven by theiremotions.
Somewhat paradoxical, but thisis what we're talking about
(02:43):
today, and why teachingemotional intelligence to kids
actually makes your job as aparent much easier In the short
term.
It may be more difficult thanjust shutting down your kids'
emotions.
We'll talk a little bit aboutwhy parents often default to
shutting down kids' emotionswhen those emotions feel
triggering to the parents, andwe can't get into all of that
today, but that's a big point inthis.
(03:04):
But what we first have to sayis that all emotions are
information, and so I'm going toreference a couple different
people throughout this episode,people who I would love to have
on this podcast, although Iguess I don't even know if one
of these people is still alive,but one of them I know is still
alive, and he's a person who I'mreally excited to try and bring
on the podcast at a future date, if I can get him, if anybody
(03:28):
has a contact, please send mesome information.
But before we do all of that, Ido want to give a little bit of
update on my life.
Basically, the last two months,I have taken a break from
everything whole parent related,except for the membership that
I run, and the reason why I havenot taken a break from the
(03:49):
membership is because that's myprimary commitment.
So if you are a member andyou're listening to this and
you're like, oh, but you'vestill showed up at group
coaching and you've still beenanswering questions and DMs and
you've been still responding tothings, yeah, of course, because
that's our paid community.
But to the general populationof, like Instagram, tiktok,
podcasting, podcast audience,all the amazing podcast
(04:11):
subscribers if you haven'tsubscribed to this podcast,
please do so and the email listI've taken basically a two month
break, with a couple ofexceptions, and the reason why I
chose to do that is basicallythreefold.
Number one there's somethingreally big going on in our life
that I'm not going to share onthis episode but that I will
share in a future episode.
So that's number one.
(04:32):
There's big stuff going on inour life and challenging things
going on in our life and becauseof that, that's been taking up
a lot of my energy and time.
Number two I never intended totake a break, but my mental
health and my just physicalexhaustion related to posting
constantly for basically twoyears caught up with me and all
(04:53):
of a sudden I realized you knowwhat I haven't posted in a week
and I feel great.
And for the next, thensubsequent like seven or eight
weeks I basically did a coupleof you know here are their posts
but otherwise didn't, and so itwasn't something I really
planned.
It was something that my bodytold me hey, this is what's
going on, this is what you needright now.
(05:15):
And then I listened to my bodyand that's a big part of why I'm
doing this episode as the firstone coming back is because part
of that is awareness.
A lot of people don't have thatawareness.
That's actually an awarenessthat I've had to build over time
.
That's not something that I,you know, innately had to like
know when that was happening.
And then the last aspect of ofthe break, or why I did the
(05:37):
break, is because I reallywanted to spend some time and I
didn't know that this was goingto be the time.
But then, when, the longer Iwent without creating content
and creating podcasts, the moreI realized I had the space to do
this, to plan break from allthings, whole parent, because I
still had deadlines with thebook and I spent countless hours
working diligently on that.
(05:57):
And so if you're excited forthat book coming out in well,
roughly, probably six months now, maybe seven months now then
you know it's a time well spentfor you.
(06:18):
And so that's the last twomonths.
If you've been like, oh, where'sthis guy been?
Why is it, you know, does henot just care about us anymore?
Does he not care aboutparenting anymore?
No, nothing can be further fromthe truth.
I did need to take some timefor me, absolutely.
I hope that you guys appreciateand respect that it allows me to
show up in big ways for you, inthe same way that if you're not
(06:40):
taking time to care for yourown mental health, your own
physical health, your ownemotional health, you're not
going to be able to show up foryour kids.
And I don't mean to soundpatronizing in this way, but you
can't pour into other people ifyou can't pour into yourself.
That's what I'm trying to saywith this.
And so, as just as much as youknow that to be true, I hope
that you'll appreciate thatthose of us who are creating in
(07:02):
this way need that space to dothat too, that those of us who
are creating in this way needthat space to do that too.
And so you know a couple ofdifferent reasons why, but I did
want to give you a heads up,because it's kind of weird to
just ghost, and maybe you didn'tnotice.
Maybe, like I, have this ideathat people are keeping tabs on
me and and wondering why I'm notposting it in reality, like you
don't have any clue and youdidn't even realize that.
And if that's the case, youknow, hey, I'm.
(07:24):
I'm glad that your life is notlived on the social media places
, wondering whether yourfavorite creator is going to
post today or not, or if I'myour favorite creator, or if any
creator is going to post todayor not.
Please don't do that.
And so it probably is a goodsign of your boundaries and
mental health that you're not.
But in this time I have gottento pour into my kids in an
(07:44):
incredible way, and that's whyit wasn't a four-week break, it
was an eight-week break, or aseven-week break is actually
because as I was doing it, I waslike, oh my gosh, I'm becoming
such a better parent.
Like sometimes helping peopleparent better makes me a worse
parent, not because I don'tthink about it I do it wrong,
but because I spend so much timethinking about and doing this
(08:06):
and on my phone that I'm notpresent with my kids as much as
I could be, and so I reallyappreciate the last couple of
weeks of just they've not been alot of soul searching, they've
just been a lot of fun with mykids and really appreciating
that.
So thank you for those who arelistening to this episode and
who didn't just like unsubscribeand tune me out because I was
gone for a minute, all right.
So we're talking aboutemotional intelligence today and
(08:32):
I'm going to try and do that ina not two hour episode.
I'm going to try and break thisdown into something that you
can take away in the next 15 or20 minutes here, not going on
and on and on forever because Icould talk about this forever.
Number one many of us and on andon forever because I could talk
about this forever.
Number one many of us wereconditioned by our parents,
whether consciously orunconsciously, whether they knew
they were doing it or not, tonot feel certain feelings.
(08:54):
We were conditioned to believethat having certain emotions and
having certain internal worldexperiences were worse than not
having them.
And if you grew up in areligious framework, this is all
the more the case.
And I'm not going to get intoreligion today.
(09:14):
I don't think that that'shelpful in general, but just
know that if you grew up in areligious framework and you're
saying, man, this is so true forme, and maybe your partner
didn't.
And your partner says, well, Idon't know, maybe it's kind of
true for me, that's not uncommon.
So, generally speaking, peoplewind up learning as children
(09:34):
that certain emotions are to besought after, not just because
they feel good and they're niceto have, but because their adult
caregivers tolerate and orcelebrate those positive
emotions, while other emotionsare just to be avoided, to be
ignored, to be repressed, andthe fruit of that becomes that
(09:56):
as adults, we often do not knowwhat we're experiencing.
And so if you want your childbecause ultimately this episode
is still talking about parenting, we're not just talking about
ourselves but if you want yourchild to be able to express
emotions in a robust way andname those emotions and
understand those emotions, whatwe're going to talk about is
(10:16):
being an emotions detective,which, by the way, comes from Dr
Mark Brackett, and he is theone who I'm trying to get on my
podcast.
So if you know him, please hitme up and let me know If you
have a contact so I can get MarkBrackett on my podcast, because
he has this concept of being anemotion scientist, what I call
being an emotion detective andthe idea behind this is that you
become a person who isscientific about your emotions,
(10:39):
not totally removed from the,that you don't feel them, but
that you're analytical aboutyour emotions.
You ask the question what aremy emotions trying to tell me?
And if you want to do that foryour kids, you have to first
begin by understanding that youprobably were conditioned to not
do that yourself, and even ifit wasn't your primary
caregivers who did that, it mayhave just been society.
Certainly, for men there is avery harmful cultural stigma
(11:02):
that men are not supposed to beemotional.
Sometimes there are certainexpressions of emotion that are
deemed societally okay ortolerable, but crying grief,
sadness, for men especially, isvery, very frowned upon
historically in what you mightcall toxic masculinity.
Even though that may be thecase, it's important to
(11:24):
understand that even if itwasn't your parents, many people
have been conditioned to notexperience emotions.
Similarly, women experiencethis in different ways.
Women are not supposed to beaggressive in any way or
assertive often and those areoutward expressions, often of
inward experiences, and thoseare often demonized you look
(11:47):
prettier with a smile, which isthis very harmful thing that
many people tell to not onlyadult women, but also young
girls, and so the idea that allemotions are valid or that, as I
say in my book, there are nobad feelings, that this is the
first aspect that you have tointernalize yourself.
And you have to internalizethis because if you don't
(12:07):
internalize it, you will not beable to teach it to your
children.
One of the other principleconcepts for my book is whatever
is modeled is mirrored, and soyour kids, the primary way that
they're going to learn to beemotions detectives, that
they're going to learn toexperience the broad range of
emotions and then express thosethings in healthy and not
destructive ways, are bywatching you do it.
(12:31):
And so the first thing that youhave to take away is that all
emotions have a place.
Unconvinced of that, up untilthis point in the episode, all
I'll say to that extent is whatwe know is that if you do not
(12:52):
process certain emotions, if youavoid, repress certain emotions
, that that repression is notbenign, it is not unharmful,
over time that will build up andit will come out in some way,
whether it comes out in somesort of explosive outburst or
whether it comes out in somesort of self-destructive
behavior or numbing thoseemotions that go unprocessed, do
(13:18):
not just go away because wedon't process them.
And so I'm not saying that youhave to lean into every single
sad feeling and make yourselfcry over everything, but if you
are purposefully ignoring andrepressing any emotion that you
deem to be undesirable,eventually that will have
(13:38):
consequences.
That bill will have to be paideventually, and the way in which
it will be paid is often wellout of your control.
And so if you're a person whodoesn't want to be seen or who
fears being seen as overlyemotional or out of control,
emotional or not actingrationally or logically,
(13:59):
understand that the mostirrational people, the most
illogical people, are the peoplewho don't express their
emotions in a healthy way andthen eventually express them in
an unhealthy way.
In other words, if you do notwork through your emotions,
they're going to work throughyou and you're not going to have
any control over that at all.
So, with that being the case,with the truth being that there
(14:22):
are no bad feelings, how can weeffectively help kids other than
just simply modeling emotionalintelligence and emotional
resilience and emotionalexpression to them?
How can we help them do it?
And I am going to offer you athree step method to helping
your kids process their emotionsand become more emotionally
(14:43):
intelligent.
All right, before we get intoemotional intelligence and the
three-step process, I want totake a really, really quick
break here, super, super short,to just say, if you haven't
subscribed to the podcast, ifyou haven't gotten email updates
I don't know if you knew this,but you can actually sign up for
email updates to this podcastwhere, when every single new
episode is released, there's anautomatic email that goes out to
(15:04):
people who are on that list.
Just let me know if you want toget on that.
If you're already on the emaillist, there'll be a link at the
bottom of the next email for youto join that email, the podcast
notification list.
If you haven't subscribed andif you haven't shared this with
a friend, please do that.
And the reason why I say thatis not just because I want the
podcast to get out and get tomore people so that we can have
a keep doing it and have apositive impact on the world.
(15:26):
I truly believe that there areprobably dozens of people in
your life who would greatlybenefit from listening to a
podcast like this, from hearingfrom the guests that we have on
this podcast, hearing some ofthe different ways in which we
process these things, to learnto process their own emotions.
In fact, if you have a youngadult in your life 20 years old,
18 years old, 30 years old evenwho doesn't even have kids, you
(15:50):
can share this episode withthem and say, hey, you know what
?
This is a show about parentingand you're not a parent yet.
Maybe this will be relevant toyou someday, but we're.
This is an episode aboutemotional processing and
labeling and becoming moreemotionally intelligent, and I
thought that you could bebenefit from that.
So if you have not done thatyet, please do that.
Subscribe, make sure thatyou're rating it and reviewing
(16:10):
it on whatever podcast platformyou're getting it on Apple
podcast, spotify, whatever I'llgive an update, hopefully in the
next episode, of whether Appleor Spotify is winning on reviews
.
You guys have been doing a goodjob of competing against each
other.
I don't think that we shouldmake our kids compete against
each other all the time,especially not siblings.
But, hey, members of the wholeparent nation, if you guys want
(16:31):
to compete against each otherand see who can get the most
reviews, then I think that'sfantastic, but I'll let you know
who's winning in the nextepisode of the podcast, but in
this episode, you know, get tojumpstart on that rate and
review If you haven't already.
Share this with a friend,whether they're a parent or not.
I really think that so manypeople would benefit from a
message like this.
All right, let's get back to theepisode.
All right?
(16:51):
So step one of becoming moreemotionally intelligent is to
recognize and understand youremotions.
So, with everything I'm goingto say here, I'm going to give
you an example of how you can dothat with yourself first, and
then how you can do this with achild, because if you can't do
(17:15):
it with yourself, it's going tobe incredibly hard for you to do
with your child.
In fact, I would say it'salmost impossible for a kid to
learn to be emotionallyintelligent when their parent is
insistent on remainingemotionally ignorant.
And at the very end of theepisode, I'm going to tell you
why emotional intelligence is soimportant.
I probably should have donethat at the beginning of the
episode, but yeah, first, firstepisode back, so you guys can
(17:38):
give me a little bit of a breakhere, okay, so recognizing and
understanding emotions the firststep to to understanding any
emotional expression is torecognize that you're having an
emotion.
A lot of times parents, when Italk about this, will kind of
like snarkily say oh yeah, Iknow when I'm having an emotion.
I don't think that that'salways true.
(18:00):
In fact, if you've ever comehome from a really hard day at
work and taken out yourfrustration on your partner,
that was the result.
I'm not saying that that's notnormal.
I'm not saying that everypartnership has experienced that
in some ways.
I'm not saying that you're abad person, but that is an
example of a person who has notrecognized their emotions.
(18:23):
So until you realize orrecognize that you are having an
emotion, that you areexperiencing emotions, you
cannot begin to process thoseemotions.
And so a lot of times thatlooks like just checking in with
yourself and trying to identifythe physical manifestations of
that emotion.
Do your shoulders feel tight?
(18:45):
Are you clenching your jaw?
Are your fists balled up tight?
Are you clenching your jaw?
Are your fists balled up?
Whatever the physicalmanifestations of your feelings
are, you have to recognize thosefirst.
This is why, when I counselpeople who are in deep grief
environments, say they lost achild or a parent or a partner,
(19:05):
one of the first things I tellthem is to begin to check in
with their body and how theirbody is responding to that grief
.
A lot of times people will bein shock.
They won't even realize whatthey're feeling.
They're feeling deep loss andgrief and despair even, but
their body knows it, so they'llget really tired or they will
not be able to sleep or theywill not be able to eat.
(19:25):
These are the physicalmanifestations.
Your body often knows what'sgoing on.
Your physical body will knowwhat's going on Even when your
neocortex, your prefrontalcortex, the part of your brain,
the logical part of your brainthat's trying to be consciously
aware of your environment andsurroundings and internal
feelings, is not aware.
And so if you feel that sinkingfeeling in the pit of your
(19:48):
stomach, I mean that's a reallyclassic one that most people can
learn to identify.
But there are so many others.
And so beginning to recognizelike, oh, I am having an emotion
, that's the first step fix forthis.
(20:10):
There are plenty of groundingexercises that you can use to
get your prefrontal cortex backonline and move through these
emotions and process themadequately and effectively.
But just the way to recognizeit is just do a body check.
So just start at your toes,start at your fingertips,
whatever works for you, start atyour head, start at your neck
and just work your way aroundyour body and feel how your
different bodily systems feel,check your pulse, check your
heart rate, check your differentbodily systems feel, check your
pulse, check your heart rate,check your breathing.
(20:33):
A lot of times, when we are inhigh stress environments, when
the emotions that we'reexperiencing are producing a
fight or flight response in us,whether or not we realize it,
we'll start to breatheunconsciously out of our mouths.
We'll stop breathing out of ournose, we'll stop breathing
slowly, our heart rate willincrease.
Those are the ways in which youcan check in with your body,
(20:55):
and even if you wear like alittle heart rate monitor, you
can just look is my heart rateelevated right now?
You know, there's simple stufflike that and you may not even
be aware that you're having anemotion, but oftentimes you are,
and so the first step inunderstanding, recognizing,
gaining emotional intelligenceis realizing that you are having
emotions all the time.
In fact, your emotionalprocessing center as a human
(21:16):
being works much faster thanyour logical brain, which means
that, basically, you're justgoing through the world, feeling
things and then rationalizingwhat you're feeling or creating,
justifying, in some cases, whatyou're feeling or creating,
justifying in some cases whatyou're feeling as a response.
And then the flip side to that,which could be part two.
Not only are you going torecognize I am having a feeling,
(21:37):
but then you're going to checkin with your body and say, okay,
which feeling am I having?
And that's going to take alittle bit of introspective
awareness.
So that's not only checking inwith your body in the moment.
It may be.
Looking back into the past Acouple minutes, what just
happened?
That coworker just came up andtold me something.
How did I experience that?
(21:57):
Oh, I just got this email fromthis person and I find the
thoughts, the sentence from thatemail, that was kind of a shot
at me.
It's just kind of bouncingaround in my head.
My partner just came home andsaid something kind of snarky
about how the house looks or how, or how I look or whatever.
Like how, how am I appreciateyou know, taking that in, I mean
(22:17):
, I, I'm having an emotion, I'mhaving feelings.
Okay, what feelings are they?
It is very hard, especially withthose very disorienting
feelings that send us into ourfight or flight response, to be
able to check in in the momentand say what is this coming from
?
And sometimes it can be comingfrom things that that happened a
long time ago.
I had a pretty disorientingearly may that that was part of
(22:42):
my taking time off.
One of the things that kind ofspurred that on late April,
early May, was that in early Mayis the anniversary of when my
best friend from my childhoodcommitted suicide, and so that
time of year, even though it'snot something that happens in
the moment, is experienced in mybody and I will have emotions
of grief and loss and I'll haveto understand those emotions.
(23:03):
And oftentimes I will notrealize that those emotions are
associated to something thathappened years ago, but
something in the weather.
Realize that those emotions areassociated to something that
happened years ago, butsomething in the weather,
something in the time or season,something in my subconscious
recognizes the time of year andI have those emotions and so I
have to realize that.
But I often can't understandthose feelings in the moment.
But first we have to recognize.
(23:24):
You don't have to be able tovery specifically name it and
label it yet, because that'sstep two.
Before we get there, let's talkabout how we can do this with
kids, so with a kid, instead ofhaving them identify when
they're having an emotion, whichcan be a very, very difficult
thing for a child to do.
We are going to be the ones whosay oh, I see that your face
(23:47):
looks really mad right now.
Oh, I see that you're crying.
Are you sad?
Oh, I see that, and actually Iasked that as a form of a
question.
You want to try and avoidasking open-ended questions, but
you can kind of ask more closedquestions like that.
But oh, I see that you're kindof tense.
Are you feeling a littlefrustrated right now?
You're, you know, kind of tense.
(24:07):
Are you feeling a littlefrustrated right now?
And you know, the thing is weactually can see the things that
happen to our kids, oftentimes,not all the time.
You know your kid might be atschool or something.
You might not know what theimpetus for that frustration is,
but kids, kids can be kind ofopen books if we're willing to
see them.
And a lot of parents struggleto do that and I understand that
(24:27):
, like we're not with our kidsall the time and kids can kind
of be closed off, especiallyolder kids middle school, late
grade school, high school but ifwe're pretty attentive and if
we can kind of put our cellphone down, which I know.
I know I'm not trying tocriticize anybody's parenting.
I understand I the last twomonths I've spent a lot of time
away from my phone, but even injust the last week or so,
(24:48):
getting back in whole parent, Ifound myself on my phone more
with my kids.
It's harder to process with themand check in with them.
I know that's just true for theage and generation that we live
in.
But the more we can beattentive to that, the more we
can see the emotions that ourkids are having.
And then the much easier casesare the ones where we know what
happened.
And so when we see that ourkid's tower just got knocked
(25:10):
over and they're reallyfrustrated about it, or our
kid's ice cream fell on thesidewalk and they're very sad
about it, or we say no togetting that toy at the grocery
store that our kid really wantsand we know that they're going
to be disappointed about it, wecan actually say like, oh, I see
that in your body, this is whatyou're experiencing.
And kids sometimes push backand say no, I'm not, and that's
(25:31):
okay, you don't have to.
Yes, you are, and create apower struggle out of nothing
but just drawing their consciousawareness to the ways and the
actions of that their body isgoing through can be extremely
helpful.
So instead of asking them to dothat in the short term, we're
going to do that Now.
If you want a way to help yourkids recognize their emotions,
(25:53):
the other way that you can dothat is you can go through this
three-step process after theemotion is passed, with your
kids, and this is the thing thatwe're going to talk about.
Kind of another piece of all ofthis is that you can always
process later, and in fact it'sway more solidifying,
educational with your kid whenyou do that, so you can
(26:14):
recognize it in the moment.
I can see that your fists areballed up and your face is kind
of scrunched up and you lookvery frustrated.
You can start to do that in thefirst part and then an hour
later, two hours later, even thenext day.
Kids have pretty good memories,at least in the short term.
They can usually remember whathappened yesterday pretty well,
(26:34):
even young kids and people don'tthink that, but that's true.
If you're willing to engage akid at their level, they can
remember usually, and so I havea kid that goes to my church.
He knows every single logo ofevery single car.
This kid's not even four yearsold and he can name every single
(26:57):
car logo.
Right, my own kids have crazythings.
My, my son, my oldest, at twoyears old, could name every
single dinosaur, likeAnkylosaurus.
You know Pachycephalosaurus,like, he knew the entire name.
He knew like what they werelike, he knew what they sounded
like.
According to some YouTube video, they can do that.
You know the kids.
Kids know every character.
You know my, my four-year-old.
Some of the first things thathe ever told me about are like
his creative prophecies, right,like that.
That.
That can be.
(27:17):
Kids have incredible memories,if, if we allow them and focus
in so we can process later to doyou remember yesterday when you
were tense, when your body gotall you know tight, when your
body got all tight, when yourfists balled up and when you
wanted to hit right?
We can say those things in thelooking back in the future and
those can help our child tolearn to recognize emotions,
(27:39):
which again is the first step toemotional intelligence
recognizing.
Now that we've done that, thenext aspect or the next piece of
this is to name those emotionsand the way that Mark Brackett
says this at the Center forEmotional Intelligence, is
called labeling.
The way that Dan and Tina saythis in Whole Brain Child is
name it, to tame it.
And the idea is that when weput our physical feelings into
(28:06):
words we actually process thosewith our whole brain.
That's why their book is calledthe Whole Brain Child.
That's my favorite parentingbook, if you didn't know and
Tina was the last episode thatwe had before I took the break,
but in that episode we didn'treally talk about this.
But their first book that theywrote 12, 13 years ago whatever
(28:26):
that book, the Whole Brain Childwas around this concept that
you can actually connect kids'whole brains, that the brain can
kind of be fragmented we talkabout this a lot in the podcast
with the limbic system and theneocortex or the prefrontal
cortex interfacing.
You know your emotional centerversus your logical center, but
also you have your left andright brain and you have kind of
the part of your brain thatputs things into language and
(28:48):
the part of your brain that'sjust kind of abstractly feeling
and that through that process ofreintegration, that loop of
connecting the feelings to words, for those feelings that can
become incredibly powerful.
And we know from therapy andfrom years of research into
therapy, that the ability to putthings into language transforms
(29:12):
the way the brain manages thoseemotions.
This is why some of the primaryways in which you process
trauma with a person, whattherapists do, what counselors
do, is they get people to tellthe story of that experience,
including naming and labelingthe emotions that are felt
during that traumatic experience, and that actually allows them
to move through it.
Well, on a much smaller scale,if you're going to be in control
(29:35):
of your own emotions and ifyou're going to teach your child
to be in control not to notfeel, but to be in control of
and express that's where we'regoing with step three, in a
respectful and controlled waytheir experiences of emotions
they have to first be able tolabel them so that they don't
become blowups, and so labelingor name it to tame it again, as
(29:58):
Dan and Tina say in Whole BrainChild, is this process by which
we actually put words to thoseemotions.
Well, john, why is thatdifficult?
That shouldn't be difficult.
No, I'm frustrated right now.
Well, it is difficult becausemost people's emotional IQ, or
emotional or EI, emotionalintelligence, as Dan Gold, or is
it Dan Goldman yeah, danGoldman who came up with a lot
(30:21):
of the emotional intelligencestuff in the 90s.
As he says, a lot of peoplereally have a very small
emotional vocabulary.
And then Brene Brown studiedthis in Atlas of the Heart,
which is her book, where it'slike an atlas of emotions and
she goes through labeling all ofthese different emotions that
people experience and givinganecdotes about it.
It's a great book, not aboutparenting, but just about life.
(30:43):
And in Atlas of the Heart shedoes some research where she
realizes that most adults canonly name a handful of emotions,
and so the reason why labelingcan be so difficult for many of
us is because we don't even havean emotional vocabulary where
we know what a feeling is andputting it to words.
Now, if somebody else expressesto us a feeling in words I was
disgusted or I was jealous orwhatever we usually know what
(31:07):
that means.
We're not unintelligent peoplewho don't know what words mean,
but very often adults will notknow what jealousy feels like in
their body so that they mightbe able to label that, and so
things usually just get lumpedinto I'm happy, I'm sad, or I'm
angry, I'm mad, and or I'mafraid Right, and sometimes
(31:29):
afraid isn't even in there, it'sjust mad right, like sometimes
when I get afraid it feels likeanger, because it's only
recently that I've been able tostart to label emotions
effectively through therapy,through journaling, and so the
process to learning how to labelyour emotions is actually
pretty pretty much harder thanyou might think it is going to
(31:49):
be.
And my, my hack for that iseither, number one, you can go
to therapy with with a therapistwho's going to walk you through
the emotion labeling process,or you can go and just get
yourself a pen and paper orwrite in your notes app on your
phone and just write out aconscious stream of your
experience and thoughts, becauseoftentimes putting things down
(32:10):
into words, whether that's inthe context of a trusted
therapeutic relationship, whichI also should say could be with
a trusted friend.
And I'll tell you from personalexperience I've had a therapist
, I have several friends who aretrusted emotional processors
who I can kind of word, vomit myfeelings onto and try and make
sense of them.
Even though I am a verbalprocessor and I am an auditory
(32:30):
learner, I learn things best byhearing them, even though I am
obviously a very talkativeperson.
I have a podcast where I justtalk to myself, for sometimes,
you know an hour.
Even though those things can betrue, putting it down on paper
is by far the most effectiveform that I've ever experienced.
And I'll go so far as to say Idon't know a single adult,
(32:51):
certainly children.
There are children who for whomthis is not effective because
of developmental level.
I don't know a single adult forwhom, when they really invest
in the journaling process, thisdoes not become their best way
of processing emotions, say, forexample, hey, you really need
(33:16):
some skills development aroundlabeling of emotions.
But once that therapistcolleague, whomever, builds that
repertoire and language,oftentimes it's through
journaling that the most goodwork can be done.
And I'll give you a window intome.
This is very kind of intimatepersonal detail, but I actually
have scaled down my therapy,where I don't go to therapy as
much anymore.
I journal more, because I'vefound that if I replace the time
(33:39):
that I was in therapy, whichwas like every other week, with
a journal, a prolongedjournaling session, my mental
health as a whole is better andmy therapy sessions that are
less frequent wind up being morefulfilling and more helpful too
, because I'm not just coming upwith stuff to bring to my guy,
who's also a Dr Dan.
I've talked to three Dr Dans onthis episode, which is funny.
(34:01):
Anyway, all of this to say,journaling is one of the really,
really amazing hacks, and youcan teach your child to do that.
Oftentimes, with a child, itmight be easier to draw out
their emotions, to draw out whatit feels like to be angry or
disappointed, but those are thetypes of kind of secondary,
complex emotions that you wantyour child to be able to label
(34:23):
and that you want to be able tolabel yourself, because once you
can put words to those things,then they can become.
You gain so much power overthem.
Our brain doesn't exclusivelyprocess through words, but does
a great amount of its processingthrough storytelling and images
and words, and so maybe it'spainting out your feelings, if
you're a particularly visualperson.
(34:45):
But those processes by whichyou can label your emotions, put
words to what you're feeling,become incredibly profound
experiences.
And so that's step two.
If step one is to recognize,step two is to really understand
by putting a label on thatemotion, and then step three and
this is really important is toexpress that feeling.
(35:08):
And so how do we express thatfeeling?
That can look a whole lot ofdifferent ways for a whole lot
of different people and I'm notgoing to tell you how to express
your feelings.
What I am going to say is that,with you and your child,
expressing your feelings isdifferent than letting your
feelings completely pour out ofyou and run you.
If you're getting to the pointwhere your feelings are
(35:28):
overwhelming you and blastingout of you and you're hurting
people and breaking things,you're doing things that you
regret later.
You put your hand through thedrywall or something like.
We got it.
We got to get back to step onerecognize and label before we
get to that point and sometimeswalk away.
Part of recognizing andlabeling is knowing when you've
(35:50):
had enough and you got to stepback right.
This is an important part ofparenting, but understanding
that recognizing and labelingare one and two.
Now we're going to go on toexpression.
Expression can look a lot ofdifferent ways.
Expressing looks likecontrolled expression.
So it looks like I'm going togo to the gym and I'm going to
work out.
It looks like you know I needto go for a walk after work.
(36:12):
It can look like processingwith your partner hey, you know
I need to go for a walk afterwork.
It can look like processingwith your partner.
Hey, you know I'm feeling allthese things.
I've done all this journalingand now you know I don't know
what to do.
But can you help me to come toa conclusion?
It can look like confrontation,going to a person and saying
you've wronged me.
You know, this hurt.
I didn't like that.
Those can be good things.
That can look like crying right, we, we should cry.
(36:36):
If you're a person who findsthat you can never cry, let we
got to talk about that.
Right, we got to figure thatout.
What's that coming from?
Feel like you're not allowed to, or where's that?
You know, if you can't cry at asad movie, that's one thing.
If you can't cry when you loseyour, lose a parent, or lose a
best friend, or lose a belovedpet, then like, then, then we
got to, we got to figure out why.
(36:56):
That is what's going on there,cause there are no bad feelings
and so expression's going tolook a lot of different ways.
But understand this it's not anoutpouring, it's not a bubbling
up, it's not an explosion, it's,it's a, it's a very thoughtful
way of going out and seeking theappropriate outlet for that now
(37:16):
recognized and labeled emotion.
And this is where we get into.
Hey, if you find yourselfconstantly getting to that
explosive level of like it justbuilds up and builds up, and
builds up and builds up and youcan't take, you can't do any
more.
And so then you just drinkyourself to sleep.
Or you can't do any more and soyou binge watch Netflix, not
one time, but every night, for amonth.
(37:38):
Right, you can't take anymore.
You exploding, your partnerexploding your boss, or you
drive 115 miles an hour down the, down the highway.
Those are are ways in which wecan see already we haven't
recognized, we haven't labeled.
We have to do more work aroundthat, because those are not
expressions, those areexplosions.
So those are your three-stepprocesses and with your kids,
(37:59):
with this last one, the key hereis to give options.
Hey, are you so mad right now?
Yes, I'm so mad.
How about you stomp your feet?
That's a good one.
How about you rip up some paper?
How about you draw a picture?
How about you go run as fast asyou can?
Right?
Mr Rogers has a song about this.
You know, I'm, I can stop, stop.
Stop when I'm mad.
(38:19):
Because he's, because it'sabout expression, I can go out,
I think.
In his song he says like I cango gather a few friends to play
a game of tag, right?
Maybe that's what you need todo.
That's what I do with my kidsSometimes.
When I'm beat, I just need torun with my kids.
That's not an explosion.
I'm not throwing them around,I'm not hurting them, right, I'm
(38:39):
playing with them.
But I'm playing hard.
And the reason I'm playing hardwithin reason is because I need
that outlet.
And so, again, this is the wayin which we can walk our kids
through.
Hey, what do you want to dowhen you're upset?
Do you want to cry?
That's okay, crying is okay.
I will say if you don't know howto do all this stuff, you are
never going to be able to beempathetic.
(38:59):
And that is, in my experienceof counseling couples, the
biggest predictor of a couple'ssuccess.
People say communication.
Sure, that's true, but reallyit's empathetic communication,
it's empathy.
Can you perspective take foryour partner?
If you can, you're going tohave a successful relationship.
Personality has almost nothingto do with it.
In my experience, there arepersonalities that make it
(39:20):
easier for a couple to last ornot.
Shared interests that can makeit easier or not.
Job, healthy work-life balancecan make it easier or not.
But empathetic communicationrises above A person who is
truly able to take theperspective, in other words,
outside of experiences of abuseor profound mental illness,
(39:43):
which may make it impossible forboth partners to do that
effectively.
When you have two partners whoare both able to empathetically
communicate, that's the greatestpredictor of lifelong
compatibility.
And so empathetic communicationis massively important, not
only for your child's long-termrelational success, not only for
your long-term relationshipwith your child, not only for
(40:03):
your child's long-term business,entrepreneurial, career success
.
Basically, in every aspect oflife, emotional intelligence is
going to lead to positiveoutcomes for you and your child.
So don't remain emotionallyignorant.
Take all the things that we'vebeen saying here.
Take this three-step process.
You can learn more about it.
I'm sure you can Google it,read some good books about it.
(40:24):
Take this three-step processand begin at very least doing
these three steps with your kids, and I promise you the result
is going to be profound.
All right, that's all we havefor you, or I have for you.
It was no.
We today, just me on thisepisode of the whole parent
podcast, all about emotionalintelligence and teaching your
kids emotional intelligence.
If you want to know more aboutthis, I do have an upcoming book
(40:46):
, if you're not on my email listyet, please be on that email
list.
I talk about this extensivelyin the book, as well as a lot of
other amazing things.
I talk about this extensivelyin the book, as well as a lot of
other amazing things, so thatbook will be available at some
point in the next six to eightmonths and, yeah, until then,
this has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
Thank you so much for listening, and I am glad that we are back
(41:09):
.
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