Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another stimulating conversation with Elena and Diane.

Diane Dempster: Always setting it up. Are we going to have like, stimulating holy cow freshers on?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I think we do. We really do have stimulating conversations. And this is a topic that we're both really excited about, one that we've been discussing for quite a few years.

Diane Dempster: Well, yes, now we’re here.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We teach perspective shifting as a core concept in coaching, which is essentially the idea that if you can view a situation differently, you can approach it differently. That’s the big picture. But there’s one perspective shift we really wanted to focus on today, and that is: Up until now. What does that mean?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, let me tell you what I think it means, and then I’ll give you a bit of the history because it’s kind of interesting. The concept of up until now is, as a parent of complex kids, whatever dynamic you're in—no matter how old your kids are, no matter what challenges you're facing in your family dynamic—there's absolutely nothing you can do about anything that’s happened up until now. Right? Nothing’s ever going to change the past.

There's no time travel that can take you back and let you do it all over again. You can “woulda, coulda, shoulda” all day long, but it's not going to change anything. What’s amazing, though, is that you can do something about what happens from here forward.

You might not be able to change the circumstances of what’s happening, but you can change how you respond to it, and that can have a profound impact. So, up until now, we can't change anything. But from here forward, we have a lot of power to create the change we want. That’s the concept of up until now.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and this just in... Well, maybe not so much, but this is true for everything, right? This isn’t just about being parents of complex kids, it’s life. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And how much time do we spend—some of us more than others—really looking in the rearview mirror? Like, “I should have said this,” “What if I had said that?” “I can’t believe I said that,” and we’re constantly looking back, wringing our hands or worrying about what we said, blah blah blah.

Or we’re thinking about the future: “What might happen? What if this? What if that?” I don’t know, but I want to put a plug in for being in the moment. Focus on that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was at a conference the other day, and I was listening to the speaker, and he labeled this concept "time travel."

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we spend all this time traveling to the past and traveling to the future. Now, that’s not to replace visioning for the future, because that’s really important. But his argument was really about being present to what's happening right now—paying attention to what we’re thinking and feeling, and how we're being in the present, rather than traveling to a time we have no influence over in the moment. And can I just share the history of where this came from?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The concept of up until now—I used to say for years, there are three words that will change your life: up until now. Or three letters: yet. However you look at it. And this came from when I first started coaching. This goes back to around 2008 or 2009. I was asked to speak at an autism group, and I wrote this speech called Up Until Now.

I talked a bit about balance, and I had parents standing on one foot to illustrate how balance is a moving target. But the whole notion, what really stuck with me, was this truth I learned as a parent in those early years. I couldn’t change what I had done up until the time I became aware of how to do things differently. Beating myself up for how I handled things when my kid was five or eight, while now my child was 12, and I understood so much better—wasn’t fair to me. And it wasn’t fair to my kid either.

For me to feel guilt or shame when I was doing the best I could, but just didn’t know any better at the time. And when you know better, you do better. Right?

Diane Dempster: Well, I think people struggle with that concept—that everyone does the best they can at the level of consciousness and information they have. I truly believe that at the core of my being, and even if it’s hard for you, especially when you know better now, it’s tough to say, “I should have known better back then.”

The reality is, you can’t change that. Right? You can’t literally go back—unless we have time travel, which I don’t think we do. I mean, we’ve been watching some sci-fi lately, but there’s no official time travel happening. The question is, where does it serve? And I think it causes so much pain and suffering when we go back there, feeling guilty and full of shame.

I mean, guilt and shame are so prevalent, especially in our population. It's huge right now.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: David Marcus, and my husband, David Taylor-Klaus, who’s a coach, often says that holding yourself accountable now for behaviors in the past—based on information you have now, but didn’t have back then—is tantamount to self-abuse. And many of you have heard me talk about how, as an adult with ADHD, it was so important when I was first diagnosed to put the stick down.

Because for decades, I had been beating myself up with that stick, in this well-worn groove in my head. I had to learn to put the stick down and say, "Okay, up until now, that’s what happened. Here's where I am now, and here's what I can do differently going forward."

Diane Dempster: Well, I was working with a couple recently, and one of the partners was really stuck in the past, having a hard time letting go. They kept saying things like, "But they did this, but they did that." And it was months ago, weeks ago, years ago, but they kept going on and on, right? It's hard when we feel injured.

We do want to go back, but it doesn’t help. It just keeps us stuck. It's like, what is it serving you to go back? If you're reflecting on the past and asking, "How do I do better next time?" that’s one thing. But most of us don’t do that. When we're back in the past, we say things like, “I can’t believe I did this,” or “I shouldn’t have done that.”

It’s this cycle of "shoulds" that leads to shame. Here’s where shame comes from: If you’re upset about something, and you can't do anything to change it, that's where we feel disempowered. By going back and feeling bad about it, we’re setting ourselves up in a situation where we can't fix anything. We can't change it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s that gap between our expectations and what we can control. That’s where we get all wobbly. It’s interesting, though, because the inspiration for this conversation came from a couple I was working with today, who have an 11-year-old with ADHD, autism, and some other complex issues.

The dad was talking to her about how she made some mistakes—she cut her own hair, for example. He was talking to her about it and wanting to help her fail forward, as we call it in our world. But he wanted to do it in a way that didn’t make her feel shame.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And so he really said to her, “We are not going to forget the past because the past has happened. What we can do is experience it. We can talk about it, think about it, and learn from it, so we can make peace with it.

That way, we can move forward in a new way and make different choices.” I loved that idea—making peace with the past so you can move forward from a place of acceptance and awareness.

Diane Dempster: Well, and maybe that’s where the whole if you know better, you do better idea comes in. It’s like this: if you can get to the place where you believe, "I did what I could with what I had," and your intentions were good—even if you didn’t do what you would do today—your intentions three years ago, or whenever it was, were not to mess up your kid or the situation.

You wanted to be a great parent. And at that time, you did the best thing you thought you could do to be a great parent. The question is: what do you do now to make peace with that? How do you convince yourself?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So I’m laughing because one of the previous podcasts I would point you to is one we did on parenting as damage control. Right?

Diane Dempster: Right. Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s not whether you’re going to mess up; it’s how. So accept that you are, allow that to just be, and make peace with it. That’s where that podcast might help you—to make peace with it.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, I was talking to somebody again this week about, I think I said this in another podcast, it’s like, I have a college budget for each of my kids and a therapy budget for each of my kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly.

Diane Dempster: I know for sure they’re going to need something at some point.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that’s normal, right? That’s healthy.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s when we know we’re helping them grow. So, okay, up until now is a powerful perspective. The other thing I want to mention is, often when I teach up until now, I think about it in terms of what I want for the people in our community. What I want for those of you listening is to have what I like to call a bring it on attitude. Right?

I want you to know that you’ve got these skills in your back pocket, some in your front pocket, and all over you. You’ve got what it takes to handle whatever’s coming at you. Life is going to throw stuff at you. You’re going to be on this rapid rollercoaster, rapidly going from one situation to another, with no lack of enthusiasm or energy.

And our job is to learn to dance with what’s coming without melting down, freaking out, or throwing a fit every time something changes or a wrench gets thrown into things. Because that’s going to happen.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that goes back to our relationship with mistakes and that sort of thing. I mean, I remember earlier in my life, I was one of those people who really had a hard time even admitting that anything was a mistake, or that I’d done something wrong, just because there was so much shame, guilt, and embarrassment attached to it.

I was joking with somebody this weekend about creating a new phrase. So my new phrase is, “Well, that didn’t work the way I thought it would.” And my friend said, “Well, that looked much better in my head than it actually did.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: On paper.

Diane Dempster: It looked really good on paper, but it totally didn’t end up the way I thought it would. But it's that lightness of, “I tried that, and it didn’t work,” versus “I can’t believe I screwed that up.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I’m just remembering back to when you and I first started working together and having conversations about mistakes. Right? And you really didn’t like the concept that anything could be a mistake.

Diane Dempster: Well, that’s a whole other side of it, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. But for me, it’s like, as we learn to live with what makes us human, which is making mistakes and trial and error, acceptance is such a big part of being human. And so, part of this message, I think, about up until now is an acceptance of our humanness and what got us here.

That doesn’t mean it was all beautiful and full of roses because it wasn’t for anyone. That’s part of what creates an environment of resilience and the capacity to continue to change. I was talking to a mom recently who was really, really struggling.

I don’t want to go into all the nuances, but she had lived a pretty good, almost beautiful life, and now she’s dealing with adopted or stepkids that she kind of married into—super complex. She really doesn’t have the resilience to dance with it, because she’d never encountered any kind of complex issues before.

And here she is, as an adult, trying to figure out how to deal with it. So she’s holding a lot of resentment.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. And it’s hard. Well, and we could do a whole other episode—maybe we should do a whole other episode on resentment. That’s a big thing. Let’s write that down. But what was coming up as you were saying that is just the idea.

When I think about shame, guilt, and worry, right? Shame, guilt, or worry are really heavy emotions. And a lot of times, we go to shame, guilt, and worry when we don’t know what else to do, right? It’s like we’re stuck. I need a good idea, but I don’t have a good idea.

So I’d much rather go back and be frustrated or beat myself up or whatever else, and focus on the past because I know how to do that. Instead of going, “Okay, wait, what do I want to do now?” Right?

We know better, but we don’t know how to do better. And so I think that maybe it’s just an indication when you notice yourself going to guilt, worry, or shame, to ask: “Am I feeling stuck? Am I feeling like I’m not sure what to do? Or is there something else going on with me right now?”

Have that be your emotional indicator, right? It’s like: “I notice I’m feeling shame,” instead of falling into it. Ask, “Wait, I’m feeling shame right now. How do I want to move forward from here?”

It’s an indicator that something’s not as it should be in my body or in my brain right now.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I love what you’re saying about this notion that we default into habits of action, but we also default into habits of thought.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Habits of thinking. And what we’re talking about is that, as you were saying that, I was thinking about how many parents spend all this time collecting information because they know how to do that, right? We go to guilt and shame because we know how to do that.

And until we have a new path forward, we’re going to default to the habit. So, really, in some ways, what we’re talking about is breaking the habit of beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves.

Diane Dempster: Well, and again, it’s sort of...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Over ourselves.

Diane Dempster: Right? And then how much of this is because we don’t know how to fix the situation, right? It’s sort of... when we’re dealing with parenting complex kids, it’s not about fixing the situation. And yet we see a problem, and we want to fix it.

But then we don’t know how to fix it, or it’s out of our control because it’s really our kids to deal with or co-parents to deal with or whatever else. And then we’re like, “But I still don’t know how to fix this, but I’ve got to fix it.”

It’s this hunger for control, this need to do something, and this fear of getting it wrong because we feel like we got it wrong in the past. What we really need is experimentation, trial and error, and creativity. But we end up shutting down because we don’t know how to get there—it just feels too hard.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, yes. And as I’m hearing you, I’m remembering that we’ve had so many people over the years—either parents or teachers, often teachers—who, after a few sessions of Sanity School, have come to us in tears and said, “I didn’t know.”

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I didn’t—teachers especially—what I said to those parents, I didn’t understand. Or parents saying, “What I said to my kids, I didn’t know.” And really, it’s the feeling, the emotion. And it’s not just shame. It’s remorse, right? It’s like, “I can’t do that over.” And I—right?

So, Diane, what do we want to say to the parents who are... the good news is, short of finding a new path forward and realizing there’s a different way to be in relationship with our kids around their complex issues, and stepping out of these power struggles... but how do we handle the looking back and saying, “What did I do? I can’t...”

And I look back, and I think about some of the conversations we had, and some of the things I did, and I feel terrible about some of them.

Diane Dempster: So... well, I think there’s a couple of pieces. Because you use that word, remorse. And part of it is about grace—being gentle with yourself.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Which is what our dad said to his daughter, by the way.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. And part of it might be recovering well, right? It’s this sort of... if you still have a relationship with a person, kind of going back and saying, “I realize that what happened five years ago, three years ago, last year might have been painful for you. And I just want to tell you how I thought I was doing the best I could, and it turned out that it didn’t end up the way I hoped it would.”

I think that... and honestly, I think that we can do that. I believe we can do that even if we don’t actually talk to those people. I mean, it’s like... can you go back and say, “Wow, in my head, I’m going to just send that message out into the universe and say, I am sorry that ended up the way that I did”? And give them and give myself some grace.

And I’m going to commit to that whole, sort of, “If better, you do better,” right? It’s this sort of, if you find that place and say, “What? I’m committed to doing better where I can.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We did an episode on parenting young adults. And I think it’s kind of connected to that other episode on parenting being damage control, which I talked about. I had this experience with my adult kids, my young adult kids, where I kind of had this conversation where one of my kids said to me, "Just because your intentions were good, it still caused hurt."

And it was a really powerful opportunity for me to say, “Yeah, I get it did, and I’m really sorry.” And to truly, authentically, with compassion, apologize for my role in it without making excuses, but also without beating myself up. Because there is nothing I can do to change that. And I’ve done... actually, I’ve done a ton to change that. If you think about it, like look at where I am now versus where I was then. And that’s what I said to this one kid. It’s like, "Yes, your younger siblings had a different parent than you had.

But that parent that they got is also still your parent now." Right? And so, we get to keep moving forward with this. And it was really healthy for them to hear me say, "I’m sorry." And it was really healthy for me to be able to say, "I am sorry. I did the best I could, and I know it wasn’t always good enough. And here I am still working on it." Right? And that’s, we’re doing the work, y’all. If you’re listening to this podcast...

Diane Dempster: You’re doing the work.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You’re hearing the work. And we can’t ask any more of any of us than to get in here and kind of roll up our sleeves and do our own work in this process, apparently.

Diane Dempster: Well, and maybe your own work is apologizing to yourself. Right? And there you go. Whoa, I’m sorry. I totally judged. I totally beat you up. I totally... It’s just sort of... that could be a great way to practice this, even if you don’t go back and say anything to anyone in life, right?

Or your kids or whatever else, right? But to even be willing to go back and say, “Hey, self, I got your back.” Right? It’s not gonna help me. It’s not helping either of us, for me to sit and beat you up for something that happened three years ago.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? We're 13 years ago.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, 13 years ago. Exactly. 30 years ago.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Like here's where we are now. And this is what I love about coaching. And this is why I landed as a coach, not a therapist, is what I love about coaching is the bottom line, the essence of it. The question is, here's where we are now.

Where do we want to go forward? We can learn from the past, but we're not gonna dwell there. Because here's where we are. And that's really at the end of the day, what up until now, as well as, here's where we are, where do we want to get from here?

Diane Dempster: Up until now.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Awesome. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for doing your work, for having the hard conversations with yourself and with others. It makes a difference. All right. Take care, y’all.

Diane Dempster: Thanks, everybody.