Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi, everybody, welcome back to another stimulating conversation today. You’ve got Diane and me, and we’ve got some interesting stuff to ponder today.

Diane Dempster: Well, you say stimulating conversation, and I’m like, all the pressure’s on.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: No pressure. No, it can’t be not stimulating. You’re stimulating humans.

Diane Dempster: No, it’s true. Well, I guess it’s just that word “stimulating.” It’s... Well...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?

Diane Dempster: Yeah. So how do you want to introduce what we’re talking about today?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So what we want to talk about today is the interplay between self-awareness, self-management, and self-regulation. These are all self-words that come up a lot for us as parents—around our own stuff, for us, and for our kids, around their self-regulation and their response to stimulation, right?

And we’re constantly focused on helping our kids regulate their attention and emotions. They often get described as having a self-regulation challenge or disorder or whatever. We want to flip that and ask: Well, what does it look like? And what about us?

Diane Dempster: What about us? It’s really interesting because we just wrapped up the four-week group for elementary-aged parents. One of the modules was about trigger management and self-management, and this sort of thing.

So many of these parents are like, “I’ve got to help my kid because they’re losing their cool, they’re yelling at me, and they’re doing all sorts of stuff.” And I’m like, okay, so what? Let’s look at that and let’s look at what’s going on for you. It’s this sort of how— even if you’re not the one who’s the primary person getting triggered. And let me just say, as a caveat, when we say "triggered," it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re yelling; it just means that you’re thrown off balance.

You’re agitated, irritated, you may be in fight or flight—I don’t know which one you're in, it depends on you as a human—but you're dysregulated. Let’s use that word. Is that a fair word that everybody uses?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s a good word.

Diane Dempster: I was just talking to someone, and it’s like, if you’re getting dysregulated by your kid being dysregulated, your ability to help your kid get regulated is gonna be...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is gonna diminish significantly, right?

Diane Dempster: Let me finish, right? It’s a sort of, “He can’t believe he called me that,” or, “I can’t believe he’s saying how much he hates himself.” Or whatever it is, if it’s dysregulating you, you’re not going to be able to help your kid in the same way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If it’s dysregulated, then the attention is not on your kid anymore. The attention is on you, right? And I have this memory of this one very unpleasant scene in a family home that may have been mine many years ago, and it had to do with unloading the dishwasher. My kid was melting down, trying to get the dishwasher unloaded so we could leave the house. We needed it done before we left, or at least that’s what we decided.

Did it really need to be done? Probably not. But that was the instruction. And because it wasn’t being followed, my spouse got totally freaked out about it, and my kid got reactive to that. I’m trying to calm everybody down because, really, we just needed to leave the house. But now there’s this other issue of, “Do we follow the dad’s direction or not?” Because we really needed to get out to go to soccer practice or softball practice or whatever. So, we ended up in this hot mess, right?

The hot mess was because it was no longer about emptying the dishwasher or getting out the door or what was best for the kid—it became about, “Well, they’re being disrespectful to me as an adult.”

Diane Dempster: Well, it’s really interesting because one of my private clients sent me a copy of a text string between her and her kiddo. And one of the things that went back and forth was, “This is unacceptable.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yes.

Diane Dempster: And I was like, okay, that’s how triggered that response means. So noticing—and this is where the self-management comes in—it’s just sort of self-awareness.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was going to say, before the self-management, it’s the self-awareness.

Diane Dempster: Watching your language. And you may not catch it in the moment, so let’s give everybody a break here. You may not be able to catch it in the moment, but you might be able to, like, afterward.

The place to start is often in the rearview mirror of a conversation that didn’t go quite the way you wish it would’ve gone. So, what was going on here? How unraveled was I? How unraveled were they? Where was my moment for catching myself when I started to go south, or whatever we want to call it—dysregulated?

Diane Dempster: What about us? It’s really interesting because we just wrapped up the four-week group for elementary-aged parents. One of the modules was about trigger management and self-management, and this sort of thing.

So many of these parents are like, “I’ve got to help my kid because they’re losing their cool, they’re yelling at me, and they’re doing all sorts of stuff.” And I’m like, okay, so what? Let’s look at that and let’s look at what’s going on for you. It’s this sort of how— even if you’re not the one who’s the primary person getting triggered. And let me just say, as a caveat, when we say "triggered," it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re yelling; it just means that you’re thrown off balance.

You’re agitated, irritated, you may be in fight or flight—I don’t know which one you're in, it depends on you as a human—but you're dysregulated. Let’s use that word. Is that a fair word that everybody uses?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s a good word.

Diane Dempster: I was just talking to someone, and it’s like, if you’re getting dysregulated by your kid being dysregulated, your ability to help your kid get regulated is gonna be...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is gonna diminish significantly, right?

Diane Dempster: Let me finish, right? It’s a sort of, “He can’t believe he called me that,” or, “I can’t believe he’s saying how much he hates himself.” Or whatever it is, if it’s dysregulating you, you’re not going to be able to help your kid in the same way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Activated.

Diane Dempster: Activated. Thank you. That’s the right word. And so then our limbic system is competing with our other system.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or executive function, our executive function.

Diane Dempster: Our creativity, or our intellect, or whatever else. And it’s this sort of... there’s all this emotion going on in the midst of trying to solve a problem or trying to get the dishes loaded, or trying to get the dog walked, or whatever it is that we’re trying to do. There’s this level of emotion that gets in there. And we begin to get confused, right? It’s a sort of... we begin to fall into our old habits and patterns.

We get very narrow-focused, like you were saying. The energy starts going like... some of us, when I know for myself, when I get agitated, it’s like, “I’ve got to fix this, and I’ve got to fix this right now. I’m the only one who can fix this. No one else can do this. I have to fix it.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So much fun when you’re like that?

Diane Dempster: I didn’t hear what you said.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So much fun when you're like that?

Diane Dempster: Oh, yeah. Don’t do it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I gotta do it now.

Diane Dempster: I gotta do it. I gotta do it now, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I don’t deal with that.

Diane Dempster: Well, and we go into it... we go into our coping mechanisms. We either go into avoidance, or we go to control, which is mine, right? But sometimes our kids are avoidance, or we go to distraction, or we go to isolation, or we go to pleasing. I mean, there are all these kinds of coping mechanisms.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We have a defense.

Diane Dempster: Or defense, right? So, it’s important to notice and become self-aware when you're in that agitated state because you're really not operating on... I don’t want to say “all cylinders,” but you're really not operating on all cylinders.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You're not operating from the frontal lobe, that’s the rational part of your brain, right? You’re lucky if you’re operating from a different system. So, here’s what came up as you were describing it. And I don’t even remember if, on the trigger chart, we have these colors, but we probably should.

But, so, you said, “What’s the difference between aware and alert?” Aware is the bottom, the base level. It’s the green—all systems go, right?

Diane Dempster: It’s green, yellow, red, and the chart, by the way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s what it should be. So, when I move into yellow, think about when we’ve gotten into environmental alerts in the last 20 or so years, where all of a sudden we’re paying attention to the air quality, and they’re telling us, “Is it a green day? Is it a yellow day? Or is it a red day?” It’s very much like that.

Once we hit alert—now, if the pollen count is high enough or if the air quality is poor enough, we’re in alert. And we have to pay attention to what times of day we go outside, what types of activities we do outside. And then there are red days where we’re told, “Don’t go outside today, don’t take kids outside today, the air quality is not good enough.” I don’t know if the rest of the country is dealing with that, but we deal with that a lot. And it’s very, very similar.

Like, aware is even-keeled, and then alert is like, “I gotta start paying attention, and I gotta do something differently. I’ve got to mitigate or modify my behavior to deal with the upset that’s happening.” Right? And I think that’s really what we’re saying.

Diane Dempster: It is. And I want to take us back to the kid lens for a second, because we were talking again about us, but a lot of times our kids are walking around in alert.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely, and high alert, high alarm.

Diane Dempster: And they don’t look like it, right? Because remember, avoidance, distraction—those are coping mechanisms. And if your kid is avoiding, if your kid’s on games, if your kid’s reading a book 24/7, it might be an indication that they’re really stressed out and overwhelmed. And they’re walking around in that alert place, which makes it easier because we’re thinking...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Everything they’re on... they’re on the verge. They’re in a constant state of alert, and it could go into alarm at any second. And you don’t know what happened, and they’re already gone. And you’re like, but all I said was, “Put on your shoes.”

Diane Dempster: Right? And then all of a sudden, it’s World War Three. Right? So, I mean, I think that’s the important piece of it—to acknowledge these three levels and to know that you may not know, for yourself even, and definitely for your kid, where they are at any given moment.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But you can begin to pay attention to where you are at any given moment. Right? That’s where self-awareness is the precursor to start paying attention to what it takes for you to self-manage yourself and to manage your own regulation. That goes back to: you can’t control what happens, you can only control how you respond.

Diane Dempster: Well, and that’s like what I wanted to say—sorry, we’ve got to be the grown-ups, guys. I mean, I think this is... I was talking to him just moments ago. And we’re like, if you’re in an argument or about to get into an argument, whichever person is aware enough to go, “Oh wait, we’re in an argument. This is not gonna work…”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Slow this down. Yeah.

Diane Dempster: Whoever it is, even if it's you every single freaking time that you're the one that has to say it because you are the one that's more self-aware... I’m sorry, you get to say it. Because you really,

I mean, it’s kind of for the greater good. It may not feel that way in the moment because you want to fight for what you believe in, and like you're agitated and want control or whatever it is, but the greater good... I think almost any time, unless you’re being chased by a mountain lion, the greater good happens in awareness.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That... well, and the other thing that came up from what you just said is that dance between influence and control. And we often feel like if we want to control something, we get kind of white-knuckled about it, right?

We tight-fisted, we hold on to something, it’s got to be a certain way. And actually, the more tightly we try to control something, the less likely it is to go the way we want it to go because we’re not allowing anybody else to have a role in it. And when we release some of that control and we start paying attention to how do we influence the situation? How can we guide the situation?

Then we have a better opportunity not only to manage ourselves but to help our kids learn to manage themselves and to self-regulate. And a lot of that, it goes back to that... it starts with self-awareness.

Diane Dempster: Well, and what you're alluding to... we talked about the difference between ending an argument and resolving a conflict.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: It’s this sort of... because a lot of times, everybody gets dysregulated, and we’ll stop and we’ll go to our corners, and everybody will calm down. But it’s hard to go back and finish the conversation because we don’t have strong conflict management skills. I mean, there’s a whole...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or in this case, it wasn’t even a conflict.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I just didn’t want to deal with it. It was just like, making plane reservations is really stressful for me; calendar stuff is stressful for me. And so, and it was stressful for my kid. And when there was another kid involved, and it was like... nobody was upset. Nobody was angry. Nobody was mad. I was just... it was the executive function, avoidance of it, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And I had to recognize that I was doing it in order to manage myself differently, to handle it. But I couldn’t have done that till I recognized it.

Diane Dempster: What are the things we do to begin to become more aware of our tendencies, whether it’s avoidance or control, or distraction, or whatever it is?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's a great question. It’s maybe another episode. And we might have some time to answer that one. I think what’s coming up to me at the moment is that we ask ourselves, what’s the story we’re telling ourselves? And then we get curious about what’s underneath it. Like, what am I really avoiding? What am I really trying to control? What, like, if we get curious about ourselves? We always talk about getting curious with our family members. But we can get curious about ourselves too.

Diane Dempster: Well, and what’s coming up for me is two things. One I said earlier, which is really reflecting afterward, right? It’s just sort of really taking a minute to go, okay, wait, what happened? What did I not? What can I remember from what happened to me this afternoon, or happened in the dynamic this afternoon? And the other thing is to begin to pay attention to our bodies.

And this is a biological response, right? So you’re literally shifting to a different part of your brain, which means for most of us we start breathing differently. Maybe we get tense, maybe we like start running our fingers through our hair.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Looking for your tails.

Diane Dempster: Yes, exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? If you’re poker, you’d have a tail, what are your tails?

Diane Dempster: Begin to notice what your body does when you get in that state. So that it’s a clue that it’s like, wait, I’m starting to get started. I just sat up in my chair, you didn’t see that line? And it’s like, I sat up in my chair, right? It’s just sort of, okay, just sat up in my chair, am I bracing myself for something? Or is that just me feeling like I’m sliding down at the end of the day?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, looking for your takes—hey, do some debriefing with yourself, getting curious. The magic three questions: What worked? What didn’t work? Instead of beating yourself up about that conversation that either didn’t happen or didn’t go the way you wanted, ask yourself—what part did work? Maybe what worked is at least I tried to have the conversation, right? And then, what didn’t? What would I do differently? So, debriefing.

Diane Dempster: There’s no good technique? It is. And then the other one we teach so often is "commit to calm."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And it's this sort of... that commitment—it's a fierce commitment—that things will go better for so many reasons we mentioned earlier. Things will go better if you can stay regulated, if you can focus on helping your kids stay regulated, rather than ending up in a hot mess. And it’s that fierce commitment to either recovering well if you end up in a hot mess (because we all end up in one sometimes).

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: Or it’s about figuring out how to back out when you notice you’re approaching that mess. But it’s that fierce commitment to calm. I think that’s an important piece that starts the ball rolling in a direction that helps with self-awareness, self-management, and self-regulation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Beautiful. That’s awesome. That was a great conversation. Did it qualify as "stimulated"?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Excellent. I knew it would. Always does. Alright, everybody, thanks for being here. Thanks for doing what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. What a huge difference it makes. And we’ll see you in the next conversation.

Diane Dempster: Thanks, everybody.