Today I'm talking with Dr. Mark Brackett.
Mark is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
He's the author of Permission to Feel and he's the author of his brand new book Dealing with Feeling.
Dr Brackett has developed a framework that helps kids, parents and educators build emotional literacy skills for recognizing, naming and working with emotions in ways that help us thrive and get in touch with our capability.
I've known Mark for a while, and he is one of my favorite people to talk with.
So you are really in for a treat.
I think you'll think about emotions in a different way.
You'll think about coping in a different way.
And without a doubt, you'll end with practical strategies you can use today.
I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside.
We'll be back right after this.
So happy to have you here today.
Thank you.
So many things I want to talk about, but let's just start with you and kind of what brings you to this work.
So you spent your whole career basically studying emotions, right?
And as parents, emotions are at the center of our lives.
Parents' emotions, kids' emotions, emotions about in-laws.
There's a lot of emotions.
I just want to know what really drew you to this work in the first place.
Well, since we're talking with a parenting expert, I'll be frank.
I just feel like my emotional life was kind of robbed from me as a kid.
I had terrible abuse in my childhood and a lot of bullying and just felt like there was no place to go with my feelings.
So what did I do?
I ate them.
I cried them.
I banged my head them.
I did everything that you would call unhealthy to deal with them.
And just before we continue, because I know that probably that led into so much research and you really like, took that and turned it into a whole journey.
All those things you were naming, I just have to say, were incredibly adaptive things to figure out as a kid, because emotions are, they're so powerful.
You can't stop them.
So if you don't have coping skills or you don't have support, you gotta, gotta do something.
Yeah.
I mean I left people in a very dark place with the opening.
But I am blessed also because I had an uncle who was my mother's brother.
His name was Uncle Marvin and he was a teacher by day and a band leader by night in the Catskill Mountains.
Who happened to be writing a curriculum to teach kids about feelings.
Who happened to live with us one summer at the right time when I just shared what was happening and totally transformed my life.
How old were you?
I was 11.
He was with you the summer when you were 11.
And it just everything changed because he asked me the simple question that guides my work, which is how are you feeling?
No one asked me that question.
I think people were afraid to ask me how I was feeling.
Did that feel really scary or really amazing at the time or both?
I think it felt relieving because I was trapped and this person actually cared.
And as I say, you know, gave me permission to feel.
The next time we talk, we're going to do a full episode just on that.
We're like not going to talk about your researcher book at all.
Okay.
But I told you we would talk about those things today and I keep my word.
So how did that happen? shape a lot of your career.
And then can you talk a little about the research you've done around that too?
Well, you know, so uncle Marvin kind of saved my life.
Things got better for me.
I still, you know, you know, things still were difficult.
You know, I wasn't sure who I was and what I was going to do with my life.
And then when I got to college, I majored in psychology and I double majored in Spanish and criminal justice and had all these different interests.
And then I was still like, what am I gonna do with my life?
And then I was in therapy and it was around 1994, 95.
And all of a sudden this big book came out called Emotional Intelligence.
And I was like, this is my uncle.
It wasn't my uncle who wrote the book.
It was Daniel Goleman.
But I devoured that book because it just reminded me of all my experiences with my uncle.
And he was a journalist.
But I saw these two names that were like the theoreticians.
And I called them both up.
And I said, I think I want to get my PhD and study with you.
The long story short on that one, because you have a lot of parents who want their kids to go to great colleges.
I got rejected from Yale, basically.
The home of your research.
Yeah, exactly.
And I didn't have the test scores and the grade point averages to get in or like the pedigree and the experience.
But I went to the University of New Hampshire and then got my job at Yale later.
The joke, by the way, just as a quick aside, was at my tenure party, the president of Yale, who was the person who rejected me as his student.
He's like you know, and you've done just amazing work and we're so proud of you.
I'm like, I want to remind you that you rejected me.
100%.
But I think that's an important piece too.
Yeah.
In terms of emotion regulation, which is my research.
You know, not everything happens when you want it to happen.
And in my research what I find is that if you don't have the strategies to deal with those feelings, oftentimes your dreams don't come true.
Those feelings, if we just even use your story as context, I don't know, disappointment.
Disappointment, anxiety, frustration, overwhelm.
Embarrassment for some people, right?
Shame.
Shame.
You know, yeah, they're all there.
And I think that's one thing that's really interesting for me, because I was not the um.
I didn't come from a family that was very into education.
And so, um, and I have two brothers and we all have doctorates.
So we're always like we were together last weekend and we, every time we get together, we're always like how did we end up all becoming doctors?
And, um, But I study and I work with people who all have perfect SAT scores.
They all have amazing grade point averages.
They all play instruments I never heard of.
They all have traveled to countries I didn't know were ever on the map. all to get into this place.
And the assumption I had when I was a young professor was everyone's gonna be successful because gosh, look at the credentials.
And now after 23 years, I've seen otherwise.
You know, I don't know if this will take us off on a tangent.
It'll be like a side quest.
We'll come back to the main quest.
But I have three kids and one of my kids, especially just things come really easily.
Like someone told me this term, like he's like a life natural, like he's been here before.
Right.
And people are surprised when I say that that's the kid I worry the most about.
Sure.
Versus another one of my kids had major speech delays, like had to work so hard.
Things definitely don't come as easily.
And I think about the grittiness and resilience and And also how much that child has to build self-worth inside out, because there's no opportunity to build it based on all of the accolades.
Right.
And I just wonder if that's related to what you're talking about.
Well, what you're reminding me of is the research which shows that, you know, for kids who are naturally kind of talented and skilled, we tend to praise them for that as opposed to praising for their effort.
And the research is pretty clear that praising for like amazing job, you're so talented, you're so amazing.
Gosh, you hit that ball, you know, doesn't actually help them develop resilience and skills.
And then later on I say this also it's funny you brought this up, because you would assume that a lot of my students would have a growth mindset.
They don't.
They only want the A.
I always joke.
I teach this course on emotional intelligence and I have, like you know, all these different experiences that I want them to have.
I want them to learn the skills and practice the skills.
And they're like, what do we need to get the end of the test?
Like I want to memorize the correlation coefficient between you know, I'm like I don't remember the correlation.
It's my own research.
Seriously.
That's not what this is about.
This is about like learning a set of skills that are going to help you in life.
Well, you know, and you and I, I feel like whenever we talk, just go off each other all day long.
This is going to be a 19 hour podcast.
Listeners, it will not just stay with us.
But one of the things I always think about is we can't develop skills for emotions we don't allow ourselves to have.
Correct.
Right.
And we also just can't develop skills to manage emotions that we don't have.
Why would you have coping skills as an 18-year-old that are any different than I don't know, a six-month-old?
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't.
No one gifts them to you by age.
Well, in my argument, which is based on my research, is that we weren't born that way.
There is no area of your brain called emotion regulation.
It is 100% learned, 100% learned.
And my research shows and I cover this in my book which is that I studied thousands of people during the pandemic and after the pandemic because I was really curious, Because I struggled a lot dealing with my own feelings during the pandemic.
I mean, my mother-in-law moved in.
It was like a whole crazy thing.
And I failed a lot.
And I go to bed at night like but Mark, you're the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence.
It's like, who cares?
He's not very good at this right now.
And I really took that to heart in terms of like here I am as a researcher and an expert, but I was not doing well at it.
And so I started studying people.
And what I found.
Among tens of thousands of people, only 10 of people said they had any education in emotions or emotion regulation at home and like six to 7 of school.
So we have people who are, you know, running around without knowing or using these evidence based skills.
I think people, it's interesting, call them soft skills.
I was actually just talking to a university yesterday about kind of their education curriculum.
And we were talking about like reversing that, like how helpful it is.
How helpful is it?
To have amazing mathematical skills if you have no frustration tolerance.
Exactly.
Not helpful.
It's actually a precondition to use your cognitive skills.
You and I, I know we see this similarly.
And so yeah, I just think it's a really powerful thing to think about when your kids especially, are younger.
The times when they don't get invited to that birthday party or don't make the soccer team.
Or I always think about.
You know something that happened with one of my kids where they all got assigned in their grade kind of these special projects.
And some of these projects are like amazing and very cool opportunities.
And some of them, frankly, are just like.
I don't know, fairly mundane.
And there's also the factor of whether you're with your like crew of friends or whether you're with totally random kids.
And the first year of these projects.
My kid in that grade had no friends and got, I truly think, one of like the worst projects.
Right.
And I did.
And I do think about this.
Like I had.
I didn't say this to him, but I have this like sick joy of like.
Okay, this is actually cool.
This is where the stuff is made.
This is it.
Because when he's older he's probably not going to have special project week, but he's going to be disappointed.
He's going to be left out.
He's going to have FOMO.
He's going to not get what he wants.
And if he's not building these skills now, well, the stakes are only higher then.
I agree.
And it's developmental, as you know.
And so what I needed in kindergarten was different than what I needed in middle school, than high school, than now.
I mean, I'm 55.
I run a center at a university.
The world's in a weird place right now.
Everybody's activated.
And so the regulation strategies that I have to apply in my life now are not the same ones that I needed when I was five or 10 or 15.
And I think that's the beauty of the work.
It's also what makes people afraid of it.
It's why I think people are so obsessed with the quick fix.
You know, it was just like, what's the one strategy to help me deal with my feelings?
I'm like, I don't have the answer for that, I'm sorry.
I get that all the time too.
Yeah.
I have one kid tantruming, another kid's drawing with Sharpie on the wall, a kid screaming I hate you.
What would you do?
I was like, I have no idea.
Right.
I don't know.
Take a deep breath and people think that's the answer for everything.
Exactly.
You talk about emotions as data.
Correct.
So just, can you expand on that?
Emotions are signals.
They tell us to approach or avoid.
So I'm looking at your facial expression right now.
I'm looking at your body language.
I'm listening to the tone of your voice.
And it's telling me like, Mark, you're welcome here.
Or Mark, like, I'm not interested in you.
I'm getting the former just so you know.
But that's what emotions are for.
They ensure our survival.
They help us to thrive in life.
And I argue that emotions are information.
And there are five reasons why every parent, every leader, every teacher should care.
The first is that emotions drive attention.
So for example, if you were bored with me right now, well, I would dislike you a lot.
But it would be that there's something not going right.
Just like something doesn't go right at home or in the classroom.
And it's not a bad emotion.
It just means that like, what's being presented to me doesn't click, and my brain has decided to go someplace else.
The second is decision-making.
So I have tons of research and others research which shows that we think that we're like cold cognitive creatures that were like.
I made this choice because of this reason.
Hate to tell you this, but you know, for parents, like when you've been really upset with your kid and you've been like at the end of your rope and you're really pissed And then you say that thing that you regretted.
How many of you think you were like in that moment, you're like, I hate my kid right now.
And I'm going to say something that's going to be mean and cruel.
No, it's automatic.
It comes out.
And if you were intellectual about it, you would be like, why would I be doing this?
It's not the way it works.
The third is relationships.
And so just think about it.
As I said, my facial expression, my body language all sends messages.
The fourth is mental health.
And the last one we spoke about already, which is about performance.
If you don't have the skills to deal with your emotions, especially for people who are really creative.
What I find in our research on creativity is that emotions fuel the creative process, but emotional intelligence and emotion regulation is what determines whether that process becomes a product.
There's so many things I want to double click on.
But just this idea of emotions as data and information, I think is very different from how a lot of people think about emotions, where there's like positive versus negative.
Right.
Exactly.
Which whenever I hear that, just an unhelpful binary, because I think about a CEO of a company.
And someone bringing them information that would make them change a decision.
I don't know if anyone thinks that's like negative information.
That's useful information, right?
All emotions are information.
Exactly.
And some are more uncomfortable than others.
Just like when you're going one direction...
On a plane flight and a pilot gets new information, like there's a new light going off or weather pattern they have to change.
That's inconvenient.
But I don't think anyone in the air is thinking that's negative information.
Let's ignore that feeling.
Yeah, exactly.
Let's just pay attention to the good stuff.
Repress, deny, ignore.
No way.
And so I think that in and of itself is life changing for people.
Like there's no positive or negative thing.
Emotions are data information, as we said.
And I think, when it comes time to regulate our emotions, I think oftentimes people think that the goal is to get rid of negative emotions.
And I just want to say very clearly that you can't get rid of your feelings first.
I don't know where they're going to go.
It's not like, you know, they come out of your head.
I always thought that, by the way, for years before I really became knowledgeable about science, I was like someone's going to go into my brain.
I'm going to carve out that area of my amygdala and my hippocampus and I'm not going to feel that anxiety anymore.
I haven't had that operation yet.
And I also learned very clearly that my anxiety has actually helped me get to where I'm at.
Because I worry about the things that I care about.
And if I reframe it that way, anxiety is no longer a negative emotion.
It actually is motivating.
Yes.
That's actually so many different ways of explaining nervous feelings to my kids.
They have really latched on to this idea of like nervous means I care.
Right.
And it then becomes this like empowering.
Exactly.
You know, I do care about this test.
So it makes sense that I'm nervous about it.
Exactly.
I think the rule that I've created, which is a simple rule to help people, is that if you have a particular emotion for a really long period of time and it's intense and your coping ability is, you're struggling with that, that's when you need to regulate.
But for the most part I argue and my research supports this, by the way that the first strategy for healthy regulation is permission to feel.
Yes.
It's saying, you know what?
Okay.
High anxiety.
Welcome today.
That's just a different attitude about it.
It's a mindset shift as opposed to, oh my God, I'm anxious.
Yes.
Do you think, just feel it like, oh my God, I'm anxious versus high anxiety.
Welcome.
Yeah.
It is, and I find personifying it to be so useful.
There are friends we have that are a little pesky.
We love them, but they're a little annoying.
But we can't make them.
They're just at the dinner party.
And if you ignore them or try to make them go away, they usually get noisier.
Exactly.
And they try to get our attention in more dramatic ways.
Now I have a question, because what I've seen, and I'm curious, what you've seen from your research and also just from students, is there more of an inclination now than years ago to kind of quote bring uncomfortable emotions to a zero than there used to be.
Yeah.
I think that we, you know, have I got into a place where people I was asked the other day about like what does it mean to be emotional?
And I said, let's throw that term out.
It has no meaning.
It's ridiculous.
And then people, I think, are so uncomfortable being uncomfortable that they'd rather either suppress or deny, or people just wanna figure out a way like what do you need?
What do you need right now?
None of that is helpful.
And that's why I really feel strongly about teaching people buckets of strategies to deal with their emotions, and permission to feel is one bucket.
And I just say this because what you eat and how well you sleep and the physical activity you get are really highly correlated with your ability to regulate.
With parents.
What I find is that in the mornings they say I'm trying to be my best self, but I just can't.
I'm just like irritable.
And I'm, you know, I set a goal to be my best self as a mom.
And then I fail the first thing in the morning.
And I say, well, how much sleep did you get?
Oh, I had a terrible night's sleep.
Oh, so your best self is possible, but you're not thinking about what's behind it.
That's getting in the way.
And the point I think of all this is that people are trying to get rid of their feelings as opposed to use their feelings to achieve their goals.
And the work I really.
What I strive to help people understand is that the goal of emotion regulation is not to control your feelings.
It's to learn how to use all of your emotions wisely to achieve a goal.
I think that's exactly right.
And I think a good example is like, I notice I'm really frustrated with my kids.
I'm snapping.
And instead of the spiral of like I'm a monster, I'm a horrible parent, or you know, other people would find this easier than I do.
Like, OK, I'm frustrated.
Like, what's going on for me?
Have I done anything for myself on the weekend?
You know, and then that information, that frustration could actually help me if I can recognize it.
Permission to feel frustrated.
That's happening.
OK, maybe I should carve out making this up 45 minutes for myself or ask my partner to do more.
Right.
It would give me that information if I listen to it.
One thing I wanted.
I was thinking about coming here today and given you know the people that you reach and kind of, there's a big controversy right now out there.
And it's one that's driving me crazy, which is that being self-aware is self-indulgent.
Yeah.
And people are arguing like against my work.
Saying things like you know, you're causing kids to be so reflective that it's causing them to ruminate and become depressed even, and creating more mental illness.
And I just wanna, I have to talk about that with you for a moment.
Please, let's do it.
It's driving me crazy because people think that doing the work that we do in schools or with families is about talking about feelings all day long.
Like none of us want to talk about our feelings all day long.
It's not even appropriate.
You know, there's a point where it's like, no, we're at school.
We're doing work.
Yes, I want it.
You can check in in the morning to see how you're feeling.
Do you need a strategy to help you get through the morning?
And then maybe at the end of the day, a couple of times, just like you as a parent, you wake up.
You're going to meet with me to do this podcast.
And you're going to check in like, am I in a good mood?
Am I in a bad mood?
Like what's, you know, am I in the right place for this interview?
If not, what's my strategy for getting to the right place?
Yep.
But do you see how that takes 20 seconds?
Yes.
It's not this like prolonged, you know, bathing in your feelings.
I just want people to understand.
We have to clear that up.
We have to clear it up.
That this is about self-awareness as a pathway to creating the life that you need and want.
Yeah.
And it's not about indulgence.
So a couple of things for further defense of Mark Brackett.
I'm a big Mark Brackett fan.
OK, so I think.
There are extremes.
And what often happens when we have one extreme and we reject it, is people immediately go to the other extremes.
They're rarely the right answer, right?
The right answer is usually something more nuanced in the middle.
And it is becoming increasingly hard to hold multiplicity and nuance, right?
Which probably relates to this kind of claim, you know, self-awareness is self-indulgence.
I think we used to have a world of kind of kids' feelings.
Who cares?
Who cares?
Yeah.
Get your act together.
Move on.
Kids' feelings don't matter.
And I do think not your work.
There has been a misunderstanding and an overcorrection to the other extreme.
Yes.
Where one extreme is kids' feelings don't matter.
The other extreme is kids' feelings dictate everything.
Or dictate what the whole family does.
So now we've gone from feelings not matter to feelings overpowering everything else.
They're both unhelpful extremes.
Exactly.
And I think what you're saying, which is my perspective to teaching kids how to manage their feelings is in the service of making them more capable.
Correct.
I mean, you can't always get what you want when you're a kid or when you're an adult.
And frustration tolerance is important.
Delayed gratification is important.
All these things are important.
But self-awareness is really important.
Because if you don't know how you're feeling As a kid especially like I was a kid who was, I didn't have language.
Nobody taught me the words.
I was trapped with my feelings and I didn't feel safe and comfortable talking about them.
And as we know, especially for kids, they shouldn't worry alone.
Yeah.
You should not worry alone.
No.
Aloneness is the enemy.
Exactly.
And so by sharing what you're feeling and being clear about it, because another big thing just going back to this whole thing is that people misunderstand behavior for emotion.
So I come in, I hate you and I don't want to go to school tomorrow.
And all of a sudden the parents triggered and they say things like you know, who do you think you are talking to me that way?
You know, stop being so angry.
When, in my case it was that the kids spit on me on the bus and I'm feeling such deep shame and fear that I don't wanna go to school tomorrow.
But I've only learned because daddy's a tough guy to yell, scream and say I hate school and I hate you.
But then I get sent to my room because I'm engaging in bad behavior that, in that instance, my mother was not really skilled at co-regulating.
And so the best thing to do is trigger, get out of my face.
And there I was, you know, ruminating in my room about my fear of going to school tomorrow, when no one knew how I felt.
And if they really knew how I felt, they probably would have had a better intervention.
Well, no, I'm so sorry that happened to you.
I mean, thank you for sharing.
I'm glad I sublimated it into a career of teaching this stuff.
Me too, for everyone's sake.
And sorry that happened in the first place.
Thank you.
And maybe actually I think it would be helpful to take that example because it's so common.
Right.
Which does just start with the word, some version of I hate you, or even just I'm not going to school today.
Right.
OK.
I think it might be helpful to outline.
We could play around together.
A version of my kids feelings don't matter.
A version of my kids' feelings dictate reality and what the whole family or what they do.
And then kind of where do kids' feelings matter and where can we help our kids access their capability?
Yeah.
Which extreme do you want to take first?
Well, first I have to say the feelings always matter.
Yes, feelings always matter.
The first example I think is sort of like the dismissing.
And what I found in my research, by the way, which is relevant to your community, is that the number one reason why parents don't ask their kids about their feelings is fear.
And it's fear from multiple perspectives.
But the primary one is that they are afraid of not knowing what to do.
Yeah.
And so what do you do when you don't know what to do?
You go to automatic habitual, former ways that you learn things, which is my mother's way of like.
I'm going to my room and you're going to your room and we're not talking.
That's the extreme, right?
That's like, suck it up.
You know, you're on your own kiddo.
Yep.
Doesn't usually help.
Right.
And I think that's what a lot of kind of parents tell me like well, that's how my parents would have handled it.
You know, growing up, you're going to school.
Stop being ridiculous.
You're being dramatic.
You're going to make me late for my job.
I'm going to get fired.
I'm going to have no money.
I don't know.
Just like some litany.
I mean, there's no relationship there.
That's right.
There's no relationship.
And in some ways in that moment, you also have no curiosity.
Your curiosity is shut down.
I have no curiosity about what's underneath.
Maybe the problem isn't my kids saying they're not going to school.
Maybe that's just representative of some bigger problem they're actually struggling with.
The behavior is a symptom.
Yes.
So that's one extreme.
What's the other extreme, that you also want to make sure you're like?
This is not what I'm talking about.
Oh my God, honey, what went wrong?
Oh my God.
I can't handle this.
Oh my goodness.
Let's, we have to, you know, let my God, let's go.
Let's, you know, like that kind of overdramatic reaction.
And I think another version of that is, okay, let's sit on the couch and cancel our plans.
You're not going to school today.
We're going to talk about how you feel. for the next eight hours instead, right?
Actually, you reminded me of something.
I wrote this op-ed and I decided not to submit it after the last election, when a school here in New York City wrote a note saying that if the kids were not up to it, they didn't have to come to school.
After the election, yes.
Yeah, and I was like, that is not emotional intelligence.
You have to go to school, period.
I mean, you have to learn how to, life does not go always in the direction that you want it to go.
And I think what collapses in that example and in my example Is there's emotions mattering with the collapse of capability.
Correct.
And I think, as a parent, I always say like so much of dealing with kids, distress and anxiety is holding two things at once as a parent.
I believe you and I believe in you.
Yes.
And if we lose the I believe in you part.
A hundred percent.
It's it's it's really it's also really overwhelming and feels dangerous for a kid.
So like, well, I'm overwhelmed by this. my parent is overwhelmed by this.
Like, where do I start and you end?
But what you're doing there is, you're instilling a growth mindset in terms of and around emotion regulation, in particular.
So if your kid is like doing a climbing thing and they're, oh, I think I'm going to fall.
You're like, honey, I'm watching you.
And I understand that you're feeling afraid.
I would be afraid too.
It's a little scary the first time, but I know you can do this.
And so I'm going to stand there.
I'm going to watch you.
I'm even going to coach you a little bit, but I just know that you're going to be able to do this.
I got, I got you.
That second part the, and I know I often visualize.
You know I need to see a more capable version of my kid than they can access themselves in that moment.
Because if I can't see that for them, like they're not going to get that from me.
And so, okay, so what's in the middle?
So we have a kid.
I'm not going to school today.
Right.
So let's say we're like, okay, not doing the two extremes.
Yeah.
It's like, honey, tell me what happened.
What's going on?
And it's not this four hour conversation.
It's really getting to know the experience.
You know, honey, I did notice that your facial expression was different today.
So my hunch is that maybe something happened at school yesterday.
Can we chat about it?
And then you're in learning mode.
Yeah.
But the learning mode is not to then say, well, like you should suck it up or like, oh my God.
The learning mode is to help engage in problem solving mode.
I have something, a new research finding that you're going to love.
There are three characteristics.
The verse is non-judgmental.
And, as we know people, I think most of us felt judged from the moment we came out of our mother's womb.
Just to be blunt, you know like you're not smart enough.
You're not, you're too dark.
You're too light.
You're too tall.
You're too short.
Your nose is too big.
You know, whatever it is, it's like, it's just endlessly judged.
And people would say, I just want to be around someone who doesn't judge me.
Please don't judge me.
The second is the listening piece.
Can you just listen, please?
Don't jump in all the time.
Just listen.
And the third is compassion.
Now importantly, what I want to say about this is that in the thousands of people that I've studied, no one ever says that the person who created the best conditions for them when they were young was smart or a problem solver.
I find that incredible because I don't think people are looking for other people to fix them.
I think people are looking for people to create the conditions for them to thrive and to ask them good questions so they can develop the critical thinking skills to then problem solve for themselves.
And I don't think that we create the conditions for that as much as we should.
And, by the way, only one third of 15000 people that I studied said they had someone like that when they're growing up.
I don't know if I'm unable to snap.
We could talk about that later, but I've never wanted to snap.
I really felt the urge to snap.
I'll do it for you.
Yeah.
I was showing off, but okay.
You can cope.
I can cope.
I can.
I can do hard things.
You know no one saying the adult that really helped the most is smart or a problem solver, and you know we don't really want to be fixed.
The other part of that that I think so powerful for parents to remember is when you see your kid as being able to be capable, as being able to be resilient.
You set up conditions for them to access that in them.
Correct.
Every time we say to our kids like let me do that for you or I'll fix this, whether it's literally opening the Play-Doh jar or it's, you weren't invited to that birthday party.
I'm just going to create a slumber party for you on that same date.
We're going to invite more people and it's going to be more fun.
We're actually saying to our kids I don't think you are capable of coping with this, which is the mirror they take in.
And so you're bringing up another piece of research which I just remembered, which is the second factor is time.
That nobody has the patience to let their kids figure it out.
They just want to get it done for them.
I know.
It's like, you know what, honey, just do that.
Move on.
Just go say you're sorry.
Go apologize.
And it's, you know, saying you're sorry doesn't really mean anything as we know.
And people don't have the patience to be present.
You know I've been talking about this a lot and it's resonating, because I think it goes to what you're saying, that the most underutilized parenting strategy in a hard moment is doing nothing.
Yes.
And I tell people you should think about doing nothing with a capital D and a capital N, because then you won't think I'm just doing nothing.
No, no, no.
You are choosing doing nothing.
It's like a very hard strategy to use in 2025.
You wait and you trust.
And the apology is such an interesting one because I have a kid who, if in the moment you say like, are you going to say sorry.
I mean, shut down completely.
But if you wait and trust and do nothing, the authentic apology that comes from him is the best apology I've ever heard from a kid.
But you have to.
You actually have to trust yourself and your kid more than you trust that exact moment, which is hard.
It is.
And I find another piece of this is the role modeling.
Yeah.
Is you know?
I joke about this, but my mom had a phrase this is the 1970s phrase probably where whenever things would go wrong, she's like I'm going to have a breakdown.
And I caught myself a couple of years ago on a flight and I was like overwhelmed.
And somebody said, you're doing okay.
I'm like, I'm having a breakdown.
And it's, you know, I picked it up.
And so we're picking up the strategies, obviously, that our parents are, everyone is showing us.
Yeah.
And so, if you're not and this is the, I think this is where the explicit versus the implicit learning happens.
Whereas if we're modeling healthy self-talk, if we're modeling healthy reaching out for support.
You know, I give an example a lot with, because you know, in my research, by the way, and my hunch is that you got a lot of moms who listen.
We got to get more dads on this.
My goal, you know, for this new journey with my book Dealing With Feeling, is to get more dads involved, because I have found that only 3 of people think of their father as the person who gave them permission to feel.
3%.
I mean.
To me, it's an alarming statistic that no one sees their father as the person who gave them that permission to feel.
And so the point of me telling you this is people think this is like such hard work to be a good role model.
But imagine this I'm daddy and I had a really rough day at work.
Like just a rough day at work.
Like I got into a fight with a colleague and I'm irritable and I come home and you're there as my daughter and you're like daddy, I want to play.
Daddy, I want to play.
And daddy is like not in the mode to play.
And so what my father would have done would be like you know honey, get out of my face, you know, or go to your room or go watch television or, you know, go get a snack.
But what if it looked a little different?
What if it was, honey, I recognize you wanna play.
And I just wanna let you know, daddy had a really rough day at work.
Actually what happened is I said something that was not kind to one of my friends at work and I feel terrible about it.
And I need a little bit of time to just think about what I'm gonna say to him tomorrow.
And if it's okay with you, I want to be with you, but now's not the best time.
I just need a few minutes to just kind of settle and think about it.
And then when I come back, we'll go take that walk or we're going to play that game.
So what did I do there?
A, daddy has strong feelings.
B, daddy's okay sharing those feelings.
C, daddy's reflective.
D, daddy problem solves and thinks about like solutions.
E, daddy sometimes needs a little space to reflect and think through things.
All that happened in a matter of a minute.
Yeah.
But people don't think that that's the right thing to do for some reason.
Or they don't think that actually saying it out loud to their kid is actually teaching them.
You know, I think there's also confusion.
I'm not supposed to cry in front of my kids.
I'm not supposed to put my emotions onto my kids.
Yet putting your emotions onto your kid ironically probably comes from not managing or verbalizing your emotions.
So they do kind of almost come out of your head and they come out onto other people.
And you're really talking about regulating out loud.
Exactly.
Actually you reminded me of a I have.
You know I do so much public speaking that I get these people come up to me.
And so a lot of dads come up to me afterwards, like, dude, you're vulnerable.
And I'm like yeah, but it took me.
You know, it was 49 by the time.
I was like public with my whole life story.
So, you know, it takes time for people.
Don't worry.
But, you know, and I share a lot about the terrible bullying that I had.
And this one dad came up to me and he said you know Mark, I could never share what you shared with us.
If it were me to my kid.
And I said, well, tell me why.
And he said, well, my kid would think I was weak.
And I said, can we just pause for a minute and just chat?
And I said, well, what if your kid was being bullied right now?
How do you think that approach, you know, would help or not help your kid?
And then the guy started crying with me and he's like yeah, you know it.
Just I just never really learned.
You know this vulnerability thing, this sharing.
You know my, what happened to me as a kid?
I just never learned it.
And I've been stuck with not expressing it for 40 years or 30 years.
And I just don't, I don't have the skill.
And it goes back to again, the skill.
The skill and the truth is, anytime we do something new, and anytime we do something new that's completely different than all the generations before us, it's going to actually feel scary because our body is doing something for the very first time.
It's unknown.
It's going to be awkward.
And so I think that's such an important piece of it.
Okay, I'm going to talk about the rough day I had and just name that and say I need space because I'm feeling frustrated and I need a little time.
When your body starts I don't know having a racing heart at the thought of doing that.
I feel like our brain tries to make sense of that by saying I shouldn't do that.
But actually your brain can make sense of it differently.
I've never done this before.
Of course, my heart is racing.
That's not a sign I'm doing something wrong.
It's a sign I'm doing something new.
Yeah.
And actually now you're reminding me of another area of research of mine, which is kind of studying this concept of becoming the best version of yourself.
And so it's an exercise that I think it's very helpful for parents to do, which is just to take a moment and imagine how you want to be seen and talked about and experienced.
So if I were to ask you that, Dr Becky, as a mom, Think about the attributes of the mom that you want your kids to see, that you want your kids to experience.
Present, connected, curious.
Yeah.
Same team.
Nice.
So present, curious, connected, same team.
And so in the moment when your kid is like getting under your skin, it's hard to show up as present connected, et cetera.
But what if tonight, before you walk into your apartment, you take a deep breath and you say I've set a goal?
I'm a mom who wants to be seen as connected, as present, et cetera.
And then kind of just visualize that as you walk through the door.
Do you think that would...
Yeah.
I think you're talking about the essence of regrounding ourselves in our values.
Exactly.
And when we're, you know, with the world, when we're on social media, when we're running on the subways and we're coming home and we're hectic and we're thinking, oh my gosh, I have this work to do yet.
And I got to make dinner and then I got to put the kids to bed and I got to do this problem solving for tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then we get activated those values and that version of ourself gets dismissed.
And so it's a practice.
Yes, it is.
Just like yoga.
Exactly.
Never ends, right?
And I have, you know, I do a lot of work here in the city as you do.
And I have a friend who's a principal of a school downtown and he takes the bus in from Brooklyn and he drives by the, um, Empire, the, um, statue of liberty and he uses that as his method yeah and he looks at the statue of liberty and he reminds himself of the principle he wants to be you know and then on the way home as the parent he wants to be isn't that beautiful nothing like lady liberty to hold you accountable love it never thought about lady liberty is my accountability buddy but i might have to change my commute i love that if parents listening you know, want to take what you're talking about and make a couple of small shifts or something that feels actionable.
Like what are your, what are your top go-tos?
The top go-to is to just have a mindset that there's no such thing as a bad emotion.
That, you know what?
The feeling is a feeling.
You could make it want to go away, but it's there for a reason because emotions come unbidden.
I think the second is, and this is a big one for me because I grew up and I still have, my automatic go-to is self-criticism.
And I can only remember being criticized.
It's terrible.
And I'm convinced that most of us have been gaslighted by people in our development, in our childhoods.
And we just start believing it.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No one ever taught us to sift through the way other people were talking about us.
And then it metastasizes and it becomes your identity.
And so I just want to encourage people to move from self-criticism or other criticism to self-compassion and other compassion.
And that alone, I think, could make a huge difference.
I'll give you one more.
Great.
I got hundreds, but I'll give you my top three for today.
I love top threes.
My third one is, it might be surprising, it's to have an other orientation.
I think that we have become such a me culture.
I'm feeling this way and it's my thing.
And I had this with during the pandemic.
My mother-in-law got stuck with us for a variety of reasons because of COVID, the pandemic.
She's from Panama and she couldn't go back.
And it's like, it ruined my routine.
I like to have coffee alone in the morning.
I don't want to have coffee with my mother-in-law staring at me.
And all I realized was, after six months for me to realize, it's like, I'm a narcissist, basically.
It's like, you're in my house, and I'm feeling this way, and I want to be alone.
There's your self-critical voice, Mark.
Yeah, you're right.
So thank you for the awareness.
And then I came down one morning and I realized I had no curiosity about my mother-in-law.
Here was an 81-year-old woman who doesn't speak any English, who was stuck in America during a pandemic, whose dog is like.
We're trying to figure out how to take care of our dog in Panama.
And as soon as I stopped thinking about my feelings and I thought about her feelings, everything changed.
Actually, our relationship changed dramatically.
And so, even when we're feeling unpleasant emotions as parents or as even children, can do this if we take a minute and think about like, Who is suffering right now that I know.
Go into your phone and look for pictures of people.
Oh my gosh, she just lost her husband or, you know, whatever it might be.
This person's dog died.
And just reach out to that person and show your love and support for them.
What happens magically is that by you helping them, you feel better yourself.
They can find more from you.
I know everyone will want that.
Well, my book is called Dealing with Feeling, which I'm very excited about.
It's all evidence-based strategies to help everybody regulate their emotions more effectively.
And the best place to learn more about me is just my website, which is my name, Mark, bracket, M-A-R-C, B-R-A-C-K-E-T-T.com.
Well, thank you.
This hopefully is not the last time I have you right here.
Thank you.
And I love talking to you and thank you for your very, very important work.
Thank you.
Let's throw that out and embrace what Dr. Brackett says, emotions are data.
And all data is information.
And we want to get information.
As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review it.
Or if you're listening on Spotify or watching on YouTube, drop a comment.
I read every single one.
Let's end the way we always do.
Place your feet on the ground and place a hand on your heart.
And let's remind ourselves, even as we struggle on the outside, we remain good inside.
I'll see you soon.
