Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress, and I am a life and parenting coach. I help

parents learn the calm mama process, which is the

parenting process that I teach. It's 4 steps. 1st, we get

calm, then we connect using compassion. We set

limits, limit set, and we follow through with consequences

correct. So the calm mama process is calm, connect,

limit set, correct. And today on the podcast,

I wanna talk a little bit about calm and connect.

Actually, we'll kind of play into limit set as well,

but I wanna talk about a very wonderful

therapeutic practice called cognitive behavioral therapy. You may

have heard of it. Sometimes if you kind of look up

to to go to see a therapist or, you know, you look at different

modalities of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy often

calls called CBT is one of the

most effective therapeutic models to help people

kind of move through negative emotion and actually

long term change the way they think about things so they

feel differently. That's one of the things I teach in my

programs is not just how to process negative emotion,

which is amazing. Right? How to get to the pause break and move

through if you're in a stress response, how to reset your body, go

from sympathetic nervous system to parasympathetic nervous

system, from activated to calm

state. That process I teach, it's called the pause break. And

it really is just a moment to reset, move your body,

move your mind. So we need to get out of our stress

response in order to get to calm. I love it. I teach it all the

time, and I'm always super gracious.

And I don't judge. Like, if you lose your crap with your kids and you

yell at them or you act out in a way that you don't love, you

shut them out or whatever it is, I'm always like, yeah, of course,

you were stressed. That makes sense. Right? So we validate that, we

learn from it, and we try to figure out where we could

have intercepted, interrupted the reactivity

and calmed our body. That's super valuable.

And today, I wanna talk about how to

get how to find a strategy that helps you prevent

getting activated in the first place, how to stay

in your calm state of mind and not get triggered

or reactive by your kids' behavior.

So I'm gonna teach you this this theory, cognitive behavioral therapy. It

started in the 19 sixties by

a psychiatrist, named Aaron Beck. What he

realized is that, there's these parts of

cognition which is really just thinking. So cognitive cognitive is

just really thinking. So cognitive behavioral therapy is

thinking and acting differently.

So it's kind of teaching you strategies to think differently so that you

act differently. So what he found is that we have these

3 kind of ways that our brains work when it comes to

cognition. 1 is we have default thoughts. He called

them automatic thoughts. So this is kind of the

unchecked ways that we think about things if we

don't evaluate them or we don't reframe them and we

don't try to understand them. It's sort of our default thinking. And

the default thinking kinda comes from

sort of how we were raised, some of the thoughts that we got in

childhood, things that we got from society.

For example, an old thought

in society, a core belief would be children should be seen and not

heard, or don't cry over spilled milk.

Right? So we have these kind of thoughts in society that were

given, and then they inform the way we think, which means I

shouldn't cry if something isn't worth crying over.

Right? Or that kids really their whole purpose is to

just obey and that that that's that they should listen

to us and, you know, that's an expectation. So we have

sometimes we have these underlying beliefs

that are basically maybe

wrong or they don't serve us anymore. So maybe at some

point, it was good that children only speak when they're spoken

to or something like that. But nowadays we

would want kids to be able to express themselves and to

process their negative emotions. So we don't really believe that you shouldn't cry over

spilled milk anymore. We really believe that it's good to

talk about our feelings and allow children to process their

negative emotion. So sometimes we have these limiting

beliefs that are what we call cognitive distortions or

thought errors. So we have a core belief that we've

never evaluated. It leads us to be thinking things

that we don't even really believe or aren't true anymore or aren't true for

us. And then we have those those become our default

thoughts. So what cognitive behavior therapy

invites you to do is invites you to examine

your thinking, to take a look at it, to notice what

you're thinking. So in life coaching, I was trained in

this. I did my life trait my life coach training with

Martha Beck. She taught us in this group called the

Wayfinders training, and I learned this as a coaching framework.

And it's essentially based on the same cognitive behavioral therapy, which

is that things happen, circumstances happen, or there there are

facts that are just out there, like my

kid hit my kid. Okay? That's a fact. Then I have thoughts

about it. So I have thinking about the

circumstance, how I think creates my feelings,

how my how I think about something kind of creates my emotion.

Sometimes it works the other way. My emotion can create my

thoughts. And then depending on how I think and

feel, it drives how I act. So if

I'm thinking this is an emergency and I'm

feeling stressed and overwhelmed, I'm gonna act by taking

very significant action. Right? Run away,

shut it down, you know, yell at my kids, do some sort of

behavior. So the cognitive behavioral part is my cognition

is influencing my behavior. If I wanna change my behavior,

I need to change the way I think. Basic understanding of

what cognitive behavioral therapy is. So now how do

you use this in parenting? Why would I bring this up on a parenting

podcast? And here's why. Because

a lot of us have a lot of default thoughts,

automatic thoughts when it comes to our kids. And a lot

of our thinking is distorted. It's

not necessarily true or factual. And we

just kind of blindly keep thinking that and then we show up in ways we

don't love. A big part of calm is,

sure, calming yourself when your nervous system gets activated.

But really the real cool work is

learning how to not get activated in the first place.

And that's really about normalizing how

kids act. Instead of thinking my kids should never

be unhappy, thinking happiness

is temporary, unhappiness is temporary, and that

it's good for my kids to be unhappy. Learning to

process unhappiness is healthy. So

right there I'm showing you how we might have a thought

that my kids should never be unhappy.

Another thought could be if my kids are unhappy, it means I've done

something wrong. Well, that's a thought error, because you could do

everything perfect and your kids could still be unhappy.

So that's not true. It's like that's a better thought. I could

do everything perfectly and my kids could still be unhappy. This happens a

lot. Say you plan a beautiful birthday party for your child or

you plan a really wonderful outing like the beach day or or

picnic or, you know, you have play playgroup or play dates, and

it's a sleepover. And it's just this amazing day,

and you put in all this effort. And then you're thinking, my

child should be happy, and then they're not. And then you're like,

they're not. They shouldn't be. They don't have the right or what. This isn't that

big of a deal. They, you know, you start to judge their

unhappiness because you're thinking if I create a perfect

experience, my kid won't be unhappy. So that's a thought

error. A lot of times we have these thoughts and they're unchecked. I

wanna talk to you for a minute about thoughts because

the brain itself, most brains are preset to

some to negative, to see the world as a little bit

dangerous, as a little bit, out to get us,

as as as hard as difficult, you know, the world

is challenging place. And the reason why the brain

kinda does that is because as a species we should be on

alert to protect ourselves. But really it

doesn't end up serving us if we're constantly in a vigilant

negative space. It kind of can create a negative

life. But the brain, it has a negative bias

and it likes to be right. So the brain

will look for evidence to prove the negative

thoughts. It wants to prove that they're true.

So if I'm thinking, my child is a spoiled

brat. I'm gonna look for evidence of

that being true because I wanna prove that

I'm correct. But if I

flip my child as a spoiled brat to my child is quite

generous and kind, I will be able to find

evidence of that because the truth is most kids are a little bit

spoiled brats and a little bit kind and generous. It sort of

depends on the moment. Reframing the way you think

about your children and the way you think about yourself and the way you think

about their behavior will help you not feel

so on guard and stressed. But you have to

overcome that negative thought bias

and start to reframe those thoughts.

So a couple of the ways that we get caught up in thought

errors is one is this negative thought bias,

Right? That we have a viewpoint of the world that the world is not

great. Behavior is not good. My kids aren't good. The world's not good. Like, it

kind of is just how it is. You can train your brain to think positively.

Some people, it's easier. They have more of a positive

outlook. Some people are more,

negative outlook. Parenthetically, this is a funny story. I am

going to a new gym. And at the new gym, you don't have

lockers. You just have cubbies. And you put your stuff like

your, you know, purse or phone or whatever in the cubby.

And it's there's no no protection. But it's a group class. We're all in the

class together at one time. Then after the class, everybody grabs their

stuff. So it's not like a locker room or anything. And I was telling

my husband about this, and I was saying to him, oh, you would probably not

like that because you would probably be worried someone was gonna steal your

stuff. And he was like, yeah. No. I would

definitely. Like, why wouldn't someone steal your stuff? And I was like, that's so

funny. You think that the world is unsafe and that you

should be on guard and that people are probably gonna steal your

stuff. I think that my stuff is probably not gonna

get stolen. Like, I literally don't think about

negative things happening. And then I started

laughing. And I said to him, and usually they don't. Usually

negative stuff doesn't happen to me. And then he laughed and he goes, that's

because I'm always going around behind you and making sure

that your stuff doesn't get stolen. Which made me laugh

and it's not true. He thinks the way

he thinks, and then he has evidence to prove that it's true. And I

think the way I think, and I have evidence to prove that it's true. But

the way that I think makes me feel free and safe and very

delighted in my life. But it wasn't always like this. I

definitely had negative core beliefs

that were a negative bias. Most of my

negative bias is about how people think about me.

So I was very self conscious, very insecure, very

anxious, And a lot of it was around social anxiety,

like social pressure. I really wanted everybody to like

me. And I was pretty sure most people don't like

me. I really did believe that I was, like,

unlikable. And I got a lot of feedback in childhood that I was

too direct. I'm too abrasive. I'm brass. I'm,

you know, I still get that feedback all the time. I'm a straight you're a

straight shooter. You know? I have learned to receive

that without criticism to go, yeah. That's me.

That's how I am. You know? I'm pretty straightforward. I'm never

here to hurt anybody. I don't mean to be rude. My

intention is my intention, and I've had to learn

to trust that I'm good enough. So I had to change

some of my core underlying limiting beliefs in order

to move through and have more of a positive mindset.

In parenting, a lot of times we have these negative thought

bias about our kids. Right? Like my kids never listen to

me. So when we use really extreme language, just like

all the moms or my kids never, always,

you know, every time when you use hyperbolic

language, your brain pretty much thinks that that's

true. Yeah. They never listen. Let's find all the

evidence of that being true. But it could be that

they have trouble listening, that sometimes they listen and sometimes they

don't. And if I'm thinking that there's some room

in that thought, they're they're they never listen, that

feels really hopeless. Why would I keep trying?

I'm gonna give up. I'm gonna feel frustrated. I'm gonna feel resentful towards them. I'm

gonna feel angry. My thought they never listened to me

is going to make me feel angry, resentful and hopeless.

But if I think sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, let me figure

out the difference, then I have more power, I

feel more hope, feel less overwhelmed. So when

we oftentimes one of our negative thoughts, the errors that we make

is by using extreme language, black and white

thinking, always never, good or bad,

that kind of thoughts. Another thing we do kinda talked about this a little bit,

but, like, we focus on the negative more than the positive. So,

say, I go to I go on a vacation with my family

and there's, like, 3 kind of really cuckoo bird things

happen. Like, one kid has a big old meltdown or there was a big

fight at the dining room or, you know, the at the restaurant or some kind

of stuff happens on this vacation. And I

get home and my friend says, how was your vacation? And

I decide my brain says, that was a

terrible trip. It was a disaster. My kids were so rude

and so disrespectful. Sometimes, if

we are going to cherry pick stories and we cherry

pick the stories that are negative, that is going to inform the way we

think and feel about our family, about ourselves, and about our

kids. So focusing on negative experiences more

than positive or minimizing the positive.

It was mostly good, but, like, oh my god. Let me tell you about these

doozy terrible things that happen. I love telling, like,

kinda, like, the dramatics parts of stories. I like that

part. I mean, I'm kind of hyperbolic as a person, but I've

learned that my brain, I

can tell any story I want to myself.

And the way that I want to think and feel is

good, positive, happy, joyful, peace,

calm. Right? So if I wanna feel those ways, then I need to

teach myself to focus on things that make me feel that way,

to tell a better story. So you can dramatize

those funny moments, those cuckoo bird moments. Like, you know, I don't know if I

talked about it on the podcast. I think I did an article about it. But,

like, when we went to San Francisco, it was, like, just this crazy trip. There

was a lot of bad things that happened on it. But listen to my voice.

I'm laughing because it's just so funny. It's, like, so comical at a certain point.

Kevin and I got one of the biggest fights of our entire marriage on that

trip. But I still remember that trip fondly.

Literally terrible, terrible fight. Worst fright ever in

in front of our kids. It was the only time we'd really

let loose like that. And I think I felt free to let loose because they

were grown ups, but still it was rough. But that's not the

story I choose to tell. I actually tell a story of, like, that was an

amazing fight because Kevin and I got to a deeper understanding of

each other. I got to talk to my kids about how complicated marriages are and

how relationships work. All other kind of kooky things that happen on that

trip are all really funny and, like, what a great story.

So you get to frame your life to

tell a story how you want it to be

and you get power over that. But if you

are focusing on negative or you're minimizing the positive, you're

going to feel negative you're not gonna feel

the positives another thing

that we often do is that we future forecast like

we look at today and we say, because of

today's mo today, tomorrow is going to suck. Or because

of the way my kid behaves right now, if they don't

change, which you're assuming probably they they

won't, like, you're kind of feeling trapped. It's like, uh-oh. We're gonna

be in trouble. If I don't stop my kid's aggression, my kid is gonna

grow up and never have friends. They're gonna get kicked out of school. They're gonna

become a drug addict. They're gonna become a spoiled brat if I don't

stop this behavior. We catastrophize the present. We look at the

present, and we use it to predict the future. I love to look at the

present and think to myself, this is information.

This behavior is showing me a skill gap. There's

a gap between what my child knows now and how

they act now compared to where they're gonna get

to. I assume that my children are gonna overcome the

obstacles that they're currently having. And I practice that in

my programs. I call it positive parenting vision. I also call it

the delight list. I look at my child and I think what is good

about them, the delight list. What are some things that are great about

them? What do I know is true about them that tells me, informs me what's

evidence that they're probably gonna be okay? And then I

just kind of create I can create the future any way I want. It doesn't

exist. Why would I create a negative one? Lincoln

didn't do well his 1st semester of college. Instead of

catastrophizing and thinking, oh my god, this kid is never gonna go to college. He's

gonna be a drop dropout, which is not a problem. But, you know, I you

can catastrophize. Like, I'm wasting all this money and it's you know, what's gonna happen?

He's gonna drop out. He's gonna have to come back home. And what's he gonna

end up doing? He's gonna become a loser. Like, I could definitely think all those

negative thoughts based on the current evidence. Instead, I

just thought, This kid is not quite sure how to be a college student

yet. That's no problem. Let's figure it out. Let's get him some tools

and some, some strategies and some support. Let's have a conversation.

Hey, bud. What do you think you need? Let's reflect. Let's talk

about this past semester. Where do you think you were what were your strengths? What

went well? What would you like to what are your goals? Do you wanna transfer?

Do you wanna graduate? What are you doing? Is it for you? Is

it not for you? Let's talk. And then he was like, no. I I

wanna, you know, go to Santa Barbara and be in college and, like, I love

it. And he got some skills, got some tools, and

now he's doing great. He's got a great GPA. He's transferring

on time. Like, I'm really proud of him. He did it though. He figured

it out. And I believed that it was possible. I

still believe he's 100% gonna graduate from

college on time in his

major and thrive. Even if there's evidence in the

moment that makes me wonder if that is true,

but I tell myself a negative story. So you see how this cognition,

my thoughts create my feelings, and my feelings

create my how I show up. And I want to show

up with to my children as

a parent that feels confident, that feels hopeful

for them. They need to borrow my beliefs sometimes. They

need to look at me because they're wondering, uh-oh, am I gonna

be okay? Am I a good kid? Am I okay? Am I do my parents

love me? Do people like me? Am I likable? Am I worthy? Am I loved?

And am I safe? They have all these doubts because they're little kids and

human. And they look at us. And if we're thinking, oh, my god.

You're a spoiled brat. You're a jerk. You're a disaster. You're not a good friend.

Like, if we're thinking all those negative thoughts, I don't know. I don't think you're

gonna be okay. We'll see. Maybe. Then our child is

gonna borrow those thoughts. They either have to

reject them thoughts and be like, my parents don't know me very well or they

have to be like my parents know me so well and I'm exactly that.

If my kids are gonna borrow my thinking, I'd like it to be good good.

I'd like their inheritance of the future to be positive.

So that's the power of cognition. That's the power of

harnessing your thoughts and thinking about

it this way. Behavior is temporary. This is a

learning opportunity. We have plenty of time. Right? That's how you can

reframe those thoughts about the future.

Another thing we do is we mind read. Okay? We assume that

we know what other people are thinking based on their behavior,

especially with our kids. My kid is manipulating me. My kid is,

you know, they they should know better by now. They're just trying to get get

you know, they're trying to manipulate or, like, trying to round me up.

They're trying to distract me. Like, you make your their behavior

about you. Like, you're in a mind controlled victim

science experiment with children. Right? That's a

thought. That's not true. Your child is just behaving the way they're behaving. You

don't actually know what's going on inside of them.

And if you assume that they're behaving because their feelings are driving their

behavior, which is the thing I teach you, is that they're

acting the way that they're acting because they are young, because they are

still learning, because they are they are gonna

make mistakes. That's all normal. Then

your child is going to you're gonna be able to think about them

as you're giving them the benefit of the doubt instead of

assuming the negative in them. I would rather

assume the positive in my kid, like, oh, they're struggling. They're having a hard moment.

They're having a big feeling. Then choose to think they are being really crappy

to me because they're jerks and manipulative and, like,

sociopathic. They actually we shouldn't even give them that credit,

that much credit because they're really little. They're just trying to get their emotional needs

met. They're just trying to communicate their emotional needs. They're just trying to get their

desires satisfied. And there's nothing wrong with that.

So their behavior is not personal. You don't need to take it personally.

So just reframing that of, like, my kids behavior is about

them, not about me. That will really

heal you from assuming that your child is out to get

you. There's a bunch of should statements we have,

and and that's kind of some of our, default thinking. I

should, I should never yell. I should read

to my kids. I shouldn't let my kids eat junk. Right? We have all

these rules for ourselves. And there's a lot of

times in the shoulds, there's an or else underneath it.

I should never yell or else I'm a bad mom,

and I'm gonna fuck up my kids. Or I, you know, I should

reach to my kids every night. And if I don't, they're gonna end up being

drug addicts. Like, there's a subtle kind of negative

underneath the should, and it creates fear and anxiety.

Don't want you to be feeling fearful, feeling anxious, feeling

stressed, feeling hurt, feeling overwhelmed, because when you feel

that way, then you act those ways. So the way that

you can shift your

behavior is by what I call move your

body, move your mind. When I say move your mind, I'm literally talking

about moving these thoughts. So how do we do

that? Couple little steps here,

kind of modeled it a lot in this podcast episode, but the first

strategy first part of the strategy is awareness. You

can't change a thought unless you know what you're

thinking. And that means doing a

little bit of self awareness or self inquiry.

One of the things that I teach in my program in the com

mama club is a thought dump. Going

in and writing out all your thoughts. So you put the behavior.

Kids spit on me. Kids said I hate you. There's, kids in

the class by themselves. Kid got an f,

17 missing assignments, didn't get off video

games. Let's pick 1, though. Don't pick all of them. Okay? Pick

one behavior and then write some thoughts about it.

What do you think about it? Sometimes I notice that most of

my thoughts are mixed bag. Like, some of them are negative, some of them are

positive. So then you kinda notice and then you pick

1 or 2 thoughts and you start to question them. That's the second one. You

question it. So first you become aware, then you question it.

I think of this like a kaleidoscope. I think of like there's

1 you you you open up a kaleidoscope, you know, you look inside of it

and it looks one way and then you turn it just slightly and it looks

totally different. And so that's what we wanna do with our thoughts. We

wanna turn them just enough to see if there's any other way to think

about the circumstance. So how do you do that? You start to ask

questions. My kid's a jerk. Is it true?

Okay. Is it true? Sure. Maybe say yes.

Yes, they are. Can I absolutely know it's

true? Like, is it always true? Is it true in

every circumstance? Is it true today, tomorrow and

forever? Kind of questioning. Most of the time,

it's not we can't absolutely know it's true. Right? Because

it's not true all the time. So then you can go like, my kid is

sometimes a jerk. Then you're like, are they a jerk? Are they acting

like a jerk? Sometimes my kid acts like a jerk. Then you can go

why? I wonder why my son or daughter

acts like a jerk. Looking at my kid is a jerk. You can flip it

around. Is it is the opposite true? My kid's not a

jerk. Can you find evidence of that being true? Because your

brain is finding a lot of evidence of the negative.

Flip it to the opposite and see if you can find some other

thoughts. Could those be true? Another way is just

like if I'm thinking my kids a jerk, does it help me

be more compassionate? Is this a helpful thought or a hurtful

thought? If it's hurtful, throw it in the trash. Flip it

around. Find a new one. It You can ask it

if it helps you act the way you want to act or feel the way

you want to feel. If it doesn't make you feel good

and it doesn't make you act the way you wanna act, dump it.

Thought dump. Dump it in the trash. Reframe it.

Find a new way to have your thoughts. Finding a way

to reframe and think about the

situation slightly differently. And then notice if it

feels better. This is

cognitive behavioral therapy in parenting.

You can do it without a therapist. You can

practice this kind of thing. Now, in my

program, I'm not a therapist, but I am a life coach and I'm

certified in this doing, you know, this work with you.

And I just help you find a different

way to think about it. My job is to just

kaleidoscope with you. And I pretty

well practiced in all the parenting stuff and also just

life. Like, does that thought what about this? What about seeing it this

way? And you just kinda try it on like a sweater and see if it

feels better. And if it does, we just pick that new thought.

Then that's what you choose to think. Isn't it so cool you can

choose what you wanna think? I love it. I love it so much.

You can choose the future. And then actually what you focus on is

what grows. And what you, you know, how you

spend your thinking is what you end up spending you're doing. Pretty

powerful work and I'm and I love it. Love it. Love it.

And it's a big part of our work in the Com Mama Club. So if

you wanna join us, it's $30 a month. You can join anytime. You can

cancel anytime. You can just try it out. See if you like it. It's

$30. And, if you love it, you get to stay. If you don't,

you just go back in there and you hit cancel. And then the next month,

you're gone. All good. I love it. I love you when you're there and

it's okay if you don't stay. But if you're curious about it, you wanna talk

to me, you can, book a complimentary

consultation with me. Talk for about 30 minutes, 40 minutes, get to

know you a little bit, get to know your family. I like that anyway because

then if you join the club, I know a little bit of your backstory. Get

to know you. I can tell you about the program. You can see if it's

a good fit, if you like me or not. I don't know. Maybe you do.

And, maybe you don't. I'm good. It's all good.

Yeah. So I love those conversations. I'd love to see you on my calendar. I

do a couple of week, and so there's usually a spot there for you

if you'd like to join. And if you have any questions about how

to reframe a thought, you can just shoot me an email and just

ask me for help and I'll I'm gladly be able to, like, just offer

you some alternative thoughts. I also do teach this

in the my free stop yelling

cheat sheet. Like, I give you how to do this thought work,

and I give you a little bit of prompts and a bunch of new thoughts

to think thoughts to borrow. Okay. I

wish you all the good thoughts this week, and I will talk to you next

time.