In this episode of the Don't Pick The Scab podcast, I interview certified coach Cari Frame, who specializes in self-kindness and personal growth. We discuss the importance of self-kindness during difficult times, particularly for men over 40 going through divorce. Cari explains mindfulness, the impact of inner negativity, and the significance of self-compassion. She shares insights from her experience at a suicide hotline, emphasizing the value of being listened to without judgment. The conversation also covers overcoming self-sabotage, co-parenting challenges, taming the inner critic, and the power of pausing to make conscious choices. Ultimately, the episode highlights the importance of purpose in overcoming fear and fostering personal growth. I really appreciate Cari for taking the time to hang with me and drop some great pearls on my men over 40. We definitely will do this again!
Takeaways
Self-kindness helps ease the inner battle during tough times.
Mindfulness allows individuals to stay present and reduce anxiety.
Focusing on imagined futures can drain energy and increase stress.
Self-compassion involves understanding and growth rather than judgment.
Listening without conditions is a powerful gift for those in distress.
Avoiding hard emotions can lead to a lack of joy.
Self-sabotage stems from negative inner beliefs about oneself.
Control in co-parenting often stems from unresolved grief or guilt.
The inner critic often operates on negative assumptions.
Pausing allows for conscious decision-making and self-awareness.
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[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome everyone out there to the 52nd episode of Don't Pick the Scab Podcast.
[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that specifically helps men over 40 in their divorce recovery.
[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_00]: They're struggles by providing the best interviews with special guests
[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: with special superpowers, and we have a definitely super power lady today
[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_00]: that dive into the tips, tricks, methods and or hacks for my men over 40
[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_00]: to achieve their new reality in a positive way.
[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_00]: We have Cari Frame on the show today.
[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: She is a certified coach and writer with lifelong study of self-kindness.
[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I preach self-care, so let's figure out what self-kindness is.
[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_00]: The self-kindness transformational power that is her superpower.
[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast with the premise
[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community
[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_00]: to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during or after a divorce.
[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Check it out. So tell us a little bit about your self-care.
[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And let's go from there, but let's start with self-kindness.
[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: How does a man going through the worst time of his life practice self-kindness?
[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's great. They're going through so much during a divorce.
[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think probably one of the things where self-kindness
[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_01]: brings its superpower to men in that situation
[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: is that it helps them not double down on being hard on themselves
[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_01]: while they're going through something difficult.
[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Because there's all the stuff coming at you in a divorce, right?
[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_01]: There's all the circumstances, all the relationship stuff that is coming at you.
[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's hard enough.
[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But then when you have within your own mind, you have inner negativity.
[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_01]: You're beaten down on yourself with all the things you should have done better,
[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: all the things you should have known when you didn't.
[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And then just the negativity that isn't even based on facts.
[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just this constant stream of negative thoughts that really weigh people down
[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_01]: and that add to the stress and take away from the energy
[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: that you have to deal with life and divorce and change.
[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And so self-kindness is a practice that basically helps that inner battle ease off
[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_01]: so that instead of being working against yourself,
[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: you can actually work with yourself, bring constant support to yourself
[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_01]: through your thoughts and the actions that follow.
[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I was doing my research and man, that buzzword
[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: distressed me crazy mindfulness.
[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody talks about mindfulness.
[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: What the heck is mindfulness?
[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Especially in some kind of change like divorce,
[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I would say mindfulness at its core is the ability to just be here in this moment.
[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Because when you're going through change, part of how our brain is built
[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_01]: to help us deal with change is that it will take us to the future
[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: and it'll try to guess what the future is going to hold.
[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Which we're unfortunately not powerful enough to do.
[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have that superpower being able to do it.
[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_01]: But our brain will try to do it.
[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, when we're going through a really difficult change,
[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_01]: our brain will actually put us into a future
[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_01]: that is based on the worst case scenarios of what it could possibly be.
[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Which then adds stress to what we're experiencing in this moment.
[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas when you practice mindfulness,
[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_01]: first thing you do is you notice what's happening.
[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like why am I, why is my brow so furrowed right now?
[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's because I'm imagining this future day
[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_01]: when maybe I won't get to see my kids as often as I want to.
[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Or when I won't have any retirement savings
[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_01]: because I don't know what's going to happen
[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_01]: with this divorce proceedings or something.
[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Right? So noticing in this moment that those thoughts are affecting you
[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: and then bringing yourself out of that imagined future
[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_01]: into this moment and just saying, okay,
[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_01]: that future was really freaking me out, making me stressed.
[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that's going to happen.
[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So instead of focusing on that, I'm just going to be here
[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'm going to focus on what I know is true in this moment.
[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So stay in the now.
[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't project yourself down the road
[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and try to try to imagine what's going to happen.
[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because we lose so much energy.
[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, when we focus on imagining the future that we don't want,
[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_01]: guess what we're actually doing?
[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_01]: We're bringing ourselves closer to creating it.
[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, speak it into existence.
[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Yes.
[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: What if I...
[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Just think it into existence.
[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: What about life of hiding negativity that and you talk about living a double life?
[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00]: How does that apply to someone going through a struggle?
[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, yeah.
[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Living a double life, hiding the negativity.
[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the negativity that first off, we end up hiding from ourselves,
[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01]: which then leads to us hiding it to others is how hard we are on ourselves.
[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_01]: If we could actually hear the thoughts that we have about ourselves on a regular basis
[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: that is just running all the time, right?
[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: If we can actually hear those, bring them out of our head and imagine if somebody was
[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_01]: actually speaking those words to us.
[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_01]: You're a piece of crap.
[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: How could you make that mistake?
[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_01]: You're so stupid, right?
[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: These are actually what our internal dialogue can be sounding like.
[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And we're being affected by it constantly, but we're hiding...
[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: We're not hiding from it.
[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't really know we have a choice because it's happening at a slightly subconscious level.
[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So first there's that and then when we do know that we feel like crap about ourselves,
[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_01]: but we can't show that to the world because that would make us look like we were actually
[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_01]: a failure or that we're failing at life or failing at being a strong man or something like that.
[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_01]: If we shared with the world how hard we are on ourselves, right?
[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So we put on this brave face and we try to act like we have confidence when really
[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: we're fighting this inner battle against ourselves, right?
[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that takes a toll.
[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_01]: That takes a big toll because you can't...
[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately it's going to show, right?
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Like when I know I've worked with clients, men in this situation where they're going through divorce
[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and they want to show up in a really careful, mindful way in their divorce proceedings.
[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_01]: But because they're battling within themselves on all this inner negativity,
[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: sometimes what ends up happening is they end up sabotaging conversation moments or something
[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_01]: with their ex because they've already told themselves that they're going to fail.
[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_01]: That's the thoughts that are happening in their head.
[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You've been bad at this, you're going to continue to be bad at this.
[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And so then what happens in the heat of the moment,
[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: they end up being bad at it because that's the thought that's already been happening in their
[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: head. So yeah, yeah, it takes its toll.
[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: What about men over 40 practicing self-compassion?
[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, self-compassion and self-kindness, they are their brothers and sisters.
[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Self-compassion is basically this exactly what we're talking about where you bring awareness
[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_01]: to what's happening inside of yourself.
[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And then you bring the wish to understand.
[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So rather than let's say that scenario I just mentioned where a guy is talking with his ex
[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: and says the wrong thing or says what he didn't mean to say or something.
[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And after the fact, if he was going to continue to be hard on himself,
[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_01]: he'd just bring judgment and berate himself on, oh, I made the same mistake again
[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and whatever. And it just compounds, right?
[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_01]: On the flip side of that, self-compassion or self-kindness looks more like,
[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_01]: okay, yep, I totally acknowledge.
[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I said the thing I didn't want to say.
[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I was a version of myself that I didn't want to be.
[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I acknowledge that, but let's look at what brought that to happen.
[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_01]: What was happening inside of me that made that happen?
[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, because I was being so hard on myself leading up to that conversation.
[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And I told myself I wasn't going to,
[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't going to be the right version of myself in this conversation.
[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure enough, that's what happened.
[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So how can I do it different next time?
[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And you bring understanding and the opportunity to grow from mistakes rather than judgment.
[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_01]: That's how you're working on self-compassion or self-kindness is if you're not in a place of
[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I have to fix this problem that is me and more like, I want to understand
[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: because I believe that I can grow, I can evolve.
[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I believe in my ability to be the best version of myself.
[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's almost like a self-realization?
[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And even if sometimes there's a lot of self-doubt.
[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes a realization is, oh, I completely know this about myself
[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and I feel totally sure that this is who I'm going to be and stuff.
[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_01]: That's quite rare.
[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_01]: What most of us are dealing with is something a little farther down the spectrum where it's,
[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I know who I am and I know that I've struggled.
[00:10:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And I believe that I have the capacity to keep growing and evolving.
[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not so much that I believe I'm already there.
[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_01]: It's that I believe in my capacity to keep evolving.
[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And even that has so much more kindness and opportunity in it than,
[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_01]: God, I'm such a, can I swear by the way?
[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.
[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say, God, I'm such a fuck up.
[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I keep doing the same wrong thing.
[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Am I ever going to learn?
[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_01]: That's just us like beating ourselves down when we're already down.
[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So self-kindness and self-compassion is a release from all of that judgment
[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_01]: and that beating us down.
[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And it brings more of like acknowledgement and ownership, but also the belief and the hope
[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_01]: and the intention to work towards progress.
[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I got a really interesting question.
[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: With your five years at the local suicide hotline, what kind of pearls did you bring
[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_00]: or learn from that?
[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Switching into that.
[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And the suicide hotline, a lot of people think every single caller is someone who is suicidal
[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_01]: and that's not the case.
[00:11:29] [SPEAKER_01]: There's probably about 70% of calls are people who are in some kind of distress,
[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_01]: some kind of mental psychological distress, and then 20% or 25% are people who are
[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_01]: having some kind of suicidal thought.
[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So there are people who are all along the spectrum of mental distress.
[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So the nuggets, I think the first one is the biggest gift that people get when they call
[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_01]: a hotline like that is someone who is unconditionally ready to listen.
[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So what we have in our life a lot of times, we have people that love us,
[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_01]: we have people that care about us, but there's often a little bit of conditions to how they
[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01]: listen to us because they're, let's say you're talking to a dear friend and maybe they've heard
[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_01]: you talk about your divorce a lot.
[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I can't really listen anymore.
[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And so they'll give you like five minutes to vent or something and then you know
[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that's all they have for you and that's fine and whatever.
[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And when we're talking with people in our lives about what's hard for us,
[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_01]: we're often protecting them a little bit from exactly how hard it is for us.
[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So when someone works with a coach like myself or calls a distress line,
[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_01]: what they get is someone who is there to 100% listen to exactly everything that is true for
[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_01]: them in that moment.
[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And that in itself is 80% of the benefit that the person gets is just being able to be
[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_01]: listened to without any condition.
[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: They can say anything about how hard it is, about how lost they feel, about how mad
[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: they are and they don't know what to do with all that anger or like they get to say it all
[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and we as professionals, we know how to protect ourselves so that they don't have to protect us.
[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: They don't have to minimize their reality.
[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: They get to share completely and that in itself is yeah.
[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Explain to me, are we going to shift gears again?
[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I love doing that.
[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Connect to joy.
[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00]: What the heck is struggling to connect to joy?
[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Struggling to connect to joy.
[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So in a nutshell, I'd say that is a result of when people are armoring themselves
[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01]: against difficult emotions.
[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you start to put up barriers within yourself so that you don't feel hard emotions,
[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: right?
[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're going through a divorce for example and you have a huge amount of grief
[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: about the loss of the marriage that you thought you would have for a long time,
[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: but you can't let yourself feel all that grief because it's going to be overwhelming so you
[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_01]: put up these inner barriers.
[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_01]: What happens is when we wall ourselves off from the hard emotions, we also wall
[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_01]: ourselves off from the good and the beautiful emotions.
[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So people say that they start to feel numb.
[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_01]: They can't really feel the moments of joy anymore.
[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Like they can smile and they can laugh and whatever, but they know that it's instead of going all
[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: the way in and flowing through you, it just goes into about here.
[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_01]: You know?
[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're not really feeling the joy.
[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So doing the work to open yourself up to the heart emotions and the things that make
[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_01]: you feel really vulnerable also allows you to then be open to the true depth of the joyful
[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_01]: moments and the moments of connection and togetherness and all the good things because
[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_01]: they go together.
[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_01]: You close one door, you're closing the other one.
[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Self-sabotaging and you're sabotaging your goals and dreams.
[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_00]: How can a man over 40 circumvent that or prevent that from happening?
[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Because you're going through the worst thing in the world and everything's going to shit.
[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Your dreams and your goals are going to shit.
[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you overcome that?
[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a big one.
[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Self-sabotage is basically a result of what your inner landscape looks like and feels like.
[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you've told yourself that you don't deserve this good future that your goals
[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_01]: are based on, if at some level of your consciousness you've told yourself you don't deserve it,
[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_01]: then your actions, even though you say you have this goal and you take some actions to reach
[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_01]: towards that goal, that inner voice that's saying, yeah, but you don't really deserve
[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_01]: something that good, then your actions will prove that out.
[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So the perfect example is when someone let's say they go through after divorce,
[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_01]: they go through a bit of a wellness journey or something and they get really fit.
[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Right? They work on themselves to get really fit.
[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I know for a lot of men going through divorce, that's one of the things like,
[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to fix this.
[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_01]: However, if how they feel about themselves inside is still negative,
[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_01]: they're not feeling good about themselves, they feel like they failed at their marriage
[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever, the outside will always match the inside.
[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So what happens is somebody will work really hard at their fitness journey and everything
[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and then six months down the road they're back where they started.
[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason, and that's a kind of self-sabotage and the reason that happens is
[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_01]: because how they view themselves inside is still saying that they don't deserve to feel good.
[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And so even though they managed to change the outside, inevitably changes back to match the inside.
[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why you have to start, you have to do the inside work.
[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You have to really bring awareness to how you talk to yourself.
[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_01]: What kind of messages is your brain telling you about you?
[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And then pull that out and start to balance it with what's really true
[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_01]: because usually it's lying.
[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_01]: It's lying to you.
[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_01]: If your brain tells you that you're a total loser, is that factually true?
[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Could you take that to court and have a whole stack of proof
[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_01]: that proves that you're a total loser?
[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No, you can't.
[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.
[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_00]: One of the co-parenting tips, that's one of my favorite.
[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Minimal authority, I have a hard time letting go of control,
[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_00]: of trying to control what happens at the spouse's house.
[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And I tell these guys, you got to let that go.
[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Only control what you can control that.
[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And my co-parenting experience was horrible.
[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_00]: We co-parented separate, basically.
[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Together we can co-parent separate.
[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And so we are on two different pages.
[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_00]: My kids are 3, 1, 30 and 28.
[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: They survived but it was a shit show.
[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And looking back I would do things differently
[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_00]: but it was so contentious and horrible that it was tough.
[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of tips can you give to my minimal authority?
[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so particularly around the idea of feeling a need to control
[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_01]: or to know or to have some choice in what happens in the other house.
[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_01]: There's something under that that they're holding on to
[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_01]: and getting to know what that is.
[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_01]: So whether it grief that they're grieving
[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_01]: not being able to make decisions as a family anymore.
[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why they're holding on to a need for control in the other house.
[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So they need to deal with the grief of the loss
[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_01]: that there are two households now.
[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe it's a feeling of guilt that maybe while they were all together
[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01]: maybe they have some guilt around not showing up as a parent
[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_01]: the way they wish they had and now they've lost the chance.
[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're holding on to needing to control
[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_01]: what's happening in the other house.
[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Acknowledging the guilt, bringing some self forgiveness to yourself
[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_01]: for what you didn't know back then and being able to move forward from a place of
[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I know better now and so I will do better now.
[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Or okay that or they could just be control freaks.
[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_01]: No it's almost yeah but a control freak that's the surface symptom of something.
[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: The inner side, inside.
[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Man no one's ever talked about it like
[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_00]: that one.
[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay good yeah.
[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_00]: How about the inner critic?
[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you tame the inner critic?
[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Because we can beat ourselves up.
[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_00]: We are the best at beating ourselves up because of ourselves.
[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_00]: The only person that can beat up better is your mom I think at this point.
[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I hope not.
[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no your mom can trust me.
[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the way she can.
[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah the inner critic how do you handle that inner critic?
[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the way to reign in it?
[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So the only way is to start with awareness.
[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So my favorite place to start is for someone just at any point in the day
[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_01]: just stop whatever you're doing and ask yourself what is my brain trying to tell me
[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_01]: about me right now?
[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah like even if you do it right now I don't know you might be too much in this moment but
[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_01]: there's always something.
[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a message that our brain is telling us about us right now and sometimes it's neutral
[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: sometimes it's positive but 75% of the time and this has been studied.
[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It's negative and part of that is a survival mechanism so it's not your if you have lots
[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_01]: of inner negativity you're a freak or something no you're just human
[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_01]: but if you can just pause for a second and say I feel crappy all of a sudden
[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01]: what is my brain trying to tell me about me right now and just see what comes up and it's
[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: oh there's something about like I had one the other day I was like why do I feel so heavy?
[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I realized oh I forgot to put my daughter's clothes in the dryer in the morning
[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_01]: and so she wasn't able to wear what she wanted to wear and my brain at some subconscious
[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_01]: level is trying to tell me I'm a bad thoughtless parent because I made this mistake and it was
[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_01]: starting to affect how I felt and so I was like what is my brain trying to tell me oh my god
[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_01]: that because I forgot to do this one little chore that somehow I'm a terrible parent whoa that's
[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_01]: right so first step is to pause everything and just see if you can answer that question
[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_01]: what is my brain trying to tell me about me and then once you pull it out and you can
[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_01]: say oh my god that's what it's telling me ask yourself is that factually true?
[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Factually, pulled up in court factually and when it's negative and it's about you
[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_01]: most of the time it will not be factually true it'll be opinion it'll be conjecture
[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: it'll be just like baseless negativity so once you realize okay it's not true I'm not a terrible
[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: mother just because I forgot to put clothes in the dryer okay that's a fact so what is something
[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_01]: that's just a little more true just a little more true and if you can find something like
[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_01]: in my case and I would say first of all I'm human and so I forget things but every moment of the
[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: day that I can I bring love and care to my kids that's true and I have facts like I got facts so
[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_01]: all of a sudden I don't feel so bad anymore right because I found something that's true
[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: and actually also supportive wow you're in my head Cari because my next question is the power
[00:23:52] [SPEAKER_00]: of the pause why is the but I can see where it'll like break you from that just say hey
[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_00]: wait a minute let me check this out yeah why is the pause so powerful because it helps us not be on
[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_01]: a unsupportive autopilot so we all have negative mental habits right like the habit of being hard
[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_01]: on ourselves man some of us have been working hard at practicing that for decades right and
[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_01]: and we're being affected by those habits all the time so when you can pause let's say I had a client
[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_01]: actually last week who knew he had a really hard call to make to his ex-wife and he was feeling
[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_01]: reactionary like he was frustrated about something and he wanted to just call her up and
[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_01]: talk about it but he's you know what I knew that this feeling in here was going to make me
[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_01]: show up in a way that that I didn't want to show up or that I knew it was an old pattern I could feel
[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_01]: the old pattern happening so instead of picking up the phone I just sat back and I just allowed
[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_01]: the frustration to be there and allowed myself to be in this moment instead of some future or
[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_01]: that past fight or wherever and just say okay I'm frustrated who do I want to be with this
[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: in this moment who do I choose to be that to me is the power of the pause is when you have
[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_01]: a moment where you're not reacting you're giving yourself an opportunity to very consciously choose
[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: who to be yeah which allows you to choose from a much deeper more grounded place
[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_01]: which is usually almost always better right yeah and why is fear no match for purpose
[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_01]: oh that's a neat question why is fear no match for purpose fear needs us to be in the dark
[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_01]: is the first thought I have fear grows in the dark right and when you have purpose
[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: you have something that you know you have something solid that you know it you feel it
[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_01]: it's a part of you and you don't let go of it if you really own your purpose you don't let go
[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_01]: of it just because you have a fear so it's something that that is stronger than those
[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_01]: mealy things that grow in the dark right fear needs us to be uncertain and purpose brings us
[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_01]: so much certainty yeah almost like I would love to know because it's such a great question
[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_00]: almost the purpose brings us into the light where fear is in the dark yeah okay there you go
[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Carrie this has been awesome my my uh men were 40 have about a 30 minute attention span
[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_00]: probably me too it's all good yeah but I appreciate oh let's hear about your connections and where
[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_00]: it can be find you website instagram other good stuff plus I have that not on the show notes
[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_01]: but go and talk about that absolutely yeah so my website is curieframe.com on social media platforms
[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: you can find me as self-kindness coach you can absolutely reach out to me I love doing
[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_01]: one-on-one coaching group coaching and workshops I do custom workshops for different groups so if
[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: anyone wants me to come and show up on zoom and and have a really engaging couple hours together
[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_01]: that's one of my favorite things to do and ultimately whatever you can do to bring those
[00:27:48] [SPEAKER_01]: moments of care and compassion to yourself when you're going through something really challenging
[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_01]: it will never be the wrong thing to do there's no downside thank you very much Carrie this has
[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_00]: been interesting I'm going to have fun time editing this I'm not going to take much out
[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_00]: trust me all of it was my good but hold on the line and uh we'll continue let me go and close out
[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_00]: here but thank you very much for your time and all that good stuff and everybody out there have a
[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_00]: good night all right bye bye