Learn the Skills to Like Yourself: The Holy SH*T Book Series with Dr. J.J. Kelly [Explicit] Part 3/3

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. From toddler tantrums to teenage eye rolls, this podcast is your go-to for updated and old school tips and tools that are going to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Do you ever wish there was a specific manual that came with each one of your kids? I mean, what works for one often doesn't work for the other, right? And let's face it, we don't know what we don't know. And even if there was a manual, it probably wouldn't be able to keep up with all the changes in our world. Well, this podcast is the next best thing. I'm your host, Jackie Finnaman, a 30-year counselor turned parenting coach. And I've got a lot to share, including hundreds of resources that you have access to right from your home and strategies that are going to boost your confidence and energize you. So whether you're knee deep in diapers or navigating the tween years,

or you're launching your child into adulthood, subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, teachers, and daycare providers. We're going to turn your parenting problems into no problem, one episode at a time. All right, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to part three of our three-part series with Dr. JJ Kelly of Unorthodox Inc. You're such a breath of fresh air and I just love having you on. So thanks for coming back. Thank you. That's interesting. I've been called a breath of fresh air many times and which is counterintuitive to me because of just I'm so like challenging or whatever but I think it's interesting because mindfulness and breathing and forgetting to breathe the breath of fresh air like if only if I was like the person that when you looked at me and you you were reminded to take three deep abdominal breaths that would be awesome. I'd love to be that person. Well, it's so funny that right before we started recording,

I was saying, oh, we didn't talk about mindfulness and how that relates to DBT and, you know, shoot, we're talking about the books today. And then look, it just, it just came through. So yes, mindfulness, let's just do a quick little bit on that. Mindfulness is super important.

We have talked about it because the naming of the emotions is a mindfulness skill. Mindfulness is just noticing it's it's raising your awareness building your emotions vocabulary sounds very cbt on the side of dbt but the zen part is like raising awareness you're just doing it with a tool but there's you know method to the madness you know what i'm saying yeah right and and you know parents go back and listen to episode 218 and 225 because i do go into what dbt is and what CBT is and how they work really well together and Dr. JJ is legit the queen of that I just know no one else like you in and you get to the core and you get to the root and you are again as I say the most authentic thank you I'm gonna pull your books up from behind me here because today we're gonna talk about the holy shit series and when you wrote these it's like as if you're talking to the person. You're having that kind of a conversation with the person that's reading the book or that's sitting across from you in a therapy session. And I want to talk about what motivated you. I mean, I know from last episode, you said writing the books for people who couldn't afford the coaching. I would say who can't afford it. There is always a way you guys,

there's always a way to afford coaching. We are so trained to only pay for services that our insurance will cover, which PS Dr. JJ did that for years and insurance could cover her services. And she got out of that system much like I did. And I mostly didn't even take insurance then because all the good ones don't because they undercut us. Yeah. Give us a third of our paid.

What? No. Yeah. Right. There's always a way you did write it though. So that if people couldn't figure it out for whatever reason in the moment, they could read your books or listen to your books. Go to drjjkelly.com, click on books or find them on audible or Amazon. The first book it's called my kid is cutting the complete plan to stop self-harm. What was the importance?

A couple of things. One is I don't do meetings with parents, which is why we're such a lovely pair. You do the parents, I do the kids. And that makes parents anxious sometimes. They want to know what's going on. And I appreciate that. It's just if I am meeting with you also, your kid's not going to tell me anything.

you need another adult's eyes on the real real and if they think i'm narking on them which essentially that's what it is you're paying me to nark on your kid they're not going to tell me shit and i need to know what they're doing in case there's something dangerous going on and then the parent will hear from me of course right but you know parents really think that they have access to the information and I get wanting it, but nope. So I wrote the book for them to try to help them with their anxiety about not having access to the information of what's going on between their kid and me. I also had, I mean, at this point in my career, it was getting all the referrals for kids that were self-harming specifically cutting. And it's such an insidious thing you know it's still kind of like weirdly it's kept secret and it freaks everybody out the blood part about it obviously completely freaks people out it scares the shit out of parents for good reason and so i you know your kid is self-harming anybody that's listening here your kid is self-harming they may not be cutting but they're doing i was just gonna say please please mention this is a great attention grabber for parents it's the worst of the worst so it is self-harming if i can do cutting i can do any of it you know what i mean if i can address that kind of self-harm then what can't i and what can't you by getting the information from me i get all the

kids that are self-harming and they, I can think of three people and they weren't kids actually that were self-harming in my 20 plus years that didn't stop. They all stopped. And it's, so it's cutting, it's vaping, it's drugs, it's prescriptions, it's booze. It's scratching, it's burning, like it's video games. Yeah. Isolating. It's punching walls, You know, like it's all the stuff that is self-medicating emotions.

And what that means is target behavior, which is an unhealthy one, that somebody engages in to get away from their emotions because they have not been taught the skills to name and regulate that emotion effectively. So for adults, it's working. sometimes it's running the marathons all the time like what are you running away from like all of it it's it's it's whatever that addiction is whatever that thing is that's going to make you feel like you're in i don't know you're controlling it it does work temporarily because cutting drinking like it deals with the emotion or gets rid of the emotion temporarily it's just it hands you a bill after a shame bill or you made messes of some kind and you got to go clean them up now like shame is not worth these behaviors and for the most part anybody that's self-harming if they are given healthy skills to manage their emotions and they will choose that instead of the the maladaptive behavior as clinicians say the the self-harm behavior the self-medication behavior. It's worth mentioning self-medication is different than addiction.

Addiction is a brain disease. It is addicting, certainly. But I just, you know, the medical model of like addiction being a brain disease versus self-medication being like usually a number. Yeah, I got it. Good. So, holy shit, my kid is cutting. Relieve your worry and guilt and get all the tools that you need to steer your kid onto a healthy, happy life. This is the parent's kind of guide. And it walks you through a lot of different questions that you have. And then of course, booking a call with you, JJ, which we have links in the show notes for all of the ways parents can get ahold of you. If they have more questions, the next book I want to highlight here is the, it's almost like that's step one. And then here's step two for the teen young adult. Holy shit.

I'm a gifted misfit. You know, when you write a book, you're supposed to have like a person you're writing to with love. I mean, it, so you pick a, it says the young folks guide to unlocking your superpowers, but this is the eight week course. This is for everyone. Like people love the other books. They're all like shiny and what, but that's the book that everyone needs. That's the emotional intelligence training, eight weeks right there for what 13 bucks. And it's as short as I could make it. It's the longest of my books so far, but it's a pretty short book because nobody reads anymore. It needs to be accessible to people like get the shit, get in, get out, use it.

So would you recommend as they're reading this, they take it week to week, kind of like the eight week course, do they read it through, go back? Like what's the best way to digest? You can, you know, people sometimes read it week to week as we're working in the eight week course. If you wanted to do a self-directed because it's less money where you don't meet with me, you just get my like Kajabi videos and you'll learn the skills.

Doing that with that is the way to go. Okay. For sure. With that in schools, like teachers should be doing that.

That's the cheapest way to go is get the self-directed one, read the book, teach the kids. then if you need me for something, summon me. But like, do you can do it without me. You can get JJ to come into your high school. Colleges have JJ come speak to your students.

You're for hire, whether it's virtual or in person. Oh, I love that. The big groups of kids. Oh my gosh. They ask the questions. They're so funny. The next book is I'm dealing with a narcissist navigating narcissism in the workplace and beyond. I have heard that this one tends to get a lot of attention and people sometimes start with this and I don't know what that's saying about our society in general exactly yes they start with that and then I'm like what you have to do now do the gifted miss that one is real real shiny that's the one that everybody goes for because it's so hot right now right now it's always been around I describe that one as like a humorous take on a very serious topic and I do it in the workplace because oh my gosh is it crippling to deal with in a work setting because you're supposed to be a professional or whatever and they're not being you know they don't adhere to any of the rules you're trying to do it according to the rules and they're going to round and you're like it's maddening and then but you don't know what to do because they lie yeah like they just don't adhere to the structure societal structure corporate structure they just don't so this is more um navigating narcissism in the workplace but also it could be in your relationship you could be again for everybody but like the fall on the sword narcissist they hurt themselves okay they have a fear that they're shit so then they do

something shitty in your presence so you have a normal reaction to it and they get the confirmation quote-unquote that they're from you not liking what they did they're doing it all to themselves but they're roping you into their shame narrative. You're doing it to you. You want it to be me that's got the sword. Nope.

It's all you. Get away. I want to read this little piece in the back of the Narcy one. Okay.

The acknowledgements. Cause this is, I'm the queen of reframes and turning problems into no problem and taking what we can learn from things. Right. And so this, I love, I love this piece here.

It says, thank you to every narcissist that has ever hurt my feelings. I mean it. Not only do I forgive you, but I also learned so much from our interactions. Helping, teaching, giving, and laughing with others is the light of my life.

I am teary with gratitude. So, I mean, literally goosebumps on my arms. I feel like crying too. I don't remember what I write a lot of the time.

So when I hear it like that, I'm like, oh shit, that is so good. like that is so heartfelt and loving oh my gosh and it's true that's why we get goosebumps is because we know the truth when we are in its presence yeah but we we do learn so much and i don't know nurse we might even just have to do an episode on narcissists and narcissism and what it is and what it isn't because sometimes people throw that out there totally that's for the book is the way it's thrown out like a synonym for asshole it's not just that it's so layered it is so layered and there's so much and often there's trauma and there's all these other kinds of things and we you know we can be really respectful for that while having boundaries that's the venn diagram that's the diagram right there baby okay so this is one of the newer ones great holy shit so this is anger that's a funny one because that subtitle's so long i spent so much time trying to pare that down and just could not a guide to honestly assess and effectively manage explosive and implosive anger without toxic positivity the toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing is such a thing now um that like performing being a good person like so attached to being perceived as a good person in lieu of actually being a decent person.

Anger is an emotion like any other emotion. It is valid. It means something. It's a signal, usually a signal that our boundaries are being crossed.

So it's really important that we do validate that and then learn skills to effectively manage it. It doesn't just mean blowing up. It doesn't just mean passive aggressive behaviors. It means acknowledgement, just like all of the DVT stuff, validate and then problem solve, accept, then change. You can't let go of something you haven't first validated. Let it go. Oh, what?

If I knew how to do that, I would already done it. Like letting go, that's a very complex, how do you do that? Everybody says it, very few people do it. It's so true. Letting go of fear and shame, what you're talking about, identify and validate your experience of your own anger.

First, reframe it as a natural emotion. You just said that managing your anger, not just react to an impulse. That's very important. I teach that in step one of no problem parenting, seek first to understand why is my child behaving the way they are and why am I responding or reacting the way I am getting to some of the root of that. And anger is an emotion like any other. And so let's deal with it. Let's learn how to effectively manage it. Like fear, like sadness. Exactly.

Joy can even get you in trouble. If you aren't like aware, excitement can make people do impulsive things that they regret later. So, you know, all of it is about mindfulness, about emotions. What emotion am I having? How do I want to act? How do I want to behave? Is that according to my values when I feel this emotion how do I sometimes act that doesn't match my values and what can I do instead these are all mindfulness training exercises so good so good and then holy shit what do women want the young gentleman's guide to creating love and partnership yeah that's to the young ones because i this incel thing is growing and straight white men entering college undergrad those numbers have gone down significantly and so where are they going instead extremist groups online that kind of thing uh the incel thing is growing and you know you can't write a book for incels or prevention of incels and be like oh holy shit will i ever get laid like that's not gonna fly off the shelves so they actually think the problem is the woman so that's why i titled it like this um but really this is about what are your values yeah values and how do you behave according to them like the woman behind them like for straight people that's still true Like if happy people, a lot of times, you know, straight men are happier with women.

Not always the case for straight women, by the way. Right. Not as happy in marriage as the straight men are. But this is, this is about values and full disclosure.

These are my top five values. Yeah. I'm just, I'm looking at all my highlights to be like, which one am I going to pull out today? Okay, well, what do you got?

The dodged shame causes fear. Yeah, your anxiety spikes when you stuff any emotion, shame and anger specifically, also fear. I love that this book talks about empathy and the skill of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. If you do this, they will attract mates.

This is the part I'm talking about. Mind you, when I'm talking to women, And I remind them of the dangers of not speaking up and how stuffed resentment can really damage a partnership long term. Guys always think that if a woman's quiet, that means things are going well. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Oh, and so they get scared in conflict like everyone does. But you want your woman talking and telling you everything that's bothering her so that you know what it is and you can do something about it. So just like we do with ourselves, we validate and problem solve.

We do that with our friends, our partners, anyone that we want to resolve a conflict with. We validate their feelings. That does not mean agree. Validate their feelings.

And then we problem solve. Sometimes that's, oh my gosh, I can see you're pissed off. Do you want to talk about it? What can I do for you?

Is this a vent or a problem solve? A lot of times your partner wants to talk. She doesn't want you to solve her problems. She wants a space where she can get her partner's validation. That does not mean you agree. Keep quiet if you disagree, at least at first.

But a really great thing to do is say, oh, I can see that you're pissed. I can see you had a bad day. Is this a vent or a problem solve? And if she says it's a vent, then zip it.

I mean, it's so well intended. It's such a great example of intention versus impact. It upsets you to see someone you love. It makes you anxious.

It makes you worried. It makes you sad to see someone you love so bent out of shape. It's not about you. You meet them where they are. You manage your own emotions skillfully. And it's not fair to men because what are they? They are programmed to only feel anger, empathy, shutting off and managing their own fear. And like, they love you. They don't want to see you bent out of shape.

You are upset in some way, angry, sad, afraid. Be quiet, then validate, then ask about problem solving. If it's vent, just hear her. And you could just say something like, that sucks.

You said that instead of tried to problem solve, you would be so much better off. She would be so much more appreciative. You know, society tells men that they have to be good for something. that's why they do it right they want to help their their whole worth is built on having to be useful but like men are to blame for that society is to blame our patriarchal society hurts them too but everybody has to modify their behavior you know when i'm with a woman i'm like explaining this kind of thing and like just hang with them a little bit and like do a little bit of emotional labor if you want to continue the relationship yeah bold whatever that's a different treatment plan for us but like while you're teaching them to do new behaviors have some empathy for they love you that's why they jump into problem solving between programming and well intentioned you know and they don't get to hide behind intention when i'm talking to a dude I'm like, shut up. You are presuming to know, to think that she doesn't already know what you know.

You're not even checking with her. I assume because you're smart, you picked a smart partner. Quit treating her like she doesn't know anything because you're insecure and you have to demonstrate all the time how much you know. That is patronizing. We don't like that. At least check with us to see if we already know that. Teaches you how to communicate. And because emotional intelligence is at the root of that. Knowing and defining your own values and your beliefs. As you say in the book, engaging in behaviors that match your values and learning about how to create love and build a partnership with a woman you choose. Check out the Get Real program and everything JJ has to offer at drjjkelly.com. I just want to say thank you so much for being with me. You too. Yeah, you're so welcome. This is a lot of fun. And I, anytime I get to speak passionately and have the space to do that, I have a ball. So it's nice. All right. That's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode,

click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost. Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool, go to no problem. Parents.com until next time. Remember your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember you got this.