Emotional Intelligence Builds Self Esteem; Wanting to be your kids friend is causing our kids to be anxious & ashamed. with Special Guest Dr. J.J.Kelly

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Fineman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling?

Whether you are at your wit's end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. Hey parents, welcome back to the No Problem Parenting Podcast where we choose to deal with and overcome the behavioral challenges within our home. And today I have a super fun guest on the show with me. Her name is Dr. JJ Kelly. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, emotional intelligence skills training expert, say that three times fast, and the best-selling author of the Holy S-H-I-T, just in case your kids are listening with you in the car, the Holy S-Series. And she's also the CEO and founder of Unorthodox. I love this. I have to say Dr. JJ, Unorthodox Inc., a punk alternative to traditional psychotherapy that centers around group process, peer coaching, mentorship, and community outreach. Dr. Kelly and the Unorthodox or her former patients live their lives with the belief that global healing is achieved by teaching people the skills to like themselves. And we were just talking a little bit before getting started and I can already tell we are sisters from another mister. I am so excited to have you here with me today. Thanks so much, Kelly. Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Thank you so much for being on the show, Dr. Kelly. I'm psyched. I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna have pop here a little bit. Well, I have like a ton of questions for you. You do have, and I'm going

to put all of the links in the show notes. You've written several books and I'm thrilled. Unfortunately, haven't read them yet, but I have ordered all of them. The holy shit. My kid is cutting super curious about that one. Holy shit. I am a gifted misfit. I love that. I am, I am a misfit. So I know I'm going to love that one. And the holy shit I'm dealing with the narcissist. That's intriguing. And these topics are so like all over the place. So I have lots of questions for you before we get into all of them. Please. You know, my story, we share, I shared with you a little bit about my background as a 20 year counselor turned parenting coach. What is your story?

How'd you get into the biz? Yeah. I mean, I, how'd you get into the biz? I, I bet this is similar to you. Like you just kind of know, right. You gravitate toward helping people and then this is what you do and you go the academic route or you don't but if we're lucky we get to work with people and actually watch them improve and that makes it the best job ever whether you got letters after your name or not by the way plenty of dumb people have letters after their name so uh it's not i mean that is true it's privilege right i mean if you get higher education and most people get it without going 200k in debt um because they have access and i i do think that part should change and it's sort of it's sort of uh dovetails i hate that word dovetails into the similarity that um i referenced before which is after almost 20 years of doing a thing and becoming an expert in that, I was like, this is a system that I don't think is healthy for the world. It's got a lot of isms in it, mental health, just like the world does that we're trying to change. And, you know, I loved what I did with psychotherapy, psychoeducation,

lectures, that kind of thing. However, it's within a system that I didn't believe in anymore. So, oh yeah, I left a pretty lucrative private practice to start my company and to start a new paradigm that actually works and doesn't make people dependent on you. And isn't like people getting together, learning emotional intelligence skills, and then they can go.

They don't have to be dependent on me forever. They can use their skills and grow. And if there's a crisis, they know where to find me. So, yes, but it doesn't have to be every week for several months and several years and all that. Now, again, not that for some people, that's what they need. That's what works. But one of the things I was always the type of counselor where I wanted to get in and get out.

I was a three month, six month max kind of person. Unless it was, you know, we'd see, it'd be once a month eventually or something like call me if you need me sort of thing. But in the system, we couldn't always do that because we had to, we could only leave a case open for so long. It was a case, right?

And so that was, that was tough. Not that I don't believe in the mental health system as a whole therapy, for instance, there are lots of great therapies out there, but just not everybody needs that. And I started finding myself more drawn to the people that really didn't need to be dependent on a system. They just needed some support, validation, acknowledgement, normalcy, normalizing.

Yes, normalizing is for sure. Yep. You know, like a diagnosis isn't a death sentence. And the normalizing, you know, one of the, my program is based on dialectical behavior therapy, which I've taught since 04, which for people who don't know, that's just a fancy name for basically Zen mindfulness meets cognitive behavior therapy. So it's everything is the Venn diagram in my world. So it's not black and white, we're trying to live in the gray.

Everybody kind of knows that black and white thinking. At this point, they know that that's pretty much a recipe for depression and anxiety. So people kind of know, they're supposed to learn how to tolerate the anxiety of the unknown living in the gray, but they don't do it. Right. And it's not taught to them. But the staple of what we do is validation. You were saying normalizing? Yes. Validate the experience of the person. You don't just jump in there problem solve right away. You got to learn about the person, meet them where they are, first before you know what tools to even offer them. But there is, ironically, there's not enough listening by mental health professionals. They hear one thing and then they're like, oh, we'll do this. Well, the connection that I think is needed for healing, it also doesn't have the authenticity. It's some sort of like doctor knows best robot, what I learned in a book, DSM.

I'm trying not to swear. You're doing a great job. Yeah. Diagnosing is good. So we know if we're treating depression or if we're treating, you know, anxiety or if it's autism or if it's right. I mean like all the different, however, everybody's still unique. And so, or ADHD or whatever. Yeah. See, I didn't even learn it. I mean, I'm sure I had to take some, some workshops on that back in the day. It's common sense, dude. Well, and there you go.

That's the way to my heart. Me too. Me too. Yes. Just be a person. Come on. Quit trying to demonstrate how smart you are all the time. Like, come on doctors, like get your hands dirty, get in and listen and connect. Right. All this, all this schooling. And we're not supposed to talk about like loving and caring for the kid. Yeah. So here I'm going to, I'm going to re-mention this because I know we talked about it before we started recording for the show, but the, the turning point for me, cause I loved my job. I really did. When I first got the job as a mental health practitioner, like this was the best job and I got to go to people's homes. We didn't have an outpatient office. It was everything in their home on their turf where they felt the kids felt less vulnerable. Right. So that was really, really, really good. And we were in their trenches then, you know, whether, you know, it was, they were a family in poverty and, you know, barely able to keep the heat on, you know, on a cold winter day and the windows are all frosted up or they had better economic circumstances. Didn't matter. We it's, we were in their home,

they were on their turf, they were more comfortable. And one of the things I loved the most was that on our treatment plans, we had to have treatment plans, insurance paid for these services, right? We had kids, we were only serving kids with mental health diagnoses. The first goal was joined to create trust. Yeah. And it was like, Oh, that's awesome. Because that's what you were doing. So I could take kids out into the community. I could take them fishing.

I could do things to just join and connect, right. And get to know them. And then, I don't know, somewhere in the early two thousands that all changed. I think it's when mental health went to medical models. So anybody out there making the rules, listening to the podcast today, stop it uh it's not helping and then we yeah then it was measurable goals this child will tantrum three out of five times as reported by blah blah blah you know the parents the teachers the schools what i'm like what is that so yeah that's when things started to kind of be like i don't know if this is you know a good fit for me let's just say that i'm always i want to be kind to be part of a system that monetizes people. I do love helping families in their day in day out real life situations. And that's again, why I wanted to bring you on because you're the real deal. Yeah. You're, you're, you're meeting kids where they're at. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And offering an environment where imperfection is totally okay. In fact, even encouraged, like the weird bits of you are allowed to come out. And that kind of thing happens in a top down way. Like,

I have to walk the walk. That's why I don't stop cursing. You know, that's why I let the weird show because it's an invitation in my modeling of behavior to them to do the same. I want to actually know them. I want them to know themselves. So let's not hide anything. You don't have to hide here it's not about approval seeking it's not about compliance it's about improving your quality of life your your capacity to experience joy that takes truth it sure does can be messy so let's get messy yeah let's seek first to understand that's step one and no problem parenting get to the root of the problem why is my child behaving the way they're behaving and Why am I responding or reacting the way that I am?

Yes, yes, yes. Validate before problem solving. One of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because you bring a lot of humor and fun and funny and lighthearted to sometimes really tense situations or really dark, dark, you know, situations, depressive situations, things like that. How do you do that?

What do you do? What's your approach? well I mean you're riding a horse the way it's going right I mean like this part I do think part of it is being midwestern you know it is a cultural thing and also like our age as well like goofing around was sort of a competition a friendly competition growing up like whoever could goof the hardest and make the the rest of the friend group laugh like everything for the crack is what the Irish say for the fun the fun of it and um and even if it means serving yourself up on toast for the funny yeah and an ability to laugh at oneself I think demonstrates real resilience you talk about markers there's a marker can somebody laugh at themselves come on over to California by the way the answer is mostly no and i'm all i'm i take my work very seriously and i do it playfully and with joy there's another dialectic the venn diagram because it helps the medicine go down you know to be laughing calms the central nervous system down that's a neuro physiology thing you know that that's just the science of the body, but also it's just a way to form human connection. And we all know it when your belly laughing with somebody, it may be on a first meeting your friends forever after that.

Absolutely. Yep. So how we connected so easily, right? Yes. Yes. Well, you also have the authenticity thing going on too like you care for real yeah and and that's that's cool you know I I do want to be around do-gooders oh well you know join my circle I'll join yours it'll yeah it's all pretty small these days by the way I'm not sure what I got I cleared the deck for you So when you level up, sometimes you, yes.

Or walk away from them. So, yeah, well, I think for me, a lot of people, it's like as a parenting coach, there's so many, you know, it's like, there's so many topics, there's so many views, there's so many opinions and all of those things. And so, and I am the nice, like, I, I really want to be respectful to other people's beliefs. So, but that doesn't mean I don't have my own.

And the thing that I am authentic about is it's okay if you disagree with me. It's okay if you have a different stance, if you have a different cause or a different belief. I don't have to agree with yours, but I can still like you, want to be around you and respect you as long as you're not forcing your stuff down my throat and I'm not forcing it down yours. I am who I am.

You are who you are. We may fit. We may not. And then putting up that boundary.

I mean, for a long time, I would, I think a lot of people do this. We surround ourselves with people that we really don't want to be around. Yeah. And we try to make it work and we try to hang out with them because, you know, they're overall nice people.

Yeah. But when they're constantly putting you down or nitpicking you for this or that, or, you know, kind of draining your energy, it's like, why am I hanging out with them? Well, this is not a good fit. let's just exit stage left politely and and then when you can't do that sometimes it has to be a little bit more like a brick wall up yep and keep her moving like we say in the midwest can love someone from afar absolutely i love that about you i love that you see people for who but you still are who you are and you stay true to yourself what you talked about the isms in mental health. There's a lot of isms. How do we cure ourselves and the world of the isms? Because I know you have a different stance on this or a different take, and I'd love to hear it.

The big question. Well, I believe clinically that, and have seen evidence of, that when you give an individual a place to specifically define what their values are, And let that be okay. Validate that. Even if they're different from yours.

We talk about what are your values? And then I am an expert at the tool of how to still behave according to your values, even when you're emotionally activated. And that is, I'm saying that in a very succinct way, but that's a really difficult and layered the same. And I teach the four modules from DBT, mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Those are packed full of tools, each one of those. And then you can cherry pick based on the situation as you continue to learn and practice the skills. So if you are a person that is now regularly engaging in behaviors that are in alignment with your values, you're building self-esteem and self-confidence. For real, not just talking about it, it's actually improving your quality of life and your ability to, your capacity to experience joy. So everybody's getting a hold, right? They're building their self-esteem, their self-confidence, they're eliminating behaviors that cause shame that's a biggie because every time you get emotionally activated when you get so distressed that you give yourself permission to act the act the jerk then that causes shame and then you hide the shame because humans want to like hide out some shame and that causes anxiety which increases your chances of engaging in the behavior that causes messes in the first place and then shame and then anxiety you see yeah so if you're eliminating those

behaviors when you're emotionally activated that cause shame then you're engaging in the behavior on a regular basis that align with your values you're building self-esteem and self-confidence now that individual is getting whole they're finding out who they actually are who they want to be and I believe that the natural consequence of getting whole is that you want to then give you want to naturally give and share and help yeah because that's what happy people do right they they value generosity they value connection and all these skills have given them a way to actually do that in a very practical way. I think the human spirit craves connection, and that can come through helping. It can come through generosity. It can come through teaching.

You know, my advanced students, they know so much. They're so emotionally intelligent, way more than any doctoral student I ever supervised, by the way. So they're getting, they're whole young individuals. I want them now to mentor the younger ones. So that's what we're moving towards then. The pre-docs, the ones that are under 18. Oh, I love it. They get cute. Baby docs, pre-docs. So they dip in, the docs, the advanced students dip in and do their own teaching.

I have a kid, one of the advanced students who's mentioned in the cutting book, this kid has past and has brought herself through. Oh, it's unbelievable. She's a miracle. She started an MMA business where she also teaches the emotional intelligence skills within the self defense. It's so MMA, like martial arts. Yeah, she's a competitive fighter, which paging Dr. Freud on that one right so she teaches some of the some of the docs and some of the pre-docs self-defense how to defend themselves how to get resilient and I mean it's so that is so awesome yeah I just had Michelle Tremblay on the show uh recently too she teaches that it's like that, you know, going from shy girl to confident person through martial arts, yoga,

dance, movement, those kinds of things. And then also we talked about what shy kids and mean kids, not always bullies, but have in common, which is often a lack of self-confidence. And so I love that you're doing that too, like getting them to feel whole, to know who they are in their own skin. Right. And when they do, when we do feel good, we're not mean, we don't feel like we need to be defensive or resistant or mean we're giving and being kind instead. I love that, but what do we do focus so much on the problem? And that's another question I wanted to ask you. Why do you think we focus so much on fixing the problem rather than listening?

It's the men, it's the medical model. Yep. It's patriarchal. So tell me Dr. Nosebeth, Dr. Knoth-Beth, who has historically been the doctor, who has historically earned the money to get a doctorate, top down is very much the society we still live in.

And I don't mistake that with an oversimplification of man-hating. The patriarchy hurts men, too. They're only allowed to feel one emotion, anger. That is not great for men and for sweet boys and sweet men.

Society is pretty tough on empathic dudes. So I'm talking about a system that encourages certain things, money, power, competition, and discourages other things, emotion, collaboration, sharing, generosity. I mean, I think again, the Venn diagram, the balance of masculine energy and feminine energy into that intersected middle, which is a blend of the two. Right.

And that's why seeking first to understand and really getting to know the person, not from this expert, like, oh, I'm an expert. Cause I have 30 years of experience working with kids and families. So I'm going to be able to come in and tell you exactly what you need. No, right. I have some skills. I have some experiences, most of which I've learned from the families I've worked with just like you. Right. And everybody is still unique. So I'm going to tell you what I know and what, but we're going to tailor it.

We're going to, one of my favorite things when parent, when my clients, you know, I'll give them a suggestion or something to try. And then they come back and, well, that didn't work at all. Or, you know, they're all fresh. Well, see, we've tried everything and we've tried this and we've tried that and that didn't work. And I'm like, that's the stuff I want to hear. Some parents don't want to tell me it didn't work. Like they're going to hurt my feelings. I'm like, no, if it doesn't work, you got to tell me we're going to figure out how to make it work, tweak it, or do something totally different. We are not following a strict totally all of you know treatment plan goals here that that is another answer to your question then ego is the problem oh fragile ego is the problem and a natural byproduct of a patriarchy by the way because if you have to present as extraordinary and right all the time not possible everyone makes mistakes so then you hide them away if you're hiding anything that's going to cause shame and then that's going to spike anxiety that's going to increase the behaviors that erode self-esteem because they cause shame and over and over again right so i tell i tell the people i work with i'm like dude i think everything that comes out of my mouth is brilliant but if it doesn't resonate with you it's garbage if you can't if you feel it in your gut throw it in the garbage it doesn't matter if it isn't connecting yeah you know I'm taking educated guesses

on how we can connect if it's not connecting then throw it away like you think I care what a 13 year old thinks of my IQ like no offense but come on yeah but it's like it's like people wanting i had i had a a veteran once 30 years my senior in the field uh came in and audited one of my dbt classes years and years and years ago and because they wanted to learn about dbt and uh and when we left this veteran said to me wow you really don't give of people like you do you and I was like uh no why would I go in there and make it about me my job in that room is to teach them the skill however it can get done if I put myself first first of all how fragile is that how very birthly uh if I put myself first i'm thinking about being liked how nasty is that and i'm going to rob them of learning the skills they paid to come here and learn because i'm going to adjust based on trying to control whether they like me or not how insecure and narcissistic is that not to mention criminal to some extent because you're taking money to feed your fragile ego, which can never be fed that way. By the way, you can't fill an, a bottomless pit of no self-esteem in that external validation grab. That is not how it works. So what, what do you think it was that the veterans saw in you that made him say that, that you didn't care what people thought? Like a little hostility there could have been some passive aggression in that comment where there

was like an actual judgment like you better not act that way rookie oh you actually don't like like i should question it but i honestly i think there was a thing in in it too of like a little bit of jealousy of wishing that they had the ego strength that i have and the wholeness yeah to do it in that very clean boundary way. Right. Yeah. I can remember a couple of examples in my career too, where that would happen. You've got somebody that comes in that thinks, well, sometimes it's envy too. Right. But they kind of like, they're so impressed with how you did that, but now they don't feel as competent or as capable. And, and, and, you know, those are not feelings. They feel insecure because they think they're not as competent. Yeah. Good point. I'm only saying that because that is a huge thing that we do is separate thoughts and feelings because general society has been taught by strength good job to just say i feel statements but like i feel like you're a jerk it's not a feeling that's a thought it's a hardcore judgment right and thoughts are things not feelings that's and they're not necessarily facts just because we think them right yeah we validate feelings not all thoughts not all behaviors absolutely not but if you can get to the feeling then you have a chance of not believing everything you think when you're emotionally activated when you're super pissed super scared you're gonna think crazy stuff and

that's okay yeah that's totally natural they have dark dark thoughts that's okay you don't have to hide that you think them you can't control what you think you just don't want to ask on them but everybody's like oh i want to portray myself as a good person a good person never gets mad wow when anger is the emotion that signals to us that our boundaries are being crossed who the hell you think benefits from talking us out of legitimizing anger so here's here's another thing parents being strong enough maybe you may want to rephrase this for me to handle their kids need to know they are quote unquote strong enough not physically but you know capable enough to handle those deep dark yeah thoughts those the the darkest anger the things that like that's what i teach parents to be able to if if the kid doesn't think you can handle what they're thinking and your feeling, right? They're not going to come to you. So I just wanted to add that on to what you were saying. That's similar to the story about the veteran.

That story I just told about the veteran is a lesson for parents. You cannot make mood-dependent decisions. Everything I teach in the Get Real program is about not making mood-dependent decision. So you have your set of values as a parent, as a member of a family, you have your family's values. So you want to behave according to those values. And I think fear and I emphasize as parents, what a scary job. Oh my gosh. And you can't be worried about whether your kid likes you or not. That sounds impossible and it must be so. It's going to make you effective. It's not about you. You made a person. So you do everything in alignment with your family's values to educate that person. And sometimes that means consequences because if they've gone outside of the line,

which teenagers are going to do, it's their job. Then it's your job to bring them back into the safety box of the family's values. The cutting book is all, it's a parenting manual and it doesn't have to be just for self-harm. Although chances are your kid is self-harming and self-medicating in some way. Sorry that that scares you. And you have to get real with that fact. It's not when it's not, if they drink it when they drink, you had got to wrap your head around these scared because otherwise you're going to la la la head in the sand yeah and then you're going to miss it and then they're going to be unsafe so I do lay out in detail a lot of these things but this trend of wanting to be your kid's friend is making it's putting out anxious and ashamed kids it is they're not confident and I I think it's not it's it's about wanting to be their friend, but I think sometimes it's about not wanting to hurt their child's feelings. I see that a lot. Parents are too nice these days. That is not, that is not what our kids want. It's not what they need. It's not what they need. And I think it comes from an endearing place. They're just,

they're really worried. They're going to mess up. They're going to screw up. They're going to say the wrong thing. If they've got a very emotional child, you know, that's going through something.

And so they don't know what to say or how to say it, or if they should bring it up or not bring it up. And so that's like literally fingernails on the chalkboard. I say with teenagers when they're, they know their parents aren't comfortable talking to them. Right.

So the parents have to validate and problem solve around their own fear in order to regulate that emotion. So they get back to baseline where there's a higher chance of them making an actually effective decision when you're emotionally dysregulated and you make a decision when you're way off baseline that's a mood dependent decision that is not mindful it is often not effective and it often causes messes that need to be cleaned up later and cause shame and then anxiety right so i want people to write down what their family's values are i want them i I in detail talk about writing out a contract for the family, including grades, grades and consequences and privileges and jobs outside the home, whatever your family's values are, you write them out.

Kids signs that you sign it. It's on the fridge for when they go, no, you never said that. and you have a structure then that holds you you know what are the consequences how long do they last this thing about oh when your behavior improves no no you put a time limit on it you don't shame them right consequence is their consequence you don't sit there and shame them because you're too much of a wuss to enforce a two-week grounded yeah you know I actually this is in one of the books but I grounded a kid years ago for an entire semester no phone no computer other than homework no no Netflix or anything I just have a moment of silence for you right now just to hang on I just want a moment of silence like we're all gonna pause it's okay dr jj go ahead three semesters of warning on that okay i will do this and they didn't think it would happen and then i brought the mom in and we wrote out everything what was going to go on and the kid actually enforced it some more than that yeah that's funny when it happens doesn't know i always talk to parents about like the grounding we want don't ground or take technology away forever but if you do because you get to that point which obviously with this kiddo three semesters worth a warning on it right there was plenty of time to make a change you then you have to follow through you have you cannot threaten things you're not going to follow through on and this kid could

their grades were changing they were like permanent potentially permanently affecting the rest of their life right like my goal with somebody that's a teenager is to like not do any permanent damage and then get them to college right and this is something that by the way that kid got straight A's the rest of high school and like two B's in all of college yeah so they obviously were capable of doing the thing yeah that's a good disclaimer to put in there because some kids it's not about that they don't want it's they really there's some kind of learning disability going on there and they can't do it but anyway that's why we can't go that is in the book as well. I do not forget about different abilities for different students and parents have to get realistic about that as well. You don't have to go to an Ivy league school to get a good education and to have a nice life. Well, you don't even have to go to college right away. If you don't know what the heck you want to do, there is nobody that, I mean, there's,

you do not have to, there are, college is great, but college isn't for everyone. and we need to change the conversation around that as well because we're putting kids in that they're going for two three years they don't even know what the heck they're doing their grades are up and down and all around and now they're like you said dead i digress um so yeah back to the the kiddo for the the semester you don't think parents should take the phone away uh last resort i don't know yeah i don't i um in fact uh when kids as far as consequence and that trust me everybody's different so there are times when the phone does have to go away because if it's if there's a safety risk with it it's got to go or maybe give them a dumb phone and not a smartphone you know so you can still get a hold of them or something like that yeah but yeah i'm not real big on on external kinds of it's all about when a kid messes up there needs to be a consequence for it. Right. But problems, that's why no problem parenting problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome. It's in the definition of the problem dealt with and overcome. So when a kid messes up and they do something, whether it's a little mess up or it's a ginormous mess up,

their job is to make it right. Make it, make up what they did wrong, right? Make up for it, make, make, you know, make amends for it, fix, repair, whatever. It's all different depending on, you know, what they did. So I prefer, I learned this years ago in my, uh, one of my favorite attachment specialists, it's a technique called the make it right technique. And I'll put that in the, in the show note, a link to that for people. If you want to get the free download, I give it away for free because I learned it from somebody else. Well, we all learned everything from somebody else. Right. But anyway, I give it away. Uh, it's basically after something happens, you say, what happened when you're all calm, when you're not in a fight or flight, when you're not like resistant, you know, beefed up parent, you know, chest puffed up and I'm going to tell you,

you know, what for and whatever, you know, not in those moments later, go back to it and you say, Hey, what happened? And the kid tells you, you get to the point where the kid can tell you, honestly, what happened? I lied. I cheated. I went on a site. I wasn't supposed to, I didn't do my homework. I hit my brother. I, you know, smoked pot. I did whatever it is. Right.

when you say, yeah, good job being honest. Thank you. Good job being honest. Step two is acknowledge their honesty. Yeah. And then go into what are you going to do to make it up to me?

What are you going to do to make it right? What are you going to do to make it up to your brother? What are you going to do to repair the door? And then they get the opportunity to do, they don't always know what they're going to do. So you can have a list of things inside the pantry door or, you know, somewhere that says, these are things that this person, this person, this person, anybody in the family has their top 10 things that would make them feel good. If somebody wronged them or hurt them, sometimes the consequences very, you know, well, you're going to have to go, you know, to the hardware store and pick up some sheet rock and fix the wall that you put a hole in, you know, sometimes that, but it's, what are you going to do to make it up to me? Or what are you going to do to make it right? And then that person needs to ask if this, like, let's say my kid hurt me. And I say, you know what, bud, I would just really love if you would go to a movie that I want to watch and you'd sit through the movie with me.

That's how you can make it up to me because you know, he's a teenage boy. He doesn't want to watch my movies. He doesn't want to go to see my movies necessarily. Right. But that would fill my tank or go shopping with me. I am not as, I don't like to shop and I definitely don't like to be in a store even by myself. So going shopping with me would, would make it up to me. That would fill my cup.

That would make me feel good. And so then he can say, Hey mom, can I go to the movie with you? yeah, that'd be great. All right. Good job making it right. And then life goes on. We keep removing, but when we're constantly consequencing and putting these like groundings and taking technology away and the very thing, especially now, even though some of us adults don't get it, we don't understand the fascination with the technology all the time. It's their norm.

It's how they're living there, you know? So it's very hard on them when you take something like that away. And so instead of doing that, we give them an opportunity to make it up to us better than saying, Oh, sorry, you know, kid hits another kid. Oh, sorry. They're not really sorry. So now the kid that got kicked has also been lied to like, what is that teaching? Right. Oh, but as adults were like, Oh, but that made it all better. Okay. See, now you know what you did wrong was wrong. Okay. Now we're, you know, now superficial. Anyway, like I said, I could hijack the podcast.

I want to highlight you. So tell us a little bit more about the Get Real program. How does it work? What does it look like? It's based on DBT, of course, and it is an eight week thing for beginners.

Everybody has to start with the beginner. And it is, I don't know, a series of short videos in a week, week one through seven. You watch the videos, you learn new skills, you practice the skills during the week. You write a little bit about it. You write it down, pen to paper, so that when you show up and I'm asking you, you don't have to remember. You can look at the piece of paper where you wrote it down because people freak out. So I make them write it down. And then we tweak it when we get together. You demonstrate what you've learned, how you've practiced the skills, and then we tweak it to fit it to you and your values and just mine it and make it even more effective for you and see what what the impact was and it's super cool because very early on you're practicing the skills and you're going to see an impact and then it's no longer oh just because i said you got to take my word for it now they have their own data and that motivates them to be courageous and try more new skills because that eight weeks I mean dbt originally was like two hours for two years two hours a week I remember that what and I always did 16 weeks because that's a semester people are kind of used to that to 12 to 8 and that just makes it more accessible but it also means we're crunching a whole lot of really dense material into a short program so we don't have time to like mess around we got to get in there and tweak it right away

make it effective but once they have their own data which happens almost immediately then we're off and running i love it and is this one-on-one a group setting there are like group setting is the basic but there are different packages like if people want one-on-ones they can have them if they want twice a week they can have them you know if they want to tailor it to the kids that's an option too so they go to drjjkelly.com and find out all about that right yep they're all listed there the different the different packages and it's like under 18s and over 18s and it's beginner intermediate advanced everybody has to start with the beginner i don't care if you think you've had vbt because most of the time when people say they've had it they don't even understand the first video they have not been taught vbt or not well yeah right what's the youngest age you you serve 10 okay so the 10 and ups through college adults 20s okay got it yeah i know i have adults as well i just like that i just like the nls they all come to me but no i serve i serve adults i serve executives in corporations um i now because of the pandemic you know belfast new zealand like yeah all over all over me too i love it i love it yeah cool it's a bright a bright light or bright side to the stupid pandemics all right well i want to also mention though you have you have an instagram page at dr jj kelly tons of free content during the pandemic we put so you can learn so much just

from my instagram so that's and that kids can follow it right oh for sure like it's super kid friendly and awesome and then you also have a youtube channel so you do a podcast or youtube show or what does it it has a couple of the podcasts that we've done throw up thursday come bark your problems you'll i love that i've listened to some of those that is hilarious throw up thursday's perfect that's with one of the docs and often docs will be advanced students will come on that and ask the question um that's what I like is the real life questions that I can just answer on a live that's just like quick and dirty I love it um and then we did a Joe and JJ go mental um with this woman from Belfast um so we we're trying to normalize mental health in different cultures that kind of a thing um but yeah and you know I made the books into audio versions and podcasts on Spotify.

You can, and the cutting book is essentially a parenting manual. But what everybody needs is the Gifted Misfits one. That is the eight week course in a thin little book. Everything that I teach is in that Gifted Misfits book.

People are all going toward the narcissism one because that's so fascinating to people nowadays. They think they know what it means, even though they don't. So I define that in the book, but I'm hoping that then people's interest in the narcissism book will bring them to the gifted misfits because that's what they actually need is the eight week course that is so cool i can't wait to get mine in read them i'm definitely having you back on thank you so much for being with me today this is so fun it is you know it's isolating when we're we love this work from home gig but it also can be isolating as just even as professionals and and parents and all that so i look forward to uh checking in with you again real soon. Thanks again for being here. Cool. My pleasure. Thanks for letting me talk.

Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share or leave a review of the show your support of the no problem parenting podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families Thank you.