Helplessness: The Cayenne Pepper of Fear — Emotion Series #12

Welcome back to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, and I'm here again with Joe Hudson.

Hey Brett, good to see you again.

Yeah, you too. So today I wanted to start with a story. About 10, 15 years ago, in the height of my base jumping career, I taught my, my romantic partner at the time, my life partner, to jump off cliffs with a parachute.

And hoo boy, that's not— that's a non-loaded situation right there.

Yeah, yeah, very, very non-loaded, we could say. And also, she was the first person that I ever taught to BASE jump.

Oh wow.

I had done some coaching in skydiving and I'd informally mentored people, but I'd never and with somebody from, okay, here's step one, here's how you start, here's how you pack, here's the body position, here's everything. And, uh, did that within the context of a relationship and all of the stuff that happens within a romantic relationship.

Things like, don't tell me what to do, but no, no, it's your parachute. No, no, don't tell me what to do.

No, let me just do everything for you. No, no, it was honestly a really wonderful experience for both of us to have had. And also there was a lot of stuff that we moved through in it. The thing that characterized the experience most for me was— which is what we're going to talk about in this episode— was helplessness. That feeling the first time watching her make that first jump. And to, to add to this, she also did, uh, it's hard to kind of describe this, but So BASE jumping is an acronym, B-A-S-E, building, antenna, span, like bridges, and earth, cliffs. And she did her first 4 jumps from each of those different objects, which is not something people normally do. They normally train from a bridge for a long time before they move to something more dangerous like a cliff. So for each of these first 4 jumps in like 4 different countries, uh, we were just like both very puckered. And for me, yeah, there's just this deep feeling of— this deep experience of moving with helplessness. And one of the things that I learned was the more that I leaned into just allowing myself to feel the helplessness, the less I got in her way and the more she was able to take ownership of the experience.

Yeah.

And ultimately, the less helpless I ended up feeling as she started to develop her skills and abilities.

Yeah, I just want to— I want to say, if you're— if you're a mother listening to this, uh, that's a huge key. If you're a father listening to this, this is— that's a huge key, that— that feeling of allowing helplessness in raising your kids. Yeah, right, right.

And that became a two-way thing in our relationship because I had a much higher risk tolerance than she had in jumping. And so she moved through a lot of the, okay, well, how do I love this person across the, across the risk continuum?

Yeah.

To, to where there's, I can't control what's going to happen in the next 15 seconds. There's nothing I can do about it, but I, but there are things I can do. There are ways I can show up. So yeah. Yeah. I just want to get in. Let's just dive into helplessness and talk about that today.

Okay, sounds great.

Cool.

Yeah.

Okay, so, so let's start by talking about what is it.

Yeah, yeah. The way I think about it is helplessness is a component of fear. So a lot of people will ask me, what's the difference between fear and helplessness? And it's— I don't think of it that way. I would say that I don't know any fear that doesn't have some part of it that feels helpless. And I don't know any helplessness that isn't fear. So I think of it more as like an ingredient of fear. And there are some things where we feel deeply, almost 100% helpless. So that would be, you know, getting sideswiped by a car, being overpowered physically, situations where there was just this deep feeling of helplessness and there's some fear. And then there's things like, am I going to make this presentation a good presentation in front of my managers, which might have fear in it, but, and it has a little bit of helplessness. There's like, oh, I can't control what they think of me or if they had coffee that morning or if they exercised. But there's a much smaller component of helplessness inside of that kind of a fear. So I think of it as a component of fear, and, and I would say the most potent. Like, I would say it's like the cayenne pepper of fear, right? Yeah.

So, so as a component of fear, how would you describe it? What is it like? What is the— what is that particular flavor of fear?

It is the absence of control, or the, the feeling— the feel— it may not be true that you have no control over the situation, but the feeling is that you have no control over the The feeling is like an experience of like, oh, there is nothing that I can do to change the outcome, and it's an outcome I really don't want. It's that combination.

Yeah. Okay. So we've got it as an ingredient of fear. What is it not? What ways might people describe helplessness that we're not referring to here?

Yeah, I would say some folks would say they feel helpless when they feel stuck. And you may feel helpless and stuck, but you may also feel angry and stuck, and you might also feel just a different flavor of fear and stuck. So helpless is not a feeling of stuckness. Oftentimes that feeling of helplessness is very alive. The feeling is very potent and like cayenne pepper. If you eat cayenne pepper, you don't feel stuck.

You feel movement.

So I would say, though it can happen where an overwhelming feel can make you freeze and there's some feeling of stuck to that. So I would say it's not that. I would also say that it's not like learned helplessness, meaning that like a limiting belief that thinks, oh, I can't change something. So the interesting thing about helplessness is the more you allow the feeling, the more potent, the more viral, the more empowered you actually become in your emotional world. But it's that feeling of like, I cannot do anything about it. And it's not stuck, it's not learned helplessness, it's not being a victim, it's not any of that stuff.

Yeah, so homing in on this, we're talking about the feeling, the visceral feeling of helplessness, not the story that I'm helpless or learned helplessness as the defense mechanism. Or, you know, collapse, resignation, or detachment, like, oh, there's just nothing I can do.

Yeah, no, none of that. That's right.

But the visceral feeling, the cayenne pepper.

Yeah. And I would say it is the feeling that when it's— when that kind of fear comes through and it's its most potent, it's one of the things that we want to not feel the most. It is one of the things in like a standard, especially for people who are like super high capacity or people who have become very self-reliant, who are big change agents on the planet, that feeling is like one of the most scary feelings. And they'll do everything not to feel it. Okay, I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll just try again, I'll be resilient, da da da da, because I do not want to feel that feeling again. I don't want to have that experience again. So I am going to be self-reliant. I am going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, work it out and figure it out and do the thing. And for them, it's often the thing they want to feel the least. It's the thing that they can't recognize that they feel the most. They have a hard time recognizing that emotional experience. And it's the thing for self-reliant people in particular, allowing themselves to feel that level of helplessness is one of the most potent change agents. Just much like if someone's feeling stuck a lot, anger can be one of the most potent change agents for them, or depressed. Anger can be one of the most potent change agents for them. For somebody who's super self-reliant, leaning into helplessness can be one of the most potent change agents for them.

Yeah. And it's, it's really fascinating here because it's actually like the first thing that we feel. We come out of the womb and the first thing that, that we are is helpless.

Yeah.

I, I imagine, I, I don't remember my moment of birth. So I can't speak from like episodic memory here, but I just imagine that helplessness is pretty much a beautiful description of our very first moments. And it's fascinating that we can find ourselves feeling estranged from that feeling when it really is at the core of our entire life.

Yeah, right.

Being small in a big universe. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Yeah, we have no idea when the bus will hit us, if the bus will hit us. We have like— there's just so many ways that you can look at your reality and recognize your own helplessness. There's some other things that are really fascinating about it as well, which is like, it is a close cousin to surrender. Like, helplessness is the recognition that you're not in control and wanting to be in control. Surrender is the recognition that you're not in control and being good with it. Right, which is a state that creates a tremendous amount of relief. And so it's a really interesting thing that they're, they're very close cousins. Both of them have the aliveness of, oh, I'm— I actually can't control this situation entirely. One is just a severe rejection of that experience, and, and one is an acceptance of that experience.

Yeah, yeah. So I love that, it's because the next question I was going to ask after we started defining it was like, what happens what does helplessness do as it moves through us? What happens when we feel it all the way through? And one thing you just described there was this, this connection to surrender.

Yeah.

Which often people talk about surrender and that, I guess that can be conceived of as, as like an end state, but helplessness is actually like the gateway.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't describe surrender as an end state. I would, it's more of a verb really.

Yeah. I mean, it's often described that way. Yeah, it can often be described as a verb too.

Yeah.

And like, what is it that you're doing when you surrender? What are you welcoming?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, or what are you not doing when you surrender? I think that the, yeah, so my experience is that when folks fully feel through their helplessness, when I first fully felt through mine, when I've seen like really high-powered executives feel through their helplessness, they become a lot more capable and they become a lot more serene in their capacity. A great example of this is 12-step programs. So 12-step programs, they have the Serenity Prayer, which is all about knowing what you can control and not control and having the courage to affect the things you can control and having the peace not to attempt to control the things that you Can't control. And if you think about the kind of thing that they do for addiction, one of them is to understand that you don't have any control over the substance. Admitting that, admitting that you are helpless in the face of the substance, or if you're an Al-Anon, the face of the alcoholic, you are helpless in that. And somehow or another, weirdly as it sounds, it is saying, I am helpless to this, which allows you to not to be an addict, to not be controlled by it. And it's the same thing. It's like, as you allow that feeling of helplessness, it allows you to see and experience the fact that you have control, but it's not quite control anymore. I don't think we have a word for it in the human language. It's not like you surrender and say, "Okay, I don't have any power over alcohol, and therefore now I can control alcohol." It's, "I don't have any power over alcohol, and I keep on admitting that to myself." And in exchange, I am far less likely to drink. And so it's a weird, because there's no word for what you get, 'cause you don't particularly get control at the end of it, but you see options, you see choice.

Agency.

You have agency. That's right. That, that would be good. Yeah. You, you see the options and choice, but it doesn't mean that you have control. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm curious to go into this a little bit from like the head, heart, gut perspective as well.

Where—

how does helplessness show up in each of these?

Yeah, that's great. Helplessness in the heart is the emotional experience of like, oh fuck, there's nothing I can do. We can all close our eyes and go back to an experience of like the most helpless we felt, you know. And when we do this in workshops, you know, a lot of people will go into that place where they were physically abused or where they got sexual molestation or they got into a car accident or like where the whole world was collapsing on them and there was nothing anything that they could do. Interestingly, also often a precursor to awakening is this experience as well, which is like, oh, like part of the journey into the identity fading away and seeing like the truth of who we are is the recognition that you have no control, that you're absolutely helpless, um, to the identity and helpless to the identity falling apart, that you can't actually protect it. And again, it doesn't give you control over the identity, but it somehow allows you to have agency with the identity. And so that's the heart is that emotional experience. The head is literally, there's nothing I can do. It's the thought process of there's nothing I can do. And the nervous system, it is an extremely heightened state of the nervous system. It's like, life or death. There's a life or death. When you're, when you're feeling 100% helpless, it's like around life and death. And whether that's egoic death or physical death, that's where you're gonna feel it. Yeah.

So, so what happens if you, if you speed bump the experience of helplessness and just skip over it, or, right, or embrace it? If it's such a natural experience and we're born with it, We're born into it.

Yeah.

What makes us find distance from it, or skip, you know, what makes it not just flow smoothly, naturally?

It's super fucking uncomfortable. Like, that confrontation is super uncomfortable, and, and we don't want to— like, our egos or whatever don't want to— our identity does not want to experience its death, as it turns out. And so we just push it away. And what seems to happen is the more that that experience isn't lived with in the minutia and in the large experiences, what I notice is people are more likely to be controlling and more likely to live with like low-level anxiety often, or have a perpetual low-level anxiety, perpetually feel under attack. And what I notice is that when people constantly lean into the helplessness, they feel more and more agency. There's, I don't know now, hundreds of tales, but I think the most common one is Mandela, who was in a prison and he was physical abuse and pounding rocks and being made to be small, feel small. He was in a completely helpless situation. And he, by feeling into that helplessness, he was able to have an open heart and to have agency and to have love. He wasn't able to stop being abused. He wasn't able to stop pounding rocks. He didn't have any control over his situation, but he had this deep sense of internal agency that came with it. And that's what it does. It's that similar thing of, of seeing through the— I would say seeing through the, the, the world of— just like surrender does, it's like seeing through the material world of control and feeling into the, the sense of agency and empowerment that can't be controlled by the external world. And if you don't do it, then you don't have that sense of empowerment. Then you're constantly chasing power, then you're constantly chasing control, then you're constant, and it can all be taken away from you. Yeah, like Mandela, nothing could be taken away from him, right? Like, he was like, it's all been taken and here I am, still here, and came out of that situation and was empowered, wasn't beaten down. Yeah, right.

Yeah, it sounds like there's an acceptance component in it as well. There's a way that it— that experiencing your helplessness, feeling your helplessness burns through some of the illusions and fantasies of control. Yeah, that are grasp on, grasp on to what you're attached to, right? So that you can find and connect to what's actually here right now.

Yeah.

And from there, develop agency, competence, uh, yes, clear seeing.

Yes. The only thing that I will say there is that what the human mind, when it hears that, what it wants to do is it wants to say, okay, now I'll accept the fact that I don't have control. Which is just a workaround not to feel the helplessness. It's the same kind of thing as if somebody was going to say, "I'm going to surrender now." It's like surrender is something that's constantly happening. Like, it's more of an acknowledgement than a doing, and the doing is the opposite of it. Meaning, for instance, the reality is, is that we're all surrendered to our brains having thoughts. Like, we're not controlling the next thought that we're going to have. There's just thoughts coming, and some of those thoughts are like, you're wonderful, and some of those thoughts are, you're shit, whatever. The thoughts come, and you, like, you, you're not going, okay, the next thought I'm going to have is this, and then the thought after that I'm going to have is this. They're just right. And so we are in a state of surrender of that, and it's just whether we're recognizing that or whether we are trying to do something about it. And if we are trying to do anything, including trying to surrender, then, then we don't— we're not surrendered, actually. And it's the same thing with, with the experience of helplessness. It is allowing the feeling of helplessness that creates the acceptance. It is not becoming accepting that creates the, creates the freedom. And so a lot of people, they just go to, okay, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna accept my helplessness and I'll be all Zen about it. But that doesn't actually get you there.

Yeah, it's another form of management.

Correct.

That's right.

Yeah.

Just another control pattern in the avoidance of the feeling of the helplessness.

Yeah. A more subtle one, in many ways a better one than other ones, but still, yes.

Yeah, yeah. So what are some other ways that this might show up for people? We've talked about like high-powered execs, we've talked about, you know, teaching somebody to do something dangerous that you love, parents.

So what I would say is that, yeah, I would say that the important thing is that there's a little bit of helplessness in every one of our anxieties and every one of our fears. There is actually truly something helpless. So if we are going into a meeting and we want people to think we're great or think our presentation is great or get agreement or whatever, we do not have full control over that. There is a part of that that's helpless. If you go into that helplessness and feel that helplessness, it frees you quicker than any other way of freeing yourself from fear. And again, it's not freeing yourself like it goes away. It frees yourself by going through. And so it's, if you do it to manage your fear, then it won't work. If you do it as a way to fall in love with your fear, it will work. And so, so what, what's interesting to me is other examples are any place where you're anxious. So if you're like, oh wow, I'm anxious that my girlfriend won't love me if I say X, Y, and Z, It means there's some part of it that you're helpless about. Like you cannot control your girlfriend's love for you. You just can't do it. Or I am really scared that the car is going to break down. There's some way in which you are completely helpless to whether that car breaks down or not. And that acceptance of that. So it's in every one of our fears. And I think knowing that and going into that is incredibly important. As far as like full 100% cayenne pepper helplessness, I remember had a really deep experience of it when I had just given everything I could to this company. I cared so much about it. It was doing so much good in the world and I had to close the company. And that feeling of just like, oh shit, like my whole world collapsing, everything I think I am collapsing. And how much freedom and how much spaciousness I had afterwards surprised me. Like, I remember, like, it was literally like 2 days. I went right into the helplessness, and it was a bumpy 2 days. But within 2 days, I was like, "Oh, wow." I just felt so much freedom and so much more capable of investing, so many lessons learned. Whereas if I would've beat myself up, "What did I do wrong? How did I? Who could I? What I should've, shoulda, woulda, coulda, I shouldn't have," da, da, da. If I would've gone through that route, the lessons would not even be half as potent or half as varied. So, but I've seen people do this when they're like, their whole world collapses. It's like the divorce, the kids leave, the business collapses. They have that deep feeling of helplessness then too.

So how do we recognize and work with our helplessness? First of all, like, notice where it is, where we're avoiding it, because many places we've probably Avoided it so well that we're not consciously aware that it's there. And then once we find it, uh, how do we work with helplessness in such a way that we don't go into any of the backwaters, like the, the story of the helplessness or the collapse around it, or yeah, acceptance as a subtle control mechanism?

Yeah, so ways to find it are pretty simple. Look for the places where you're most controlling would be a great place where you have that kind of controlling thing that you know creates a rigidity and a disruption in your system is a great way to find it. Another way to find it is, like I said, like whatever anxiety you have, look for the place that has the most cayenne pepper in it. Like somatically feel, uh, where's the thing that's most scary here? Um, that's another way. I'd say another way is to Um, what's interesting is you don't particularly need to feel it in every situation. If you start feeling it in any situation you can find, it relaxes in other situations. Just like if I move anger, then anger moves more easily with like less, um, violence, less friction to the system. Similarly, if you move the helplessness in some of the key areas like you can go into your memory and just go, oh, when did I feel most helpless? And you start moving those experiences, then it kind of changes the way that it moves through you in the rest of your life. So you don't really have to find it in every location. You can just— once you've found it 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times and you've moved it, it starts moving differently in your system, and then you'll recognize it far more easily. So that's how to identify it and just— and to start the movement. And the— and the movement is literally to allow your body to have the fear release of shaking and going to worst-case scenarios and feeling all the experiences of that. It is the recognition that you're not in control and to go into either the scenarios where you lose, if it hasn't happened yet, or where you've lost, so to speak, where you've suffered that loss in some way, or you suffered that trauma in some way. Really important when you're doing this that you have a lot of support around you. A person who can be with you is really great. Um, a person can be with you and not be in fear, who understands that they're there to be like a grounded support, is a really, really useful thing. Um, for that, we would never do a release like that in a, in a group unless there was like a very strong container of love and support. So I think that's really important to be able to do that. Um, and that prevents a lot of the backwaters. What can happen is if somebody moves a lot of, um, helplessness but they're alone and they get caught in the past where they felt it and they can't see the reality of today, their nervous system gets overwhelmed, then it can be counterproductive for sure.

Right, which was going to be my next question here is for listeners who are just hearing this episode and they want to explore working with their helplessness, allowing it. What's one way that you would suggest that they could play with that in a way that's not likely to lead them into opening up too much and getting stuck in it?

Yeah, that— and an easy, gentle approach is the emotional inquiry that we talked about. I think it was on the last episode, but at some point, and, uh, we can put a link to that audio, um, down there. And Um, yeah, so that would be a great way to just like be able to like put your feet in the water and, and feel it. And, and that is not having a full release of it. It is being deeply inquisitive and full of wonder about the somatic experience of it. But it's, it's, it's allowing it to be in your body, but not— it, it will make sure that your body doesn't get overwhelmed, dysregulated. Yeah, that's a, that's a good way. Um, and the other way is just, you know, take 5 seconds with any time you're feeling anxiety, go to the spicy part of it, take 5 seconds and just be like, oh, what's the really scary thing here? And go right into that just for 5 seconds and then go about your day. That's a really good way to start exploring it somatically. Go into it.

Yeah, yeah, somatically. That reminds me of sort of the practice where people go through and they visualize everything they're afraid of all the way through their death and then all the way through beyond their death.

Yeah.

And there's a way to do that as like the story, like visualize the thing I'm afraid of— my company falling apart, my relationship falling apart, my kids getting on heroin. Yeah, whatever those might be. But then there's also the the underlying feeling. Like, if I visualize it and put myself in that position, what does it feel like? We can also do that backwards through our lives too.

Yes.

And then do the emotional inquiry with what comes up there.

Yeah, the same thing can be found in many traditions. Roman tradition and the, and the, the samurai tradition, they all had this experience of like visualizing your death emotionally in parts. And you can visualize any negative thing. I also recommend doing the opposite too, which is like visualizing the whole thing working out perfectly well and having all those experiences, because sometimes those are the more scary things.

The ego—

the ego dies either way. Like, if, if you— if the worst thing happens, the ego has to shift, you know, the self-identity has to shift. And if everything goes incredibly beautifully, the self-identity has to shift. So both of them can be really useful.

Right, right. And that brings up a very important point here, which is what is the difference between doing this practice and catastrophizing, which many people do all the time? And they're like, oh, this isn't gonna go well. Oh, that's gonna go to shit. Oh no.

And yeah, one is in the head and one is in the body. One is a thought process that's created by an emotional state. And the other one is, fully, deeply feeling the emotional state all the way through. So even if you catastrophize, "Oh my God, everything could blow up," you'll notice just if you hear even the way I said it, you could hear my whole body tighten. "Oh my God," which means I'm holding back the emotion. So if you can even say, "Oh my God, everything is gonna blow up," and you allow yourself to feel the whole thing, that can be incredibly healing. So the catastrophizing, that's dangerous or creates less freedom, more rigidity is the one where you don't feel it, where you just, oh my God, no, it's gonna be horrible. And then you just keep it.

And that's what makes it loop.

Right, yeah, exactly.

You just keep looping in it because there's, and there's a reason why those thoughts are coming up because your body wants to process this.

Yes, exactly.

And so it's gonna keep knocking on your door until you actually feel it. So if you're just letting yourself have the thought but constricting around the feeling, then it's gonna continue.

Correct.

And I also like the component of like, remember to do this on, the flip side too on all the positive things. There's a, there's an emotional yoga here of expanding the range of motion of how much you can be with, how much you can experience, yeah, from the range of helplessness to everything's going great, all the way in between. So then whatever actually does happen, even in the, in the, in those little moments, like let's say you're giving a speech Yeah. And between each word, there's some amount of rigidity, some amount of self-censoring, some amount of management. And all of that can just relax if you feel capable and welcoming of the full range of the experience.

Yeah.

Then you'll just have that much more freedom.

And I think the key there is the welcoming. I know I've said it once, but it's so important. I want to say it again, which is if you do all this stuff to control your experience, to control the emotions, it will not work. It has to be a like welcoming, like, I can't wait to feel helpless again. The freedom is not I don't feel helpless anymore. The freedom is in I can't wait to feel helpless again. Mm-hmm.

I'd love to also ask about how this works in a team.

That's a great question. And there's so many ways to think about that question. There's like, what happens when an entire team feels helpless? What happens when one person in a team feels helpless? What happens in a team where nobody allows their helpless feelings? Those are all different things that occur inside of a team. Typically, if there is something that a team is not confronting, if they're in denial about something in the business or in their objective, one person will start feeling more helpless and they'll start getting rejected by the rest of the team. And then—

So one person's holding the helplessness for the team.

Correct.

Consolidates in that person.

In that person.

The rest are not feeling it.

Yep, and then they reject that person, that person goes away, and then a new person in the team starts holding it. So that's what usually happens with one person. If the entire team feels helpless and And I'm assuming when we say that, that they're not fully feeling helpless. If the whole team's just like, oh my gosh, this is never going to work. And they're not processing that, like divest, just get out. Because that becomes that learned helplessness, that becomes that collapse, that becomes burnout. Like if I'm talking to somebody who is burnt out and not the burnt out, like, because I've just been working really hard for a long time, I need a break, but the burnt out of like the psychological burnout, it is because they are not in that serenity prayer. They're, they're, they're using anxiety to motivate themselves over time because they feel responsible or for dozens of reasons. And so typically then that, that's going to lead to some sort of a burnout if it's, if it's like Being used is like, I won't feel helpless and therefore I'm gonna motivate myself. There's, there's a burnout that's gonna occur for those people. It's gonna be typically pretty bad in last years. So that's, that's another one. If a team can process or is not scared of the feeling of helplessness, then they feel it and then they pivot, then they feel it and then they pivot. And, and there's a lot more enjoyment and movement in the team. And they will confront things easily, happily— bad, difficult things easily and happily— because they know that by confronting it and feeling the helplessness, they'll move into a truth and a better way to go very quickly. So it's like, oh cool, I get to feel helpless because I know at the other side of that I'm going to have a clear vision of how to move forward that's going to work better.

Yeah, beautiful. And I imagine that also applies to a family in many of the same ways.

Yeah. Yeah. There was this moment that I had with Esme recently. Esme was going through something with her boyfriend, and at some point I was like, that's my fault. I'm like, this is the way I raised you. And because I raised you this way, it's creating this kerfuffle in your relationship. And I'm really sorry. For that. And in that moment, there was a helplessness that both of us felt, like, like, it's done. I wish I hadn't done it that way, but I had done it that way. And she was like, it's done, and I love you, and there's nothing— like, there's nothing but this that can be done about it. And so we just sat there and looked at each other, and then we cried for a bit. And then she told me, you know, she felt really fortunate that we could have that moment together. And that was the end of it. That was the end of the process. And oddly, just that in itself relieved the pattern in her. So the pattern went away just in that, like, acknowledgment. And, and I remember thinking to myself how when I was younger and I was parenting her, I was so scared of fucking her up. And I thought to myself, man, if I, if I fucked her up 100 different ways and each one led to a moment like this, totally fucking worth it.

Totally. Yeah. I can imagine the puckering. I, I don't have a kid, but I can imagine the puckering I'd feel if I went to, if I was just like, oh, I'm sorry, I, I raised you this way and now you're wrong, is sort of the way that I'd be afraid of that coming off. Yeah. Like, peace. Sorry.

I wasn't saying she was wrong. I, I, I, what I was saying, yeah.

I could see that being the fear of acknowledging it.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was definitely that moment of, ooh. And it was like, You're in pain like this because I, I was not confident. I wasn't fully competent as a parent. That's me. And I was scared of X, Y, and Z. And so I did A, B, and C. So there's a— and I remember that moment where we just looked at each other and we were just like helpless in it and in tears. And then, yeah, so that's like a really great way of just feeling through that.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's a really great way of also closing this beautiful episode on helplessness.

Pleasure as always, Brett. It's good to be with you.

You too. And thank you everybody for listening. Don't forget to send us any comments or questions. You can find us at artofaccomplishment.com or on Twitter @artofacomp. Take care.

All right.