Adolescence, Stress and Covid with Michelle Roisman, LCSW & Jason Wasser, LMFT

Welcome back. So tonight I have a really awesome guest. It is not only a former student of mine but now a colleague and associate, Michelle Reisman. She's a licensed clinical social worker who has experience working with children, teenagers, and adults, and she originally grew up here in South Florida, and after a few years in New York came back recently right before the pandemic started. And she received her bachelor's in psychology from Emory University and her master's in social work from Columbia Columbia University. And since that time, her work has included providing home-based family therapy, as well as working in outpatient clinics with individuals of all ages. Her passion has been working with children and adults who are experiencing stressful life experiences and have traumatic histories. Michelle, thanks so much for hanging out with us.

Thanks for having me.

Of course. So it's really, as we know, people don't know this, but for anybody out there who's listening and watching, Michelle literally lives less than a building or so away from me. We do our awesome social distancing. We're doing this via the web, so I'm glad, I'm glad to see you for the first time in a while face to face. So I want to get started first because people always ask us a question: why did you become a therapist, right? And specifically, why did you pick doing what you're doing? So I love to start off with that story. For you.

Sounds good. So I guess where it started was high school. I volunteered a lot with underprivileged children in different areas, different communities, doing different things, and I realized there was such a need for resources and support, you know, for the whole family, not just the child. And that's where it really began, was with the parents. And I ended up majoring in psychology in college and then got my master's in New York City, which you had said. And while I was in New York City I was working in so many different neighborhoods. I was working in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and I just witnessed a lot of different things. And while I was there, I had to go to a lot of trainings in trauma because the students and the children that I was working with, most of their histories, yes, they had depression, anxiety, but they really had PTSD. And it was really hard to diagnose and to see that from the school's perspective, from their parents' perspective.

And it just became my passion, something I really was interested Yeah, so when we talk about trauma, people kind of put it out there as in like, oh, I went through this thing and now I'm traumatized, right? So from your understanding, from your best experiences, from, from your point of view as an expert therapist, what would you say is your personal definition of trauma, um, and in what ways does it show up? That we might even, might even not consider trauma being trauma.

So one of the biggest resources that I love is called the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and so I'm going to give you their definition and I'm going to fill in the gaps. So they define traumatic stress as anything physical or emotional that could happen to somebody that could threaten their life, either physically, psychologically, and it could be to someone they love. It doesn't necessarily have to be And so when we think about trauma, we have to think about the reaction to it because it's so subjective. One person could go through something and be totally fine, and the other person could have a significant, you know, psychological change. And a lot of things that people don't realize that come from trauma are, you know, of course people know the overwhelming sense of terror, the helplessness, the horror, you know, the range of emotional reaction. A child could just not be sleeping, they could be nauseous, they could have stomachaches, headaches, right? They could just not want to go to school, they could be avoiding anything, and if you ask them what's wrong, they're gonna say nothing's wrong. And of course, because they don't want to talk about it. And so it's really hard to, as a parent, or even, you know, an educator or therapist, to see that that's what's actually going on because they don't want to bring it up.

So how many kids, right, as we're seeing this, I'm flashing back to my childhood and And it's right, it's interesting that we all go through stuff and depending on our story, depending on our culture, depending on our experiences in life, we may not call something what it might be. And I'm thinking back to all the times in elementary school, middle school that I wanted to not go to school. My stomach hurt, my head hurt, all those times where they actually were physical symptoms. But it was, you know, in a way non-diagnosable as a stomach issue or whatever it was. And it wasn't like there was anything massive going on, but like, I'm looking back now hearing this and also, you know, from my experiences being a therapist, that sometimes we don't call that stress-related trauma. Right?

That's so important, especially right now, you know, during COVID and this pandemic, right? Nobody's going to look at this and say, oh, you have PTSD from this this pandemic, and now, you know, you're traumatized. But if we look at what trauma really does to a person, how your fear is consistent and it's helpless, and, you know, there's hypervigilance and, you know, a state of shock that your body gets into from a trauma, the same thing could be happening now for kids everywhere, right? Their cortisol levels, which is your stress hormone, gets shooting up and they cannot calm down. If they're a generally anxious person, then imagine now, it's going to be even worse. And so I think it's important to remember that not every event necessarily is a trauma, in quotes, but it can be traumatic for somebody.

Yeah. Well, I'm noticing as time goes on, right, because we're now in the end of July, and about a week ago, because I noticed for myself, and this is one of the things that like people are now starting to ask, like, well, as therapists, how are you, what is your self-care, and what's your anxiety levels, and all that stuff. And I'm being honest that it definitely has its toll on me. And I realized that as I made a commitment a week ago to start meditating consistently every night, I actually have those Muse headphones that we sell, right, that you talk about advertised, and I got it last in February and I started meditating with that. So I just looked last night after my meditation, what are the actual numbers of what's showing up in the last week to 2 weeks, right, that I really started doing it again consistently last week to the beginning of the pandemic. Right, mid-March, and I can see that my total relaxation function, that it shows up on the scores, there on average it was 70 to 90%. And now my highest score of the last week, even though I feel relaxed and I feel connected to meditation, it's not getting past 60% on my brain scans, right? And this is a 5, 10, 15-minute meditation, and I'm conscious and aware of what's going on around me. So I know for sure physiologically and neurologically stuff is showing up for me as an adult, adult and as a conscious, right, person. So I'm wondering like, what must kids specifically differently be showing up for now that like, if we're not tracking them, what can be these little minute things that could be showing up for them and how can we start implementing some things that we can do for them as well?

Well, we know, you know, in adolescence our brain's going through so many different changes, right? We're learning so many different things. We're learning independent, we're having new relationships with friends, with teachers, you know, with our parents, and part of that, our brain has to increase cell production, right? Our brains are growing, we're doing new things, and we have to give that opportunity to our brain to grow, and to do that, the other parts of our brains stop because they can't all go on at once necessarily, and so, you know, our amygdala, which is our— the part of our brain that is in charge of our emotions, takes over because while our prefrontal cortex— now I'm getting very specific— is growing, and we know that it doesn't grow until late into our 20s when it's really done maturing, I should say. And so while that's learning how to, you know, be good at decision-making, prioritizing, inhibiting certain behaviors, and also doing the behaviors you want to do, our amygdala is what covers our emotions. And so when we go through trauma or any traumatic experience or stress and our body's having that physiological reaction, our brain can't incorporate it all and it slows down growth, right? It slows down our brain being able to take in new skills, learn new things. And so it's really important for us to kind of slow down that other— those other emotional processes going on in our brain so that our brain can kind of relax. And take a step back. And that's why the meditation for you has been so helpful.

So let's take a back step for a second because I know we're talking about the amygdala and all this prefrontal cortex stuff. So I'd like to give the listeners who haven't, you know, have any background in studying any of the neurology behind all this stuff, and just give— I'll give a quick 30-second breakdown. So really there's 3 parts of our brain that are interacting with ourself in the world on a daily basis. And the first one, let's call our neocortex, which is our rational brain. That's the part that's logical. It makes sense. It's part of decision-making. It helps us discern between, I know where I am, I know what day it is, I know what time it is, I know what I'm in the mood to eat, right? I like pizza. I don't like whatever, right? That's rational brain. That's neocortex. So that's fully conscious and fully aware. Then we get into our mammalian brain, and our mammalian brain is the part of our brain that has no tracking of time. It's timeless, but that's where our emotions play out. So something that happened 10, 15, 20 years ago, when we think about it again, it triggers that same physiological response in our body, a biochemical response in our body, as if we're back there again. And then if that doesn't feel good or feel safe, that goes into our reptilian brain, which is the fight, fight, flee and reproduce. Flight, fight, flee, and reproduce. That is our safety part of our brain. And when those three parts of our brain are not working in concert together, or what we call in the neuro-emotional technique world incongruence with each other, we create something called a neuro-emotional complex, otherwise known as an unresolved stress pattern or a traumatic experience. So what Michelle's explaining is that all of this gets highlighted and experienced in different parts of our brain and parts of our brain can actually be stunted, right, in experiencing full connection and full connectivity in that experience. So what this is happening is that we can get caused to go and be triggered into a fight-or-flight scenario, and especially kids are more susceptible if they don't have the ability to process it, to express it emotionally, and that's where we as adults have to come in.

Correct? Definitely. And you know, when the emotional part of our brain is taking over, that's when our flashbacks are going to come up. That's when we're going to have intrusive thoughts about something stressful that happened, or, you know, we're going to have a hard time identifying emotions in other people more than even ourselves. And so it's really important to notice it.

Yeah. So let's say we weren't in the middle of this pandemic. Like, what would be some of the— I know before you talked about some general symptomology. And then I want to get more into what's going on right now, but like the common things you're saying, right? It's a kid with the headache, my stomach hurts, I don't feel well, I don't really want to go to school. Those will be the chronic, most consistent behaviors that you've seen over the years?

Those, I would say, are more of the somatic symptoms of trauma, right? That, you know, their stomachs really do hurt, their heads really do hurt. It's not necessarily an excuse not to go to school, but because of everything going inside their body, coming out as pain and they might not be able to express it with words. But the other things are avoidance, avoidance of everything that's gonna remind them, right? There's a big thing called trauma reminders and those are anything that can remind us of something stressful that's happened in the past. It can be as simple as walking across the street if that happens to be a reminder for you. And so everybody's are different. There's no one to say, you know, particularly right now, with COVID and we have all this free time sitting at home, just having empty time, not being scheduled back to back to back the way kids are today, can give a kid more time to just sit and think about some of those reminders. And those can be really anxiety-provoking, because they don't want them. So they try to avoid thinking about it, yet it's popping up in their face all the time.

So in that space, right, let's call that the rumination space where you're stuck thinking about something and you're— right, I'm finding, especially as I'm talking to my clients, especially those younger, those adolescent teenage kids, they're home way more now. So it's not like that typical teenager comes home, shuts the door in their bedroom, is on the phone texting their friend, on TikTok, Instagram, social media, playing video games. Now they could be home all day doing that, especially during the summer now that the school year is over. So there's more of that isolation from interaction and engagement. But, but that rumination, I think that's something that I really would love for you to talk a little bit more about, where there's more time that's not focused or structured. So are you saying that the right amount of structure is going to be helpful, and what's too much structure versus being overstructured, overscheduled?

So what I've been telling a lot of my clients is that yes, we have all this free time, but we do need structure, we do need a schedule. And sometimes I like to just schedule in downtime. I say, okay, well, if you're doing homework all day, then give yourself an hour break to just chill and relax. And so I think it's a really fine line and it's hard to find, and each child's different, each teenager is gonna have a different say in this, what is good for them and what's too much, right? Some kids do really well with more structure, some kids, like me, I was like lie in my bed all day kind of kid. So I think it really, it depends on the kid and it depends on life circumstances and what they're really going through.

Would you say that there's other predispositions of things that would cause a child to have more struggles, more difficulties with this than just the average, whatever it might be? In other words, we're all going to respond and react differently, especially kids, and you can have kids who maybe don't have any predispositions or anything else going on in life that still may struggle with this, but are there things that could be precursors or, you know, other things to look out for that could make this time period worse?

Definitely. I think any past history of anything stressful can definitely make this period worse. Like we were saying before, now's the time that they're gonna sit and think about it. The other thing is, you know, any past history of any depression, anxiety, OCD, right, anything that could interfere with their mental health could be a stressor. ADHD, right, if a kid has ADHD and they're sitting home all the time, that's gonna be hard for them. So there are so many things. The other thing I'm thinking of is, is parental stress, right? If the parents are under stress, the kids are going to feel that. And the parents, you know, as hard as it is right now, and everybody's stressed, but it's just to be mindful of it and recognize it.

So as we don't know when this is all gonna end, as we have undetermined facts, where one day we hear one thing, one day we hear another thing, some parents are ready to send their kids back to school, some parents don't want to send their kids back to school, some schools are saying yes, we're open, some schools saying No, we're not open, that can change any day. What's the best ways to navigate the uncertainties, especially around now being a month out from, or less than a month out from school starting again?

I think it's really important to help your children feel safe, however that works in each particular home, but letting them know that they feel heard, that they can come to you, you're a safe person to talk to, right? And then also holding that judgment yourself. If they tell you something you're not excited about hearing about, One of the things I really hear frequently from kids is they don't want to tell their parent because their parent's not gonna let them ever leave the house ever again. And, you know, then that— then they don't feel safe to come and talk to you about it. And so I think that's one thing. Another one is to provide some extra attention if that's something they need, right? Not that they're feeling needy, but they might look a little needy right now, and that's okay. But providing that attention, and then the reverse, if they don't want the attention and they don't want you in their room asking them what's wrong, to give them their space. So it could really, you know, go on either spectrum with teens about how they're going to want and what they're going to respond to. And, you know, helping them relax, right? Helping them identify the feelings, right? Most kids and adolescents don't necessarily know the feeling that they're feeling, they just know they don't feel good. And so helping them identify, well, are you angry? Are you feeling shame right now? Are you fearful? Right? Like, what are you feeling? And then helping them practice relaxing, practice meditation like Jason Wasser was saying, practice deep breathing, you know, positive imagery, saying positive things to themselves. They're safe right now, they're comfortable, they'll be okay. And, you know, a lot of those little things can go a very long way.

Yeah, it's interesting because like what you're describing about like helping the child identify what they need to identify, sometimes I find is incredibly difficult for the adults or the parents to identify their own needs. Needs because they're so busy, right, taking care of whatever they have to take care of, that their own needs aren't met. So it's kind of a reflection of what's going on perhaps in the home, right, on one level is going to show up in another level. So what would be some of the tips, right? So if we're saying this, right, for the parents to like maybe schedule times for them to have their own downtime, to leave the house by themselves, if, you know, just do something even, you know, in a safe way, socially distanced, way to carve out time for themselves would also be—

Yeah, definitely. I mean, parents, that's a whole other topic, is how to be a parent of a kid with stress and take care of yourself, right? Because you're going to have your own reactions, your own stress about, you know, your child and what they're going through. And so it's definitely, it's more for everybody to take time for themselves. I hear that a lot right now. People don't want to leave their homes, they don't want to do anything, they're just home. And it's really important, even if it's just going for a walk for 10 minutes, if it's taking a deep breath, if it's meditating before bed, little things that you can do to kind of give yourself a break.

Yeah, and I'm wondering, you know, one of the things I'm a big fan of is creating rhythms and rituals in life. And, you know, the people who I find are the most successful are the ones who actually have a consistent schedule, so they know what's going on. So when things have to fit into their life, they know where it fits in versus it becoming an overpowering obligation or distracting them from their purpose. And I'm wondering what it would look like if, going back to that concept of structure versus free time and play, of like even scheduling completely unstructured time, right? Between 3 and 5 is completely unstructured time, do whatever you want. 5 to 6 would be this, 6 to 7 would be this, and shower time is consistent and reading time is consistent and family meditation. I mean, that'd be freaking amazing, right? One of my buddies, Jim Sheils, he was on earlier, he has an incredible book called 18 Summers. They basically have 18 years of opportunity to create long-lasting relationships with your family, legacy with your family, and he talks all about tech fasting, that one day a week he commits to not having a tech day. Okay. Right? And I can imagine right now even more so what he would say would be we absolutely needed it before this, but absolutely completely right now as families, if you can commit to one day a week without technology, without the news on, whatever channel it is, right, without being on social media, without checking anything, can we have a tech-free day? What that would do.

Yeah, and I think that's so important because a lot, you know, my clients, they frequently say, you know, I'm taking care of myself, I'm watching TV, or I'm playing on my phone, or I'm playing a game and it's relaxing. And I have to really help especially teens learn the difference between what I call passive and active coping. Passive is when you're sitting on your phone and you're scrolling on TikTok, and then all of a sudden it's 4 hours later and you don't know where the time went, right? I see your face. Versus active is going for a walk, is doing a meditation, is really taking the space to give yourself time to relax and take care of yourself, going on a bike ride, playing a game with friends, right? Not just watching TV or playing on your phone.

Right, right. And one of, one of the listeners who are in happens to be my mom, so shout out to my mom. That she taught— she's a reading specialist, and her thing is she says that visual schedules are so helpful for kids with anxiety, right? So in other words, to see what's actually happening, to see what's to look forward to, your regularly scheduled programming, that visual cue Have you seen that, right? And have people that you've worked with, have they implemented something like that where we know Tuesday night it's on the wall, it's on the— it's not just on the fridge, but—

Yeah, definitely. A lot of my clients, especially the ones who are like the high-achieving teens that need to get straight A's and they have a lot of anxiety right now, I've been having them write down schedules and lists and things that they know that they need to do, what time they're going to do them and when. But also I do make sure to have them schedule in leisure time, right? When are they just gonna chill? When are they just gonna go on a walk? Because those are just as important as getting that A in class. So definitely, I think visual schedules and, you know, visual reminders are really important. Sometimes I have kids just write "breathe" on a sticky note and put it on their mirror so that when they look in the mirror, they remember, okay, I need to take a deep breath. And it's just a good visual reminder for them.

Yes, there's something you said that I love because people always talk about Well, I'm just walking, or I'm just reading a book, as if it's not enough. It's like a pre-qualification of them disqualifying the action of what they're doing that could be self-care or uplifting to them. Well, no, no, I just read 10 pages. It's not like it's a big deal. So how do we get them away from the I'm just doing, right? It's just a walk. It's just—

Yeah, it's about their mindset. Not putting that judgment on themselves that they're not doing more than that, right? Because everybody needs to do what they need to do. Everybody has different ways of coping, and reading a book is an amazing coping skill. And if you take that judgment off of it, it would help with consistency and repetition and allowing yourself to relax.

But when you continuously feel that stress about just doing it or just going for a walk, it's not gonna help at Yeah, because I remember at the beginning of the whole pandemic, everybody was like, that's it, I'm gonna finally write that book, I'm gonna work out every day, I'm gonna have all this game plan, I'm gonna start cooking. And now we're 4 months in, and I don't know how many people have actually accomplished that. I know in certain, you know, accountability groups that people are committed to those type of things. But talking about judgment, right, what you just said was like so heavy and so important, is that like, right, kids just ended school a few weeks, whatever it is, a month ago, and now school again is right around the corner. But the— what are we supposed to be accomplishing? The pressure that parents are supposed to accomplish, the pressure that they put on the kids, the pressure that the kids put on themselves. Where— what do we talk about with that?

I think it's so hard today. The pressure keeps going up and up and up from when anybody was kids previously, right? Every year the scores get higher, the pressure gets more, and a lot of it is the kids, a lot of it is the parents and scheduling and trying to find things. And you know, it's so important to realize what is needed versus what is wanted, right? Do you need to do all of these things? Is it 100% necessary or is it something that you would like and you would aspire to and it would be great? And sometimes just taking that mindset shift can take that pressure off because it's not necessary, it's not needed, it's something you would like.

So instant gratification when it comes to doing this, right? I'm not feeling well, I'm stressed out, my kid is right? Let's just say, right, I'm a parent who's saying that, or I'm noticing my kid. How patient do we need to be with this process versus like hoping that like some implementation, some intervention, talking to some therapists like what you, like us, will bring this overnight change when the whole world around us isn't changing? So how do we really guide people to being patient, and how patient should they be?

I think, you know, with anything it's important to be patient. Especially when it comes to mental health. You know, how many times you included that people come, they come for one session or two sessions, and they're like, you're not doing anything for me. And, and, you know, therapy or mental health, it takes time. It takes time for that stress to build up, just as it takes time for it to— for us to de-stress and bring it back down. And as the world is not changing and it's not going back to the way we'd like it to, and I don't think anybody realized that we wouldn't be going to school in the fall necessarily, that with that is going to take time, right? Kids have to learn to cope, they have to learn to deal with these stressors and these changes that they've never experienced before. So it's important to be really open and honest with them as things are changing and giving them the prep in advance, not just saying the day before school, "Oh, you have school tomorrow," but giving them time to kind of adjust to the changes. Yeah.

So the one topic I'm, you know, I'm hesitant to discuss but we have to discuss is the, God forbid, loss of life during this sudden, quick, you know, there's, there's a thing that if a child is out, right, the whole debate about whether a child is a carrier, is passing on, I'm not going to get into that. But as far as just, you know, there's possibilities that A, there's a teacher that they may have that may not be there in the future, God forbid. There might be a family member that may not be there, God forbid, and there may be a friend that may not be there, God forbid, from this. So what do we do? Because this is not like the random story where, you know, the only thing I knew back in the day was like one kid in middle school who really was in my class who something happened to him. Now this is like, this is every day in the news with everything, right?

I think, you know, with any stressful situation and loss of life that is traumatic or sudden to somebody you care about, that's a trauma, right? That's something that affects us. And especially now, kids aren't, you know, any family member isn't having the time to cope with it, to prepare for it, to have a funeral, right? All these things that kind of help us cope and mourn and move on. And so I think it's, it's important to have that patience, like you were saying, to be mindful of how these things are going to affect everybody. Around us, not just kids, and allow them the space to feel whatever they're feeling. I think that's one of the most important things I tell parents of kids all the time is let them feel it. Don't shut it down. Don't make them stop crying. Let them cry. Crying serves a purpose. It's reactive, helps us. And so letting kids and teens feel what they're going to feel and express it.

So is a part of trauma is the unresolved grief around whatever happened and not being able to not just express it but also heal from, from that experience.

Yeah, I think it's that. I also think it's, you know, the shock value, right? Trauma isn't necessarily when a family member or, you know, a grandparent is slowly dying and we have months to prepare, but it's a parent that dies suddenly in her age that just isn't there all of a sudden and they have no time to process for it. And that's what makes it so traumatic. And so right now that's happening all over the place. You know, people are dying unfortunately, and we have no craft time for it. You can't go visit your family in the hospital. There's horrible stories that we've all heard. And so that's what makes it so stressful. That's the hardest part.

Yeah. Yeah, which goes back to the patience part of understanding that this is not a short-term fix. Right, whether what's going on in the world, but being proactive about getting your kids the right help, the right resources, such as working with someone like Michelle, right? This is such an important investment for our well-being, not just for the family's well-being, but for the child's well-being, because stuff can be shoved down for years and years and years and show up 15, 20, 30 years later. I'm working with a client and they're now in their mid-20s and stuff that happened to them when they were 17 that they're like, "Oh no, I went to therapy and I dealt with it," is resurfacing again because of something presently going on in their life. So, you know, hopefully part of the therapeutic process is actually finally solving it, putting it to bed, healing from it. But, you know, in the world of the stuff that I was doing pre-pandemic when I was with clients was the NeuroEmotional Technique, and we can actually find the trigger and the fight-or-flight response response in the person. So otherwise we're just guessing on an intellectual or rational level that like, oh yeah, no, I'm good with that, right? So if something is still showing up and if something's still being triggered, right, for lack of a better term, then there must be a component or aspect of that that hasn't fully been handled. And maybe that person wasn't— would you say that maybe they either A, weren't ready to go deeper, B, they maybe held something back about sharing their experience, as well. Maybe they weren't as forthcoming or as open, or—

Definitely. And, you know, I think I see a lot that especially with teenagers, they're like, oh, that didn't affect me. I was 9, it didn't affect me. Now I'm 16. And then when we really talk about it, they realize, and that's when the change happens. You know, sometimes it gets worse before it gets better when they have that realization, but that's when they start to put pieces together and say, yes, this event did affect me. It might have been small to somebody else, or it might not have been as significant as I see on TV, but it was a big deal. And it's the most important thing that kids can do.

So over the years that you've been doing this, how have you seen when stuff shows up for children, how has it affected for, especially for, um, in the scenarios where parents are together, how has that affected the marital dynamics?

I think it's hard. I think kids, don't necessarily want to talk to their parents about what's going on, and I think it, you know, it creates resentment, it creates, you know, a lack of trust on the parent's side, on the kid's side. And one of the things that I do is I use— it's called trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. One of the main aspects of it is bringing that connection back together, bringing the whole family in the room together once it's safe and, you know, things are able to be processed healthily, that they can talk about it together and know that when things come up or a kid's re-triggered or have these intrusive thoughts, that their parent's a trusted adult that they can go to. And so I think, you know, you brought up a point. It usually, you know, it's not easy, but healing can happen.

Do you see that like parents sometimes will have like any issues that might be already in their relationship, like it would already start triggering more stuff between the couple? Like that the kid becomes the scapegoat, right, as we know in family dynamics a lot of times kids become the scapegoat of the parents' issues. But you ever see like where if the kid is going through some type of traumatic experience, it starts creating a rift between the parents and their own relationship between the two of them as far as marital stuff?

Definitely, because they're trying to get help with their child, right? And if it's not helping, they're going to take their anger out somewhere. And, you know, the easiest person is your significant other to take that anger out on. And so definitely, and, you know, even past traumas from parents can come up. If they see their kids struggling and these things are coming out, they're going to struggle themselves because they're going to have, you know, a reminder of something and realize, oh wait, my childhood wasn't necessarily as great as I thought it was. And so it definitely brings up a lot in everybody.

Yeah, so I know there are, right, the theories that we talk about is that unfinished business passes on intergenerationally, and our hope is, right, that our future generation won't have as much unfinished business as as it is, but there's still always stuff to work on. So like you're saying, I very much agree with that. If you're seeing your kid go through something and it's pushing your own buttons, there probably is something there about whatever that experience is for yourself that you still need to work on. And I would definitely say not only, you know, do family therapy, you know, if your kid needs to go to individual therapy, go to do the individual therapy, but that family therapy and then doing that individual therapy for the adult as well. Will be like, so, you know, ask— asking yourself, what is it about what I'm witnessing that's bothering me so much? Not the fact that I don't like my child suffering, I don't like getting into fights with my spouse or my partner more, but like, why am I being bothered by that experience? And what is it resembling to what I went through? And what haven't I done the work on about that? So I know that's such a huge, massive, um, important, especially when it comes to like trauma, because like it is, it's a fight or flight.

And most people know that, right? Fight or flight. When I bring that up, everyone's like, oh yeah, you learned that in school. But it's so hard to apply it to yourself. Say, oh wait, I'm in fight or flight right now. My body is preparing to attack, whatever it is. And that's where a lot of irritability comes from, because their heart rate is racing, right? They're going through so much stress, and that's why they're so irritable with They're prepared to fight whatever comes their way.

Yeah. So after this is all— so let's say they're doing the work, they're going to sessions, they're working with their— right, their kid's working with someone, maybe them as a family. I know that a lot of times that, right, we've experienced this, is that it's the drop-off therapy. Take care of my kids, I'll pick them up at the end of the session. So how important, right, do you— would you say, like, in order for the best, most successful work to be done, that a parent or the family has to commit to being part of that process and not just say, no, no, no, this is my kid's thing. You fix them. I'll pick them up at the end of the hour, meaning like, whatever, I'll let them sign on and, you know, by themselves at this point.

But like the drop-off therapy, I think, you know, with trauma especially, it's something that the whole family needs to be involved in because the kid, I could be there with them, or you could be seeing them for an hour once a week, maybe twice a week, but then they're spending the majority of their time at home with their parents. And if their parents aren't embodying some of the messages that the therapist is sending, it's disconnected, they're not gonna understand, it's gonna be confusing. So the whole family needs to be on the same page with how to handle a situation, how to talk about the situation, how it's going to affect the child or teen. And so it's definitely not a drop-off therapy type situation. For the change to happen, that's when the parents are coming in. I've had so many kids go through serious traumatic things when I was working in New York, but the parent came every single week. And they did amazing at the end.

And that definitely expedites the process probably, right? Because I'm seeing this right now, the case that I'm working with, and there's a college student, and I'm like, listen, like, I can help you to a limit, but I'd rather save you time, effort, and money where I want your family to be involved starting next session. And this was session 1, right? That was at the end of session 1. I can only commit to you if you commit to this process. And it asks, well, are you sure? I'm absolutely, completely sure because you've already done multiple paths of therapy with other therapists and now you're in my lap, right? So if I'm going to be doing something different, not just being a different personality and, you know, as much as, right, I already know that I'm a different personality than the other therapists they work with, but if I'm going to be more efficient and more effective, will you be willing to do this? And they kept coming up with all these different excuses. Well, What about this? Can I try that first? I mean, you could, but haven't you already? Well, no, I haven't tried these things yet. I'm like, what do you think will happen? Well, I'll probably end up back where I am now. How much time do you think that will take you? I don't know, 2, 3 months, but at least I won't have to talk to my family about it. I'm like, but that's the whole reason why if you want to feel supported, you want to feel engaged, you want to feel important, all the things that are going on, you have to get past that. So I see that like This doesn't just end with adolescence. I would say even for college students, right? High school kids, right, who didn't have a graduation or they didn't have prom, college students who either had to come home early or now had to pivot fully online, especially incoming freshmen, but students who are already away, who are now coming home or stayed on campus and quarantined, to not have their families involved. And parents, I really want you to hear this, like, be engaged. It's a different level. It's not like you're being like, no, I want them to I want them to learn how to handle this. Doing family therapy with your college-age kid is also really important and really essential.

Definitely. I like to think of therapy as not forever. I like to think of it as, you know, something that you need to get through stressful experiences and to gain the skills, but then you take those skills past therapists, right? Like, the therapist isn't the one who's doing the work. You're doing the work, or your kid's doing the work. And so when we bring the whole family in the room, those parents become that trusted person that they can talk to, that if something else were to happen, let's say, they have the people to trust, they have the support system and the skills. And so it's so important for the family to be there for them to listen.

So if there was a good for all right now, like of, you know, if you can do at least this one thing during this process, whether you're a teenager listening to this, you're a college student listening to us, you're a parent, an educator, anybody who's working with kids, what would be the one thing that you would say, like, this is my good for all right now that I think you absolutely completely need to be doing during this time frame?

I think meditation is one of those things. I think it's a beautiful thing. I utilize it myself too, daily, most days. But also my other thing is the judgment, right? So when we do those things and we have these skills and we maybe don't do them every day, to take to take that judgment piece away, right? Even as I said, most days I meditate, but there are days when of course I don't for whatever reason, and not putting that judgment on myself that I'm not doing enough. And I think right now everybody is trying the best that they can, doing the best that they can for themselves, their children, their family, and trying to be kind to ourselves and have compassion for ourselves for, you know, the world we're living in right now.

Awesome. So I know you've been doing some cool stuff on social media and everything. So I know for people who want to hear more from Michele, it's MicheleRoisman, R-O-I-S-M-A-N, all one word, underscore therapy. And again, it's Michele, M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E-R-O-I-S-M-A-N, underscore therapy. And I know you also have a website.

It is Mroismantherapy.com.

There you go. So guys, everybody who is out there listening, right, this whole idea of trauma having to be this big, crazy, massive thing that is catastrophic and life-changing is, you know, is not necessarily always the way it's going to show up. It could be a slow, steady buildup, kind of like we've been going through in this pandemic. So just want to have everybody out there be empowered from the words that Michelle and I were talking about tonight. The simplest thing you can do: exercise more and definitely meditate more. There's tons of good resources out there, right? There's Dr. Joe Dispenza. And Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. You just go on YouTube and just type in meditation for kids, meditate, right? And I'm sure stuff is gonna come up. I know, like I said, I'm a huge fan of the Muse headphone headbands. They actually are really cool to see what you're doing and how your meditations are going, and it's super, super cool and really easy. And you can get one for the family and everybody just downloads the app on an individual device, right? So if someone has an iPod, someone has has an iPad or whatever, you can use the same thing and just share it amongst the family, which I know one of my buddies does in his chiropractic office for all of his clients before they come in. They just, you know, clean it off. So, love to hear any questions you have. Obviously you can reach either one of us very easily through the Family Room Wellness Associates, or, you know, again, you can find Michelle at her Instagram that we just listed a few minutes ago, as well as you guys can reach me as well on my Instagram. And Michelle, thank you again for talking about this really, really important and pertinent topic of what's going on in the world right now.

Absolutely, thanks so much for having me. It was so great talking to you.