When Learning is Trauma: Hilary Jacobs Hendel, Lois Letchford, & Lisa McCarty

Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome. Welcome to When Learning Is Trauma, to Lisa, and welcome, Hillary. And I love the discussion that you were just having before we— well, once we started to go live and got all the email links out and everything else we did. But welcome, Hillary, from New York. And you are a psychotherapist, author, blogger, and educator, and author of the book It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover, to Core Emotions and Connect with Your Authentic Self. I've been reading it over the weekend. Hillary, could you just to start with give us a little background and then we will explore everything?

Absolutely, Lois. I love your enthusiasm and your energy. Thanks for having me on to talk about a subject that I've become so passionate about. But first, a little bit of background. Born and raised to a psychiatrist in New York City and a guidance counselor, very psychologically aware family. And I was— I ended up going— I won't bore you with the details. My first career, I was a dentist, and that's only relevant because I had a great education in the body. I was— we were with the medical students for the first 2 years. I was going to say, I'm a science nerd in terms of my education. And contrary to what we're going to be talking about, I was born with the great luck to be able to focus and study and do well in school. And it gave me a great amount of self-esteem. And I was going to become a doctor, became a dentist instead for reasons that maybe we'll comment, but I don't know.

They're in the book.

And then, oh, you know it all, right? Everyone knows all about me.

I forget.

And then I talk a lot. I'm big into being authentic and walking the walk. And so I, in New York, the way to become the best psychotherapist, which is why I went to social work school at the age of 39, as quickly as possible. I was a single mother. And I wanted, I knew this was the career that I was going to try, that I'd always wanted to do, but was insecure in my 20s to become a psychotherapist because I felt I, what could I offer? So I went to social work school, and then right into analytic training because to be a psychoanalyst was to be classically trained and the sort of the crème de la crème. And then in the institute where I was working with patients, I was assigned a lot of people that weren't assessed for trauma, but that really I started to think about were suffering trauma. And I had simultaneously been exposed to this other way of working, that was considered at the time not psychoanalytic. And I was studying and reading this whole other world that began to make more and more sense to me. And it really started with a conference that I went to on emotions and trauma and attachment in New York City, where there were these very well-respected researchers, Diana Fosha, Dan Siegel, many people might know, who wrote Mindsight, Tom Stern, and Jude Cassidy. They were leaders in the field. Tom Stern and Jude Cassidy have since died. But I saw Diana Fosha, who became my mentor and teacher, put up this triangle that showed how emotions work in the mind and body. And I had never had a stitch of anyone teaching me about emotions. I just thought they're There wasn't any information on emotions. And what I learned transformed my mental health. I didn't even know I was an anxious person because I just was moving, moving, moving to deal with my own anxiety. And so to make a long story short, I started studying this way of practicing, which was a trauma-informed model that dealt not only with cognitions and thoughts, but also with the body. but how emotions present in the body because— and this is something I learned I didn't know— emotions are body experiences. And of course, when someone tells you that emotions are physical, you're like, oh yeah, of course they are because I feel them in my body. But I was raised to think that there was no mind-body connection and that anything having to do with emotions and emotional energy and vitality, Lois, like you have— was like a woo-woo California thing, and we don't do that.

Yeah.

But it was compelling, and I trained, I became certified in this method called AEDP, which stands for Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, that I would not have looked at if it wasn't so steeped in science as a basis. And I think psychotherapy is really an art that's guided by science, but I was allowed to really explore the world of emotions because of the validity of the science that was also not translating to the general public. And I went on to become that type of practitioner.

Yes.

And then I, after about 10 years of practicing this type of psychotherapy, I started my pet peeve about no one getting any emotion education. started to evolve, as I was telling Lisa, into a moral outrage. And on a lark, I wrote an op-ed to the New York Times about a patient I had been working with that had been basically called hopeless. Their psychiatrist said, he's hopeless, like almost with disdain, and diagnosed with depression, bipolar, been on every medication, been hospitalized several times in like these horrible psychiatric wards, every cocktail of medication. And so when they came to see me, I didn't want to redo what everyone else had done.

Yeah.

Let me reconceptualize him as a survivor of childhood emotional neglect. I treated him with AEDP and he recovered. And I thought, oh my God, that's worth writing about. So I wrote the article for the Times, they published it. amazing, went viral, and then I got asked to write a book. And Random House and this agent who I still have, who's so wonderful, said, what do you want to write on? And I said, well, there was this triangle, this triangle that I think is a public health tool. I think this should be taught in high schools, if not earlier, so that people don't feel there's something wrong with them, that they understand their reactions to the environment are normal and human. And then everything since then has been history. And you probably found me from an article or book. I write a lot now to educate the public and run classes and just try to help. That's sort of my labor of love. I don't typically get paid for it. My bread and butter is as a therapist.

It's a brilliant background. And you and Lisa were talking and you were defining trauma. Give us your definition of trauma because you and Lisa have got a lot in common.

Yes, so my definition, and I just want to say that I didn't invent anything new.

Yes.

What I, if I had any, you know, sort of stroke of—

Genius.

Yeah, I don't like to use that word, but if there was any sort of moment, it was really this, what my talent seems to be is taking complicated science concepts and making them accessible to everybody. But AEDP and all the science that informs that method is really where I get my ideas. And a couple of maybe, you know, mixed in— every therapist has their own brand, every nurse has their own— you learn everything and then it comes through you and it's yours.

Yeah.

But the way we define trauma in AEDP Is having overwhelming emotions and not enough emotional support. The way they say it is a little more poetic— overwhelming emotions in the face of unbearable and unwanted aloneness. And so it's the combination of being overwhelmed for any number of reasons. And children, of course, their nervous systems are not matured. All they have are feelings. And if you don't have parents who are educated— and they're not educated, that's not their fault. They, like me, didn't know that there are these things to learn. It's not really in parenting books yet.

Yes.

And many people have told me that the book should be in the parenting section.

Yes.

And I do think that just understanding how emotions work— so when you shut down your child's emotions and say, Oh, it's not that bad. We're trying to help, but the problem is that child is now alone with a feeling of anger or a feeling of fear or a feeling of sadness or worse, a feeling of shame that there's something wrong with them.

Yeah.

And if we don't learn tools and techniques and tips to bridge that aloneness, to in essence validate emotions, So your emotions are wanted here, and simultaneously we're shaping behaviors that will help them survive in life, which is incredibly challenging. So I think a lot of parents feel if I validate my child's anger, I am doing a bad thing. I'm supposed to kind of corral that anger.

Yeah.

And what you— it's counterintuitive, you can welcome Anger, which is just a feeling, it's not a behavior, it's an experience internally, saying, yeah, you are really angry, and how can we help you with this anger? And then how can— what are we going to do in the outside world? What are we going to do for you? And so it's a multifaceted process.

Yeah.

So, and I can give an example of that, because I find the more I talk, the more it's helpful to people. people to have an example, particularly with what that might look like for anger.

Yeah, yeah. Shall I?

Yes, please.

Yeah, so imagine this happens so much in families or siblings, and you have a little kid, firstborn, maybe 6 years old, and a newborn, 3, and they say something like, I hate my sister. And then most parents respond by, no, you don't, you love your sister. Well, not in that moment. That child hates their sisters, and that's anger. There's a reason that they feel that.

Yeah.

So there's many ways to respond, but one way is, oh, what did she do to make you so mad? You know, you respond with a lighthearted touch, always like gentleness and a sort of humor, not making fun of, but a lighthearted, what did she do to make you so mad? Let's pretend this doll or this punching bag or something like that is your sister and really let's have her at it. We don't hit people. We're not mean to people. We don't bite people. But we can pretend this doll over here is your sister and we can get that anger all out. And then there's laughter and play and it turns something that is potentially toxic to the child is like through alchemy is turned into something. Or as my friend told me this weekend, the concept of composting. Take something that's not good and we want to put it and make it into something that breathes life into a person.

Wow.

And being validated for our emotions is the number one thing that helps people feel vital and loved and connected.

Yeah. I'm thinking so much, you know, about— because we've come to this from a literacy point of view and children who failed and parents send their children to school expecting them to do well and they don't. And the child gets in trouble at school and then the child comes home and is then ostracised or condemned for not conforming in school. And you know, how can we support that child? Because that's where we're setting up double whammies of trauma across the whole— across the board.

Can I just also add to that, that I've also seen where kids are acting fine at school.

Yes.

And then they come home and all hell breaks loose. And when you look at these kids, they oftentimes are the ones that are also struggling in school. So some kids tend to fly under the radar and other kids are not, you know, are more boisterous or willing to get into trouble at school. I just wanted to make— just put that out there.

Yes.

Because I've seen where it might not be obvious in school and the parents are like, I don't know why they're acting like this with me at home, and then come to find out that they are having that lonely experience at school. And I loved, Hillary, how you I'm glad you said lonely as part of the trauma, because I think that I always look at it as misunderstood, like our struggling learners, and especially where it comes to dyslexia, and the teachers don't have training on that across the board. And there's so much misunderstanding to what these kids are going through, how they learn, why they're having trouble learning this way. But I love how you said lonely because I feel like that's where these kids are trying to find that group and oftentimes are finding a group with the kids that are also feeling lonely.

That's a great point. And truthfully, I think it's both, that they're misunderstood and as a result, right? Because when we feel misunderstood, then all of a sudden we're alone. The connection is broken.

And I didn't think of it like that. So thank you for saying that. Thank you.

Well, we can't bring this— that doesn't finish our conversation. I've got a couple of quotes because I'm reading your book right now. I don't know where to start because there was so much in it. Okay, the first point is this does belong in the parenting magazines. How I wish I had had your book 30 years ago. I cry over that.

Lois, I feel the same way. I wish I wrote the book that I wish I had read.

Yeah.

Before I was a parent. And even when I was, you know, in my teens, not understanding my emotions, feeling like I was bad for being angry and cranky. And, you know, it's not pleasant, but the sense of badness, this sense of shame because of the cultural messages that have these myths that are unattainable, that we are just supposed to put mind over matter and just do Like Nike.

Yes.

Like we're, you know, it's like, no, we're human and we're sensitive souls. All people, big strong men too, they just, you know, they have to curb these defenses and they curb their feelings and they have to develop these crusty defenses. I think bullying is all about an understanding of shame and emotions in In treating— looking at the bully, obviously not excusing the behavior, but it's another thing of looking underneath the behavior to the communication that something is not right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so absolutely.

Okay, this is the quote: Current experiences that have similar emotional qualities to our past experiences are often linked in the mind. Loss connects to prior losses through the brain cell networks holding past memories, emotion, physical sensations, and beliefs. In 1 second, we can go from feeling like the competent adult we are to feeling like the young child re-experiencing loss. Subjectively, we feel like the trauma is happening again, even though it's only a memory. That speaks to me because I spoke to my son with a PhD and asked him what happened in first grade. He cried and not one word emerged, which is how this series came about. Tell us more about that.

Yeah, well, it's— oh, there's— thanks for reading that. There's so much to tell, but I would say what's practical, right, for listeners— and let me just say hello to everybody that's listening or will listen to this, and I'm so glad that you're here. You know, life is all about Or being successful in life is being able to negotiate relationships, whether it's work relationships or people relationships, I really think, and learning how to connect and at the same time be your authentic self. And it really requires some understanding of what it means to be human so that if I am in a relation, let's say, I mean, we could talk about— Partnerships, or we could talk about my adult children. So, I mean, I am— I've been just being myself many times, and then all of a sudden, I know by the change of the tone and voice that I have triggered them, right? I've either made them feel badly about themselves, and I only just wanted to be loving, and there was no intention.

Yeah.

But there's something about even being asked a question. I laugh because one of my children, to this day, they're almost 30. I have 2 children and 2 stepchildren. But when I call my oldest child and I don't leave a message or I text, can you call me?

Yes.

What did I do? Am I in trouble? And they're 30. No, you're not in trouble. I just missed you. So maybe that's like the best example, right?

Yes.

It's something from everyday life. And what is it about that? That's the neural network. That's the goal of them. One goal of the emotional mind is to protect us. Maybe the main goal of emotions, they're survival programs that developed over thousands and thousands of years. And the reason we have emotions, even though they're painful, is because humans could evolve better with emotions, even though they hurt, than if we were Vulcans.

Yeah.

And so part of that is the wiring and experience that we're not even aware of. So if I am 2 years old and I have a moment of emotion, like anger, anger, or even exuberance and excitement, and it is met with either disdain or contempt or neglect, disinterest.

Yeah.

The, the child's going to feel that because there's such a contagiousness about emotions. We are so wired, mostly nonverbally than even verbally, so that children are excruciatingly sensitive to any expression on a parent's face, any tone of voice.

Yeah.

Used to be that they thought kids didn't even have feelings, they were just these empty vessels, but it turns out it's the opposite. So if a child is looking at their mother's face, registering this not consciously but implicitly, when is my mother happy, when is my mother displeased, and I'm wired to keep her happy so she wants to be with me and connect to me, that any inkling I get of her displeasure gets wired in the brain with either shame or some kind of other emotion or affect that reminds me, accuses me, don't do that because when you did that 6 months ago, it didn't work out well. And these things, after repeated experiences, wire so that by the time the kids are grown up, like people come to me like, I want to tell my teenager, you know, how to do this, this, and this, and how to be. I'm like, don't worry, they know every thought you're going to have before you have it. They already know everything because they've been watching you like a hawk from the day they came out. And so these things, these triggers that we all have, are just designed so that something doesn't look right, something doesn't feel safe, emotions come up, and then we travel through time back to that original experience, and it lights up like a Christmas tree like you, uh, like you, you just spoke. I have a dot, I have like a little model. A lot of people like this. Can you see this?

Yes.

It's a lemon squeezer, but it's meant to be the authentic self, how you're born. And all these pipe cleaners are the, the wiring that we wire in experience, just like we learn what 2 2 is, and then we have that little network. So it's really very similar to learning So we learn that, you know, if we speak angrily to our mother, you know, I was so lucky I had a nice mother that as a teenager when I was rude and obnoxious and, you know, called her names sometimes, she would say, oh, Hillary, that's charming, right? And it diffused the whole thing. But a lot of other parents— I thank her, that's why I dedicated the book to her— a lot of other parents will react.

Yes.

And they'll punish or they'll abandon. Anyway, then there's like this neural network that wires that's got like the mother's face in there, they've got the mother's emotion, they've got the kid's emotion, and it's this neural network that's just waiting for a trigger. And then as an adult, when an adult partner kind of does something similar, it's as though these networks overtake our authentic self and now we're in a mood or a state where we're not—

Yeah.

thinking, we can't really think clearly. We don't— we can't kind of reconstitute. We need time until kind of the Christmas tree lights dim and we have some restoration of our true kind of self that can think and feel and deal all at the same time.

Wow.

And kids are always in emotional states. You know, you try to rationalize with kids, you have to first make them feel safe and loved and brilliant.

And I'd also say that a lot of our learners, the reason we do all this work, are very visual learners. And that would be like a perfect thing to show any kid, but specifically the kids that have these language-based weaknesses, or an adult, to be able to explain that to them so that they can see it and understand that, that there is nothing wrong with you, that this is how our brains work. I think that's fantastic. Did you come up with that on your own? No.

No, I wish I could say I went to some therapist for a consultation for another patient and she showed me this.

Yeah.

And I thought, oh, that's great. And I, you know, in the Emotions Education 101 class that I give for the public, that I give just— we're going to start giving our 3rd class in September. We use all these, so many different ways to teach people so they understand And again, first and foremost, they don't feel like there's anything wrong with them.

Mm-hmm.

Because we all are raised thinking we have all these things wrong with us. And the bottom line is, we're all on a spectrum of everything. It's all normal. It may not be adaptive, it may get you into trouble. But there's healing, the brain changes from birth until death. And creating safety is the first step for brain change. And everybody learns, as you know, Lois, everybody learns differently. And it's our education that stinks, our system. It's the environment, it's our society that's completely dysfunctional. It's our parents that need help for their traumas.

Yes.

And it's up to this generation and the people watching to make sure they learn and educate themselves and work on themselves. find partners that are committed to working on themselves and understanding this stuff so that they cannot repeat what happened in the generations before, because there's intergenerational trauma. And emotion education is the first step, emotion education and how it connects and what is trauma.

Can I bring up a touchy subject? It might be touchy, maybe not. But sure. The use of medications, and I am not going That's right. And I'm not here to say that they're not helpful, but I feel like this society has gone overboard on utilizing medications for everything, and I feel like a lot of what you're even discussing has been lost, or how we have to get back to this, you know, the basics of this. I don't know if you have a theory on medications, or if I could bring that up.

It's a little touchy. Oh, no, it doesn't feel touchy. It feels so important that we can— there's nothing you could bring up probably that would be touchy, because the touchier it is, the probably more it needs to be talked about. Yeah. So, and if we had more time, I'd be so curious why that, you know, what about that feels touchy to you. I can imagine, but I wouldn't want to assume.

Well, I could say because I know a lot of people really rely on them, and I don't want to see It's just that they're not helpful, and I would never tell somebody not to be on them, or if they think it's working, and that's fine. But I think that as a society in general, we just really over-rely on just that. So that's why I feel like it's a little touchy. I don't want people to say, you know, to think that I'm against medication.

That's not my, that's not my goal. Yeah, yeah, and nor is it mine. So I think that medication absolutely has a place. The way I think of it for the patients or clients that come to me is if you're not able to function, you need a certain amount of oomph to be able to do therapy. And if you're so depressed that there's just, you're so shut down, you can't get out of bed, you can't eat, the medication is really great at just giving you like a little bit of a bottom, raising the bottom from the bottom of the well a little higher.

Mm-hmm.

But, and I think you're right in terms of, I think one of the reasons that medication, it must have been when it was discovered, such a relief because we didn't know a lot about the brain and emotions and that the brain changes. It used to be that we thought, I think by around early, late adolescence, that you were like locked and loaded.

Yeah.

And then because of the invention of the MRI, And the fMRI, which happened around, I think, the '70s when it started to be used a lot, they could start to image healthy brains where it wasn't unethical because before that it was applying X-rays. So they only imaged unhealthy brains or dead brains. And so they learned a lot about how emotions work and they learned that the brain changes and that the brain can continue to learn. And so that's why even psychoanalysis, which was considered a quote unquote insight-oriented model, moving from that to AEDP, which at the time I was so surprised that Diana Fosha called a healing model. But it is a healing model. And so if we just say that you, you have, you're, you have an anxious personality, or you have, you're depressive, it's as though that's the end of the story. story, and our only option is to treat the disease, but if, quote unquote, the disease, but if we think of those as symptoms of buried emotions that cause symptoms of trauma, of which depression and anxiety are 2 symptoms of trauma, then we can say, and we know we can heal the brain, then we can start to think, well, you don't have to give medication, or you can give a combination, but always with psychotherapy. And I think always with a healing-oriented model. And I just want to qualify for people that, you know, struggle with emotions, when I talk about working with emotions, both teaching people about emotions, the public, and clients as a psychotherapy model, that is not an excuse for wearing emotions On one sleeve and acting out and behaving badly. It's really that we were just working up here with the cerebral cortex and thoughts and cognitions, and it's like trickle-down economics. It doesn't work as fast as working with physical sensations of symptoms and emotions and liberating them from the body up. So what I'm really talking about is giving people education and skills so that they have a balance between understanding how their thoughts work and understanding how their emotions in the body work. And that there shouldn't, I think, be just cognitive behavioral therapists. I think all therapists should be trained in cognitive therapy and experiential, somatic, and emotion-focused therapy so that everybody that comes—

Is covered.

And be treated holistically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for that.

We have a question from Chris. He says, what would you say is the worst part of the American education system, specifically for students with learning disabilities? What advice do you have for parents of children who struggle in school?

I mean, it is a huge, huge, huge, huge problem. Because if you live in a neighborhood with a school and it only has the traditional type of learning where some teacher bores the kids to death, at least who weren't like me that loved to sort of listen and take notes, but most people are not like that. I think, you know, you've got probably— I think of it like a third, third, probably a third of the kids need to do hands-on work. A third of the kids are artistic and need to work through art, and a third of the kids just feel comfortable listening and are good students. And so what I guess I would say is to nag the hell out of your school to have different tracks, or as a parent, to try to do damage control by really saying, you are perfect the way you are, you are wonderful, this is a problem in our school.

True.

This is a problem with your teacher, this is a problem with your principal, and it's a problem with society. So it's not you, and we're just going to— tell us how we can support you. Do you want a tutor? Do you want me to help you? Do you want, um, do you want me to try to change anything at school and advocate for you? I would really talk to the child unless they're really young, and then if you see something, I would Say something. Like I think my mother, my mother tells a story. I'm sure this is true because she's outspoken. She got the kindergarten teacher fired at at I went to all through New York City public schools because she was mean and she was. I remember her. She used to say "Sprechen Sie Deutsch, sprechen Sie Deutsch," like when he didn't understand. And my mother went to the principal and said, "Teacher's got to go." And I think at that time, the reason I say I wonder if What the real story was, because you can't really fire teachers these days because of the union, but in those days, I guess because it was sort of an upper middle class area, and yeah, so I think make trouble on behalf of the kids.

I love that answer. I love that response. I wish I'd done more of that for my children.

We have a lot of people listening that are teachers, so it's not like we're saying that you're doing everything wrong, but I think there's an awareness that we need to bring. And that's why we're doing all of this work, because these kids are suffering. And then I see that with the job that I do, and these wounds are deep. And, you know, and it's hard sometimes to even change the system that I'm in, because they're all so focused on this, like, disease model— not everybody, but there's more emphasis on this disease model rather than— and the labeling you're anxious, you're depressive, as you said, as opposed to saying, well, what's driving this? What— where is all this coming from? And, you know, and I think that when you try to ask these adults about their early schooling experience, a lot of them, they, like Lois knows, they don't want to go there.

Right.

And some of them maybe haven't even— some of them maybe haven't even thought about that before because it's just very normal. You go to school, that's what you do. You don't think that that's an abnormal experience because how do you know that it is or isn't? That's just, that's normal. You go to school. So, you know, to come through a system like that where it's really difficult for you and to struggle, people, they underestimate it and it's a real problem. I totally agree.

Can I just say Can I say one thing?

Yes, of course.

Because to the teachers out there listening, teachers, like nurses, I mean, they are saints. It is so hard within the confines. So in that example that I gave, I'm really talking about abusive teachers. And I'm also talking about that teachers need to take it upon themselves. They should read It's Not Always Depression. Because if you don't understand, just like parents, how emotions work in the mind and body, you're not able to kind of have the empathy. It doesn't mean you allow bad behavior because you can't, but the insight into what I share is so helpful to even help the teacher be more patient and less angry.

Yes.

And just like parents, right, there's so many great— not so many, but great childcare books. Like, these are from the '60s, like the magic years that help you understand the kids so you don't want to kill the kid when they're like 2. Like when they're throwing their food off the high chair, it's because they're exploring the world, not because they're trying to destroy your fragile eggshell mind, you know. So it's like to understand that, like everyone, kids just want to feel safe and connected and have some moments of happiness and stimulation that feels good.

Yeah.

So, and I love teachers, and they have the hardest job in the world. So I may have came off too— that was a particular example that I wanted to share. But the emotion education is, is very important for the guidance counselors, the school staff, and for the teachers to have. And I will come to your schools, or I will teach you guys how to run emotion education classes. That's what I've been trying to do more.

That's brilliant.

Yeah.

That's incredible. Because what I was going to talk about is what Lisa talks about all the time and what I'm up to in your book is the small T's. We know about the big T's, but it's these small T's that we underestimate their impact.

Exactly. We don't—

not only do we underestimate, we don't even— they're invisible. We don't even know that we're having an impact.

And it's those—

they're invisible traumas. They're these things that we— they're just off the radar. And I was telling Lisa before that I— the categorization into small t and large T is not the best because a lot of people feel that it's giving weight to the trauma, that big T traumas are more important than small t traumas. But what it means for people listening is that small t traumas are these seemingly invisible, non-traumatic experiences Experiences like school, like getting in trouble in school and having your parents repeatedly say, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you doing your homework? What are you, stupid? Like, what's going on? Why don't you just listen? Why don't you just sit still?

Why don't you—

If that happens the whole— throughout one's life, the kid is going to develop a feeling that something is wrong with them, when in fact it's They're probably— they're not the traditional learner that our society makes us fit into, like the proverbial fitting the square peg into the round hole.

Mm-hmm.

And so the skill and the creativity, if you can't change anything, is how do I bolster my child's sense of self-worth in all these other ways with words and with showing and all these things and get them Get them through if there's no choice, which for many people there is no choice but the local high school and the local elementary school that they have. It's not like they can afford a private school. And I'm a big proponent of public school anyway because you learn to get along with all types of people in public school. And I think that is the most valuable education.

Yes.

But you want to make sure the kid, you know, isn't small-t traumatized in the process.

Lisa, you You talk a lot about this. What have you got to say?

Well, for one, I wish we had about 6 more hours to talk on here because there's so, so much to say. Yeah, this— the whole experience in school, and again, I can't say this enough, it's underestimated for those kids that are those non-traditional students. And I literally talk to people every day who have had similar experiences, and then What I also, um, see is how that will affect people, you know, their, their whole self-esteem is, is affected when they're not learning in the traditional way in our school system. And I hate to keep coming down on the school system, but this is why we're talking about this, because again, this goes back to those learners who are dyslexic, dyscalculic, dysgraphic, uh, ADHD. You can put labels on people, that's fine, uh, if it's gonna help, but if you don't understand how to help them or how they think— It's going to— they're not going to understand their self-value. And I've seen so many people who are unemployed or underemployed, they don't trust their own minds. Right.

Yeah.

Right. It's so tragic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And your final quote— well, I'm just keeping an eye on the time— the one that really stuck with me, and I've written it twice: neurons that fire together wire together.

Yes.

Talk about that.

And again, not mine. That has been written about. I can't remember who first. Who knows? There's very few new things. People put new language and new words and they repackage things. But it's such a great thing for the public to understand. And what it means is that that's what learning is. You learn from experience. So when you— the neurons that fire together, meaning you have an experience, and an experience is anything that happens to you.

Positive or negative?

Positive or negative. And it creates either temporarily or permanently, depending on if it's reinforced, like learning, right? You could learn 2 2 4, but if it's not reinforced, you're going to forget it in a couple of weeks. And that's why we teach, we give homework to reinforce the learning. So it's the same thing that if you grow up in a household where, where really they don't— emotions are not welcome at all, you are going to wire into a person that doesn't know how to process emotions, that doesn't have space for them that when they're having a feeling, it might even feel disidentified, like, this, this isn't me, I don't have feelings. So all sorts of things can happen. But whatever happens, from the moment you're born, your brain is taking— you're taking in everything through your 5 senses, and it's going right into the brain, which is recording it. And the things that are important stay. And the things that the mind and brain and body deem are not that important to survival, you forget. The things that we learn when we're younger tend to stay. That's why I can remember every lyric from every song that I sang in junior high school and nothing when my husband wants to play guitar. He's like, why can't you remember words? I'm like, I don't know, but if we play Dreamweaver, I'm going to remember that one. So it's just something—

I like the model, your pipe cleaner model. That was so great to show, like, maybe neurons wiring together. Yeah.

And what's interesting about that is, is what wires in trauma, and this comes from EMDR and various other modalities, but mostly, like, if somebody talks about a bad experience that they've had, or a good experience, there's going to be an image associated in the mind, like a snapshot. There's going to be an emotion That they will be able to say, or more emotions, because we can have many emotions at one time, and they can also be conflicting, like, like, I love you and I hate you right now. You know, when your kid says to you, I hate you, they do not hate you. They love you. They're angry, and they want to hurt you. So a picture in your mind, an emotion, a belief about the self, right? So if I get a bad grade on my test, and there's no parent there to modulate the experience. And in fact, the parent says, yeah, you really screwed that up, you dummy. That's a memory with the mother's face of disapproval, the feeling of fear, probably, and shame in the child, a feeling in the body associated with fear and shame, because all emotions are bodily experiences.

Yeah.

and a belief about the self. I'm stupid.

Yeah.

And those are the 4 components of the wiring that when we do psychotherapy or people— the Emotions Education 101 class, my tagline is, it's not therapy, but it is therapeutic, because we do these experiential exercises. You can't learn about emotions intellectually only.

Yeah.

You can feed the left brain a little bit so that you're not scared of what's going to happen. It demystifies the experience, but then you have to go into the experience and feel what it's like to have a feeling and be able to say— like in therapy, when someone asks me, when someone tells me, let's say they're sad, and they're new, and they're learning to speak the language of emotions, my next question is, what inside your body lets your brain know that you're sad? So that they— so I say, just kind of check inside. Oh, I feel a heaviness in my chest. I feel like I want to cry.

My stomach is clenched. Exactly.

Right? That's anxiety. My stomach is clenched. So all these things we can begin to get unafraid of, because it's counterintuitive. We lean away from these things, we shoot up into our head in defenses. That's the top of the triangle.

Right.

Into anxiety and defenses. When we recognize that, we know we have to work our way down to the bottom to find those core emotions in our body so that we can experience them and they can release that, you know, the energy that they have associated with them so that the nervous system can calm down and we can feel ourselves again. The purpose of emotions, people don't realize too, is to make our body move. move. That's— emotion comes from the French and the Latin, emovere, to move. That the whole purpose of a core emotion is to activate the body. Like, think of fear, so that we run as fast as we can. And if we had to think, oh, there's a tiger in the room and I better run away, it would happen too slowly.

Slowly.

And we'd be eaten. So nature made it so that we don't have to Be conscious of it. It just goes right into the middle brain, triggers the body, and boom, we're out of there. And it's only after we've escaped that we realize it.

We've got one more question, and then I'm conscious that our time is disappearing. Xena says, I still remember the time when I came home from kindergarten. I got 97 or 98% on a test. I ran to tell my parents. I was praised, but they And then asked, why didn't— why wasn't it 100%?

Right. Oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. That's really not right.

I have to deal and manage perfectionism still.

Exactly. And there it is, right there. And imagine the parent that just said, fantastic. And imagine coming home with a B. and not such a great grade either, and saying, great job, were you happy with it? And the kid might say, well, I wish I could have done better. Anything I can do to support you?

That's it.

You don't— you just stay one step ahead behind the kid and you ask them. But instead, imagine that, right? And you can guess that that— what was the name? Was it—

Xena.

Xena's parents probably were also perfectionistic or they had insecurities that it was so important that what registered is not how amazing that grade was. And the mind also tends to look for the negative, some of us more than others.

Oh, yes.

So that those 3 little points, right, just went into that parent's head and were like, hmm, and they didn't pause to think. think how that, you know, parents have to think before they speak. How do you think that's going to make my kid feel? And unless it's going to foster a good feeling about the self or some sense of connection or well-being, don't say it. Unless you're telling your kid, don't stick your finger in the electric socket or don't run into cars. That's where we have to be firm if it's about safety.

Safety. But everything else has to What you're saying there is also the parents examining their life because did that happen to them? Are they repeating it? Are we repeating what has happened to us?

Exactly. And it is hysterical that my patients who are parents, they complain about their kids or whatnot, and I will— I'll say, well, how did you feel when you were that age? And the exact same thing that their kids hate, they hated. And I'm like, that's important to remember. Try to, try to have empathy. Turn it around and imagine what it's like before you say something or do something. Really try to put yourself in the skin of that child. And it's so— self-esteem and mental health is the most important thing to be able to thrive in life. And so it's much less important that your kid get a good grade than your kid feel good about themselves.

Okay.

Because that's going to allow them to, to, to have that steam to propel them through challenges, and that's what you need. It's not, if I fall down, I don't get up. You know, the proverbial falling off the bicycle.

Yes.

You want to be the fuel that says, you can do it, and if it didn't work this way, You'll try it this way, and no matter what, I love you and think the world of you.

Yeah.

To me, you're so smart, and if your teacher doesn't see it, you know, could it be that your teacher's preoccupied with her life, or something's not going well in her life, or it's really hard and she's stressed out? She didn't mean to yell at you. It doesn't— you're not a bad kid. You're a good kid. Or if there's a symptom, Let's see what's not working for you. You know, what's, what's not working? And even the kid being able to say that and identify it and not change it makes a huge difference. Yeah, that really sucks. It's like not fair. And you know, you've got a couple of years left in the school and then we'll really try to, to find something that works better and support this.

Thank you, she said, for addressing and responding to that.

You're so welcome.

Hillary, time is disappearing. Where can we find you? And tell us about your course, because that's available to anyone, anywhere.

Yes, yes, yes. So I would say that for anyone interested in what I've had to say today, that if I— my website, which is hillaryjacobshendel.com, is sort of a free resource hub. Write a blog that is timeless because I don't write about current events. I'm writing about different aspects of life and emotions, whether it's bullying or getting along in relationships or how you release anger, how guilt and anger when you love your parents and you feel like grateful but you're also enraged at them for some things, you know, how you negotiate those conflicts. So, and for people that want to stay in touch, sign up for my newsletter, my blog, and I I send a new article once a month and also news of upcoming classes or webinars. Then there's the Change Triangle YouTube channel, which has lots of— I put sort of exercises on how you work with different emotions and just kind of trying to find some educational— whatever I think will help people and whatever sort of comes into my mind that I feel like producing something on. And then the most important thing for people that can bear to read a book these days, and a lot of people don't read, but it's on audio, is to read the book because I wrote it to be for like a 14-year-old and above. It's mostly stories of how people come into therapy in their defenses, and defenses are like these brilliant, creative, wonderful ways that we have learned to spare ourselves emotional pain starting when we're young. But then what happens is, is they're not useful. They cost us too much because when we are in our defenses, we're not connected to our authentic self. And so the stories show how people come in, in this, on the top of the triangle, in their defenses and anxiety and shame and all this inhibition, and how they move from down into experiencing their core emotions emotions, because before one felt bad about themselves, there was an emotion that came before, which was probably a protest. I don't like the way you're talking to me, and that's making me sad. And when people can connect back to the core emotions and then process them, all sorts of good things happen. So the book shows that, and it's got exercises and science without any jargon, just enough so that you know that it's not bunk. And so the book is called book is on audio and it's in hardcover and in the UK it's on softcover and it's in Chinese and Spanish and Korean and Polish and Lithuanian, lots of translations because the whole world needs emotion education. And the class, the Emotions Education 101 class, is if you didn't want to read the book on your own, you can take that class, but that does cost money. But all the other resources, and the book costs money because Random House Random House published the book, but everything else is free. And I try to create a lot of free resources because most people in the world can't afford.

And everyone needs it. Everyone needs it.

It's a basic education in emotions. It's really what we should all be getting in high school. And until we do, I'm just going to try to keep on plugging away, sharing the information. Yeah, it changed my life so much. And I would have been a better parent I mean, I knew enough of what to do, but I really did— I had a child with— I had one child with ADD and another child with an auditory processing disorder, and I could have done better on the how to talk about it, and that's the emotion piece, I think.

I agree. Lisa, where can we find you?

Well, let's see, LinkedIn and Facebook and Monday Afternoons with Lois, talking to awesome people. Um, that's about it.

And I've got to thank my son Isaac and his friend Chris for their support, because this show would not go on without them. And this is our last show for this season. We're starting up again in September, talking to a wonderful lineup of guests. And Hillary, we might ask— we would love to ask you to come back, because you—

Oh, thank you, thank you. That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.

Oh, I just thank you. You've got so much to offer, and we, as you keep saying, we've got so much to share. So hit the like and the subscribe button, hit the bell for notifications. Find my book Reversed: A Memoir. Find me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

I'm all there too. I forgot that, the social media.

All the descriptions are in the link to this one. Join us again in September, and we're going to turn this into a podcast as well, so you don't have to watch it; you can listen, and we'll bring them out over the summer. So thank you, thank you, thank you very much, and we'll see you all back in September.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lois.

Bye, everybody.

Bye. Listening.