Live Coaching: "Turn triggers into growth"

All right, my darlings. Hello, villagers! Good to have you with me. Thanks for either being here or watching this video. Um, I think this is a good topic. Triggers, uh, just come with the territory, and that is how your child teaches you what, what is there to be matured, what is there to grow up. We are growing up as much as what they are. And you know, when your child does something like, um, you know, refuses to do what they're told, or they cry, um, they have meltdowns in public, and we'd really like to be the calm parent who can handle any situation at any time, but that's very rare. We're more like donkeys on the edge. Remember that famous Shrek quote, 'I'm a donkey on the edge.' I remember being a donkey on the edge, I tell you. With 4 boys, it was unavoidable, unavoidable. But this session isn't about blaming yourself, because that doesn't help, okay? Your children will always be your greatest teachers, and it's not because they're easy, but because they have an extraordinary ability to find those neon light buttons of yours which are teaching us to— well, teaching us a lot of things, but particularly about ourselves. So if I say the word trigger, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it a feeling? Is it a moment, a parenting moment where you found yourself feeling out of your depth? Have you explored a little bit of parent rage? I didn't know what the word rage was until I became a parent. So these are things that are part of, um, the territory. So a trigger is when your reaction is much bigger than the situation, and we, we get triggered all the time. We get triggered at work, we get triggered you know, through family, friends, all sorts of things. And the trigger is part of what is inviting you to go inwards. Often in parenting, we tend to focus on, you know, getting advice and tips and tricks to get our kids to do what it is that we want them to do. But what if instead we changed ourselves? And in changing ourselves, it changes our child's behavior. That, my darlings, is a miracle. And I've seen it happen in my own parenting when I've had my own breakthroughs in my reactivity, where I've been triggered in the past and then have been able to get to the bottom of that and change that. My children changed too, and my husband did as well. Oh my God. It's a real shock. You don't realize how much influence you have on the people around you. I'll tell you one of my— I was reflecting on this preparing for tonight— one of my not-so-fine parenting moments where a trigger for me was not feeling heard or ignored by my kids. And when you got 4 sons, they're very good at that at times. And I remember being in the kitchen, I was trying to cook dinner, and they'd, you know, come in and they'd snacked all afternoon and they just hadn't put anything away, and And they're in the playroom and I'm saying, boys, come and clean the kitchen. Put your things away, please, so I can cook dinner. Boys, come and put your things away, please, so I can cook dinner. Boys, come and put the things away so I can cook dinner. And then I got so frustrated because they just literally, all of them just kept ignoring me. I just grabbed my arm. I put it over the kitchen bench and moved it along the top of the bench so that food, plates, glasses, everything went smash, shatter, bang. On the floor. And, um, then I looked at them and snapped, 'Now you've got a bigger job to clean up.' So I also had these moments with wet towels and— oh God, you know, we had a cupboard with towels right near the bathroom, so every time they went to the shower, they'd grab a new towel, grab a new towel, and before I knew it, I had just wet towels everywhere because I wouldn't put them away. Or hang them up or dry them out or whatever. And, um, you know, same thing: boys, pick up your wet towels. Boys, pick up your wet towels. So that became a real trigger for me. And, you know, it's not the trigger itself, and it's not even their response, it's the story we create or we attach to it. Because remember, we're meaning-making machines. So what are the stories you tell yourself when you get triggered? Just think about that for a moment. So my story was, no one ever listens to me. But let me give you some ideas about the sort of meaning we can attach to children's behavior. Things like I have no control. I'm failing. They do not respect me. That was probably the other aspect to my story. No one ever listens to me and they don't respect me. Everyone is judging me. I cannot cope. Does any of that resonate? That meaning layer is absolute gold. Not comfortable gold, not sparkly gold, more like gold buried under a pile of laundry, but it's gold all the same. So when you start to appreciate that it's less about the behavior and more about your reactivity to it and the part of you that's reacting, then you have the capacity to start to change. To change your story and to change the way you respond. So it's, it's a shift around parenting where you go from thinking, you know, how do I get my child to do this, or how do I stop my child from doing something, to what is my child communicating and what is this activating inside of me. It's really powerful. So when you become triggered, there are 3 places to look. One is the present, like how full is your energy tank? Are you tired, hungry, rushed, overloaded, feeling overwhelmed? Are you unsupported? Number 2 is the past. Have you felt powerless, ignored, embarrassed, trapped? Invisible or not enough before. So when else have you felt like this? Is there a pattern of feeling like this? Where there's a pattern, there's a belief. And number 3 is the belief. What are you telling yourself about yourself or about your child or about your parenting This is not about excusing our reactions. It's about understanding them so we can choose differently next time. When you can see a pattern, you can start to change it. So linking it to past events, linking it to patterns that have been consistent is really, really powerful. This is the stuff I do in RTT as well, where we look at patterns, find their root cause, their origin, and then start to extract them and replace them with new beliefs, new ways of thinking, feeling, and being. So what I'd like you to do now is to just reflect on a moment in your parenting when you last felt triggered, or a significant trigger. So just think back, but not something too overwhelming unless you feel like getting down and dirty with yourself. Just remember, this isn't therapy tonight. This is just some gentle reflecting. So what happened? So, and, and when you think about it, don't get caught up in the drama. Just, just if a, if a video was videoing it, what would the video see? What, what actually happened? What did you feel in your body? It's the ability to recognize the impact of triggers on our body which gives us the first signs that we're being triggered, because life is a somatic experience, it's a bodily experience. And so being able to notice that, what happened in your body can help you pick it up next time. What emotion was present? So if we look at the example I just gave you about my situation, what happened? The kids wouldn't clean up. What I felt in my body? Was a, like a, um, heat. And what emotion was present? Anger, frustration, helplessness, and also resentment. A resentment that I was doing it on my own. I wasn't getting any help. And what did you make it mean? That's a powerful question. What meaning have you attached to that story? In my case, I made it mean that I— my voice isn't heard and I'm not respected. But maybe it was, I'm failing, or they're out of control, or I cannot do this, or everyone else is coping but not me, this will never end. What meaning have you attached to the story? We can always change meaning. The next question is, have I felt this before? This is where can we can start to pick up patterns. Is this familiar from childhood school, relationships, work, birth, early parenting, or even another season of life. Have I felt like this before? And number 6 is, what might this trigger be here to show me? I always ask this question: what is the invitation here? What's this inviting you to think, feel, see, be, do, We're looking at what is this, what is the invitation here, and ultimately it's to grow. Your kids will grow you up as much as you'll grow them up. Isn't that beautiful? It's so mutual, it's reciprocal. So maybe it's an invitation to get more rest, to have some time out. To draw boundaries. Maybe it's an invitation towards self-compassion, self-acceptance instead of self-flagellation. Maybe it's an invitation around space, courage, letting go. And what would you do next? With that? What sort of changes can you do to really help you rebalance your nervous system and give you that time and the space to really reflect on how you're going as a parent? These are such precious times, my darlings. You, you I don't think there's too many things in life that grow you the way pregnancy, birth, early parenting, later parenting, teenage years— it all grows you up. Even me as a granny now, I'm having to recreate how I am around my son and his beautiful partner. Like, there's always growth inherent in life, but this is a particularly intense catalyst for it, particularly young children, because they're a bit uncontrollable. You never know what they're going to do. But then, yeah, it continues. Now, sometimes we need to repair when we do get triggered, particularly if we react. And there's always space for a good repair. And it's a beautiful thing to repair with your kids because it teaches them that you're not perfect and they don't have to be perfect. So you can always go back to them and say, I had really big feelings, I'm sorry if that scared you. You know what it's like to have big feelings too, don't you? And you, in doing that, you start to give them the vocabulary to develop that emotional intelligence that we need as humans. So your children learn as much from your weaknesses as they do from your strengths, and it's good for you to be honest about those with your kids. Hmm. So for those listening, I hope that's been very helpful. I'm going to stop the recording now and chat to the people that are here. Um, to see how they felt about it. But lots of love to you all, huge respect for what you do as parents, and, um, yeah, thank you for tuning in. Oh, by the way, I've got some news. I've been playing with AI, and Carmen and I have put together all of the coaching, and there's lots of it over the years from the parents catch-ups, new parents catch-ups, to the Thrive work, to the pregnancy work. And we've loaded it into an AI kind of agenty thing, however you talk about those things. Have we got a name for it? I just can't quite remember now. But anyway, we've been training it and we're going to trial it on new villages. So Carmen's going to put a link in the village WhatsApp group And, um, you can have Tracey in your pocket at 3 AM in the morning. How good is that? Please let me know if it's useful. It, it's an interesting, um, thing that so much of my parenting orientation is around doing the inner work more so than the tips and tricks around parenting. But sometimes tips and tricks can be very helpful as well. And I like people to discover that they have the answers to their kids, but what I'm realizing is that everybody is using AI to get parenting advice as well. So you might as well get it from someone who you know and trust. Hopefully that would be me. But, um, yeah, so stay tuned for that because I think Carmen's going to post the link in the WhatsApp, and that means you, I think, log in and then you get the responses that don't come on the WhatsApp. It's a private thing. Um, so if you, um, see it, please try it out. See if it's any good. See if it sounds like me. I hope it doesn't swear. Maybe I should teach it to swear. Then you'll feel like, um, you are talking to me. Okay, thanks for listening. Ciao.