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In this insightful episode, clinical psychologist Dr. Tanya Cotler joins Jess and Scott to explore the complexities of intergenerational trauma and cycle-breaking in parenting. Dr. Cotler shares her expertise on how childhood experiences shape our parenting, the importance of curiosity and compassion in understanding our triggers, and practical ways to build self-awareness and cope with parenting challenges.
Listeners will gain valuable insights on:
* How our bodies hold onto past traumas and how they can resurface in parenting
* The concept of "repair mapping" to reflect on difficult parenting moments
* Finding a balance between productivity and mindful pauses as a parent
* Reframing children's challenging behaviours as opportunities for growth
This deep and honest conversation offers both professional wisdom and personal examples to help parents navigate their own healing journeys while raising emotionally healthy children. It is a must-listen for anyone looking to break generational cycles and create more connected relationships with their kids.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
Hey friends.
Today we're not gonna have a big intro to the topic because
This episode with my dear friend and colleague, Dr.
Tanya Cotler, already includes so many important topics that I didn't want to add more to an introduction
So we're gonna get straight into it.
Tanya introduces herself right away in the episode.
We cover topics like sleep training, intergenerational trauma.
We talk about how to calm your body when you feel triggered, and so much more.
Can't wait for you to listen and I'll talk to you again at the end.
Tanya, welcome to Robot Unicorn.
I'm so happy that you're here.
I mean, we already had lunch together and spent so much time.
time together so I mean it's funny to introduce you now.
But before we get into the episode, I was wondering if you'd introduce yourself or anyone who doesn't know you yet.
Sure.
Thanks so much for having me.
Just got to meet Scott so I'm already
So excited about this.
Yeah.
Really?
That was exciting for you?
It was.
Yeah.
And we talked about Scott's new shoes.
Yep.
We had a moment for his millennial socks.
already so we're eating wine gums.
We're eating wine gums.
Yeah probably won't have any more of those right now.
I'll have those after.
It makes it harder to talk.
So I am a child and adult clinical psychologist.
I specialize in both
And they focus primarily on a parent-child attachment relationship and maternal mental health.
The way I look at it is I see the relationship as
co-created by parent and child and very often in the mental health landscape we are talking about parenting either in terms of best interest of the parent
or best interest of the child and we're often failing, I think, to look at it from the both end.
And all relationships have multiple members that are co-creating the relationship that unfolds.
So that's where I work
So I work sometimes with adults, sometimes with children, sometimes with families, and sometimes with parents of even young infants in what's called parent-infant psychotherapy.
Mm-hmm.
I love it
I love your approach.
I feel like we have been online together for a long time.
I remember seeing your stuff maybe even 2020 online.
But only in the last year we've really gotten to know each other
And it's just been so nice.
We went to Nashville together.
Yeah, Tanya and I went to Nashville together.
And I feel like it solidified.
Well, my love for you at least.
So I don't know.
My love right back.
Yes.
I feel like something that we really bonded over, I mean, outside of the personal life stuff, but was our similar view on the way we approached kids and families.
And I agree with you.
I feel like it's such a nuanced thing that we are often missing, whether it's in the field of child therapy or the field of parent coaching or supporting parents.
You and I both look at both.
Like how does something that we're teaching a parent impact the child or the child the parent and vice versa?
So I really appreciate that.
I feel like we've been able to have so many incredible discussions already around that
I totally agree.
I think it's one of those things that when we talk about how to let's say say a script to a child in a big feeling moment, stuff we'll I'm sure we'll get into.
it's missing a whole piece on how is it for the parent who's delivering that script?
How do they regulate their own feelings?
How hard is it for them to be saying the words they're saying?
What are they actually feeling inside?
Because all of that impacts the scenario.
And so then when it doesn't go well.
A script for example.
A parent feels like they failed in some way because if it's just supposed to be this one liner that I've learned how to say, then it should work
And so we really need to understand the differences and the nuances in what a parent carries, the stories they carry in themselves, and the story the child comes to, or the narrative of the child comes to carry themselves due to the parent
Yeah.
Something that you talk about so much in your work and in your practice is the stories that we hold within our bodies.
Yeah, and that's something that Scott and I I mean you can touch on that too, Scott, but in our relationship, especially in the last seven years since having kids.
has just come up over and over in our lives too.
Yeah, for sure.
I can't speak for your experiences, but I know that like when we had our first daughter, it was surprising.
Things that you maybe thought you were okay with as a parent or you've never reflected on before in your life all of a sudden are coming up.
And
I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about that and the impact that those stories can have or that you've seen them have on the parents that you work with.
So
I'm gonna answer that from a bit of a background story.
The way I became both child and adult psychologist was by being child psychologist first.
And at the beginning of my work, I worked in inpatient psychiatry
I worked with children who were hospitalized sometimes, very often due to behavioral reasons, they were being diagnosed with diagnoses we don't give children like bipolar disorder.
and I remember being really pissed off about it, to be honest.
I couldn't fully understand.
I was a young early career professional.
I I think I was in my masters only at the time.
And I couldn't understand how these kids were
getting these labels and in a hospital and g the treatment was directly for them and it was these, you know, six sessions and they were supposed to get better.
And very often what would happen is before discharge, before they were
released from the hospital.
You would meet with the parent or the caregiver or sometimes a foster parent.
And so often I would realize a story that the parent carried
you know, as I was talking about the child, it would turn into talking to the parent about their own story and what maybe happened to them.
And you were seeing this impact now.
And so the way I looked at it was, okay, I need to actually work or learn how to work with the adult too.
And what happens, I believe in parenthood in particular, is that parenthood reawakens the wounds of our past.
It is almost as though I often say motherhood because I specialize more particularly in reproductive mental health and also the hormone changes and brain changes that happen to mothers in particular.
But we are seeing it
no doubt, regardless, in any parenting figure.
Because what happens is there are stories we carried in our bodies, sometimes that we forget, context is forgotten, but emotions will live in our bodies.
And we used to think that trauma lives
Like flashbacks.
That's how we used to talk about trauma, right?
You have a memory and it's a flashback.
Sometimes it can be, but very often it isn't.
We will hold on sometimes to body sensations.
We will hold on to feelings
a feeling of shame, a feeling of anger, and it will show up, and it will show up at moments of high anxiety, potentially, which parenting is.
And so moments in parenting will reawaken things that we haven't dealt with yet.
And sometimes it will reawaken things without us understanding what is being awakened.
We're being called to care for another little being's emotional world when sometimes we have never actually cared for our own emotional world.
Right?
We've just sort of
the term I use for myself as when I became a mother, you know, I was a head on a body.
Like even though I'd got my degree in PhD in psychology, I was
quite frankly a head on a body.
You know, I wasn't in touch with everything going on in there and motherhood really awakened that up.
It's easy to distract yourself with
schooling or hobbies or whatever, anything else, I know I had the same thing.
For me it was pouring myself into work before we had kids.
And I know that that definitely was a distraction.
Like
I think for myself I feel as though I knew that was always something that would probably need to be worked on at some point.
But it was especially after we had our first daughter that I mean for me I realized we were dealing with other things at that time, but we definitely needed to deal with
some of my childhood experiences before really I could call myself a good parent.
I wonder if if you're willing, Scott, to like talk about what that
feels like in your body.
Because I feel like a lot of the people listening to this podcast, like we've heard the term cycle breaker.
We've heard the term flashbacks and trauma.
But I don't think we talk a lot about how that actually physically feels in your body and how your body like remembers these sensations and these feelings and maybe they're like a certain age that come back and they're reawakened during that time.
Yep.
Do you remember what that like feeling was like?
When you're talking about the flashbacks, I would say there's only one experience that I have that actually will still come back now, even though I've worked through it, but I still will get that experience.
Something that happened with my grandfather when I was a kid
Nothing like that he did to me, but just it was a traumatic experience that I went through.
But in terms of like the sensations I feel, I feel like mostly it was just anger.
Yeah.
But I think underlying that, which we've found out recently, was more like an anxiety or sadness around a lot of the experiences that I had growing up.
So I would say like
It's not as though I'm having these flashbacks or anything.
It's more just I know that these feelings of anger or anxiety
or whatever the feeling is, sadness, it's a result of those experiences, but I'm not like specifically focusing on any experience every time.
It's just that an automatic feeling that I have.
I feel like one way I often try to explain it to people.
Sometimes people say
How do I know if there's something that I haven't dealt with?
You know that there's sort of a curiosity.
How do I know if something's affecting me?
Well
First of all, there's often a mismatch, I find, between how we want to be or our values or our desires in a given moment
and what then transpires.
It might be a reaction as opposed to a response that we can catch enough
So it requires a reflection, a reflective capacity and a curiosity that we are beginning to take to ourselves, like a looking inwards.
What just happened there?
Right.
I I remember
For me as a mother, one of the moments that I noticed it was with my children, I was always very rushed.
Like you had to get everywhere on time.
And if we were running late
because children, you know, need to put on their shoes themselves and then they need to tie themselves and then they decide that they need to wear the blue pants instead of the pink pants.
It gets late wherever you're going.
And I remember
the bodily response for me was it it was an anxiety response, like I would get hot.
I would literally feel hot because
I had to go.
This would happen when I was taking my children to a music class.
Like I didn't have to go anywhere, but I had there was an urgency.
And that did live in my body from my own childhood.
And I remember the one time I yelled at my daughter, like, come on, let me put your shoes on for you.
Right?
I'll just do it.
And you know, her big eyes that look like they've seen the, you know, the wonders of the whole world, like stare back at you like and the curiosity, like what just happened to me there?
What
was that why was that so hard for me?
Why was waiting patience?
I'm a very patient person.
So when it doesn't fit your values, why was that patience just then for her to put on her own shoes so hard?
What is it about being late
for me.
And so it becomes these curiosity moments.
So when people say, How do I know if I'm ready?
or how do I know, I often say, are there moments where you're feeling feelings that don't match?
where you want to be feeling, where you're struggling or you feel stuck.
A big one that a lot of my patients bring up is silliness, struggling with our kids' silliness.
Some people are surprised by that.
Like why is it so hard for me when my kids are running after each other?
And often I say, I don't know, why why?
Let's think about it.
And the first step really is curiosity and I call it like the double seas
with compassion.
It needs to be not like why, but why?
Like with open wonder.
Yeah.
Yeah, I I remember those early days too being a parent and
I mean we still have that now.
I mean we still have that now.
I mean you're describing the hurry up thing, I'm like, oh Jess, is there something there?
Like do you have to think about yourself?
Because to be honest, I thought of you for that as well.
Yeah, honestly.
Because the the situation that you just described, I had that this morning.
where I felt it in my body where I'm like, hey, let's go, let's go, right?
And one of our daughters is sensitive to the clothes that she wears.
And so it just it ends up meaning that a morning where it's like
in my logical mind, just put on an outfit and let's go.
It takes thirty minutes to pick out the right outfit for it to feel good and for all of those things to come up.
And I know I feel the message in my own brain is, let's go.
Hurry up.
Let's be fast.
And like exactly like you said and Scott, I knew you'd you'd be like, Jess, that's you And that's what I love about our relationship.
I it's fine that you call me out on it.
And I feel that sensation in my body.
And then I get to work or I get to wherever I'm going.
I'm like, there was no rush.
Like you said, right?
Like I didn't actually have to be rushed.
And realistically, it actually took the exact same amount of time even though I was trying to rush.
It just disrupted our relationship more.
So it's it's the moments like that, I think
that we are all reflective people, but you're constantly having to reflect and you're constantly having to ask yourself those questions.
And it can be hard to know when is the time.
Something and I'm just really curious to your thoughts on this that I see a lot in the moms that come for us.
It's like I want to be a cycle breaker.
Right?
They see they see the words, they see the language.
We talk about it a lot on Instagram, breaking cycles.
They want to be a cycle breaker, but their baby's not
sleeping, they're exhausted, they're tall, they're having so many meltdowns, maybe their relationship's not in a great spot, and they'll want to dive into this deeper trauma.
But sometimes we consider is it's
time.
So I'm I'm curious to get your thoughts on that.
So I so appreciate you bringing that up, Jess, because as someone, you know, I introduced myself and I don't often introduce it leading with the I specialize in intergenerational trauma because when I lead with that
It's a mouthful and someone wants a glossary, you know, dictionary, what does that actually mean?
Or it can be quite jarring.
And I specialize in intergenerational trauma
And what that means or why that actually is important, I think, to me, is that that doesn't mean, you know, a singular, objective, traumatic
event that everybody has and it's one and you pinpoint it the way we used to think a trauma work, trauma retelling.
You're gonna tell and retell and retell that one story
And now you've broken cycles.
Like now you've healed.
And I think very often that is actually what people think.
And classically in trauma treatment, that actually was a little bit of what it was.
Right?
It was this idea of
stories that you tell over and over again until they no longer hold on you.
Now that could be a part of it, but we know so much more now about the somatic, the importance of the body
and what the body carries and the importance of how it is showing up in the here and now and how micro moments can be what we carry and they're not always these big events necessarily for people
and that sometimes the things we carry are more the wounds they created, right?
What we when we talk about trauma, it can be how I felt in a situation.
It could be what's called an error of omission instead of an error of commission, what I didn't receive as opposed to what I did.
So when you're ready or when do we do the work, I believe largely begins with safety
You have to actually be in a place where you are feeling safe with a person who you're feeling safe with.
So that might be if you're in therapy, the therapist, that might already exist.
So that's important.
If you don't have that, then for sure it needs to, I b believe really strongly, be a co-created experience.
So it needs to be with somebody.
We need a witness.
We need to not feel alone
in what we're going back to.
And so are you in a circumstance of life where you have that, either with a therapist or a partner or a friend, we're revisiting things.
But then it also becomes what resources do you have, internal resources.
If you are someone who's not sleeping, or you don't have safe body-based practices, mindfulness, meditation, or
dance or movement or walking outside.
You don't have times where you feel safe in your body.
Bringing up memories or events or times where you felt unsafe.
can be overly dysregulating and flooding.
So when I'm working with someone, we're always beginning in feeling safe in our bodies, learning how to even find that and what that feels like.
before we're going to the memories or the moments where we felt unsafe.
There's something called pendulation in trauma treatment and it's actually the
learning of moving back and forth between what feels very uncomfortable in the body, maybe scary, and what feels safe.
And a person needs to have built up a little bit of that
It's almost a misnomer out there.
You know, I'm gonna be a cycle breaker, so I'm gonna write my story.
Yes, and you really deserve to have the environment and the safety and the resources.
to be able to revisit that story.
And again, resources meaning internal resources, sense of safety inside me.
Yeah.
Can I ask a question about that?
Like I feel as though so this might sound a little skeptical
But just the the idea of having the resources, like the internal resources, especially as a parent, I feel like that might be tricky for people to actually feel as though they have that.
A hundred percent.
I actually think that is exactly why we should be beginning in the here and now.
So we should be beginning with I believe a parent comes in and they tell the story of So this morning I yelled
when it took my daughter too long to put on her running shoes.
And what we're sticking with is what happened in your body in that moment.
And what did you feel?
And maybe next time what we could have done.
And
Would it have helped you to, you know, go put an ice cube in your hand?
And maybe we're teaching you some mindfulness in our therapy session and we're building on what did that remind you of?
Uh when did you feel that feeling before?
So it's less like going back right away when they get into therapy or not going back.
What what trauma did you experience?
Jess's original question.
It's often not the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you're focusing on how can we practically help you and then try and understand over time when you feel you're safe to do so.
That's when you get into potentially talking about the the deeper trauma or the Which is tricky, right?
Because parenting, as we all know, is not a kind of linear point of arrival where at some point we've all landed.
in like, we can breathe now.
It's this developmental phase of ups and downs.
And so everyone you're navigating that a little bit, right?
And I believe in my therapy sessions I've watched how much it isn't a linear process.
Right.
So somebody may be talking very much in the here and now and they build their resources and they feel safe in the relationship and then they may move back to some aspects of there and then and doing some more narrative building or story building of what happened to them.
and what still lives in their body and then they go through a really rough patch where their kid is toilet training and it becomes very pragmatic.
and back to managing the toilet training and even if you know and they know that there's some stuff that's lingering in the background that's getting brought up to the surface with the toilet training, you may not deal with it in that moment 'cause at that moment the toilet training battles
are hard and going back to what it's bringing up for them is not helpful.
And then you may process it when the timing becomes right.
Timing is really important in this work.
Yeah
I agree and then that's why I wanted to bring it up because I know like these words are kind of trendy right now, right?
And I I hate to say that because I don't
think psycho breaking is a trendy thing at all, but I do know that people will read it and see it and then come to therapy and like, okay, I'm ready.
I got to unpack all my childhood traumas.
And our role as therapists is to help first maintain that sense of safety and then see what's going to be helpful in terms of unpacking that trauma, like as the timing makes sense.
And I think it's okay for people to know that.
Like I've I've heard from people just on Nurtured First recently being like, oh, I I need to go to therapy and just unpack all all my trauma.
And
It's like, yeah, you can, but like don't feel that pressure.
Like that doesn't that's not the only way to be an excellent parent and we can slowly build on that
And looking at I you know, I hear that and I think we're doing something right as a generation of parents that are wanting to quote unquote cycle break.
We're doing something right that that's becoming trendy
we're doing something right, that we're moving as a parenting generation away from kinda the keep calm carry on and that we understand that
there's permission to feel and that all feelings matter and that it's okay to be vulnerable and that we all carry stories in us and some of those stories are deeper wounds than others and
it's also okay for that to occur when you're ready.
It doesn't have to occur with immediacy.
And I think we always risk the penla moving too far.
Right?
If we if the pressure of
We all need to be reflective and aware and curious and all the time.
It's really hard to parent like that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, especially when you're completely exhausted.
You have the pressures of work, you have the pressures of whatever else there is, bringing kids here and there and everywhere.
So I think a lot of that then it comes back to what you're saying and what Scott was questioning is like building resources, right?
So how can we as a parent build internal resources to draw on
so that we don't lose our cool and we don't get so triggered by things that come up for our kids.
I think back to that mom, let's say and when I say that mom, I'm imagining myself like three years ago.
So
Yeah, a couple years ago I had a newborn baby.
I had a five-year-old with a lot of feelings, and I had a two-year-old who was really struggling to regulate, and my newborn didn't sleep
Right.
So I I think I had a lot of resources at the time, but it was still really, really tough.
And I think about all the parents that follow nurture first or that are part of our community.
And they're in that position.
And so I'm wondering what resources can a parent like that draw from to get through it?
Because I think a lot of the times all you hear about is, well, sleep train your baby, right?
Just sleep train them because
Then they'll sleep through the night and then you'll be fine.
But then parents try and do that and actually it's more triggering for them.
And the baby's crying now triggers something inside of them and they have less resources to
pull from.
So if you are talking to a mom or dad that's in that position, what kind of advice or support
So here's a really tricky one.
I'm really bad at one of the five things you say because every single person to me is their own story.
Oh I know.
So I am so bad at that question because my answer is always
It truly it depends.
Yeah.
Right.
And so I'll answer it instead with becoming curious the questions I would ask instead of the answers I would give.
Right.
And so the questions I would ask is what happens to you when your baby's crying?
And what do they want to be doing at night?
You know, and and are they holding the desire to be feeding their baby all freely at night as a baby needs in their bed, but they're afraid because somebody told them that their baby's never gonna learn to regulate
Well then, you know, then fuck that.
Um and you know, you're gonna co-sleep and it works for you and it's what you wanna do and you'll learn safe practices in co-sleeping and you're at peace and you're comfortable and it's bringing you comfort.
that your baby's closer to you all night and suddenly you're feeling so much more regulated.
Now the same parent comes to me and says, I can't sleep next to my baby.
And sometimes I've worked with mothers where that is true, sometimes due to even trauma.
And they actually do need to separate at night.
They actually need their baby not to be in the bed.
They actually do need their baby.
to sleep separately to them.
And I say to them, okay, well, this is gonna involve crying because your baby seeks that proximity to you.
And this isn't how you teach them regulation and all that jazz, but you also matter too
And in the grand scheme of things, if this is a mother who is really, really struggling to show up and is severely sleep deprived and depri
press and in her best interest it is some form of and when we use sleep training we have to be careful what does that actually mean, right?
So that could mean
not picking up your baby and moving them to their crib but having your hand on their back and shushing them until they fall asleep.
I mean, it's been co opted for a very specific model, which I am not referencing.
But are you gonna involve some form of kind of sleep hygiene?
of helping your baby learn to sleep without you, you may.
You know, that might be I say I describe it as a prescription.
Like as a psychologist, there are times where I prescribe I do, I prescribe it.
But it is very much led by the person.
What can they tolerate?
It also depends on the age of the baby.
It depends on the baby's n style.
Is this baby a baby who's touch-based?
Can we still hold them?
Is it baby who's sound-based?
Can we still sing?
Right?
So how are we gonna work with it?
But the idea is
What does the parent need?
What does the child need?
How do we negotiate that as best we can to get to our goal?
Which if the goal is sleep, then sleep.
And that's gonna look different for every parent.
Yeah
Exactly.
I I think it's such an important discussion to have.
It reminds me of the episode Scott and I did on just things being black and white in the parenting space.
And I think what we always look at is the parent-child relationship, right?
So whatever we're teaching, whether it's discipline or sleep or anything, like what is going to serve the relationship best?
And if we can look at the relationship as a two-way street, then I I think we're looking at things so much different than like is sleep training bad or good or you know, you know, and like how do we even define it?
I I think
We just want to put things in a box and it's so much more nuanced than that.
So I love that you offer that perspective, especially when we're also thinking about our own wounds.
So I think about parents I've worked with who come with sleep struggles, let's say.
Like so they're coming to me because just my kids won't sleep.
But then we get curious and we ask questions and we get to the root of it and it's like
you know, the deeper and deeper you get, it's like, oh actually like I remember laying in my crib screaming when I was a kid.
Okay.
So now let's talk about that feeling in your body and the resources you were talking about.
So often these things are so much deeper than what they present as.
And when we can help build internal resources and help parents, even like you said, the two C's, curiosity and compassion, like we can help people develop that
That's where the real healing I think can come into play.
I think that one of the things we attempt to do by creating categories is we're attempting to alleviate anxiety.
Right?
A category of good or bad, you know, if you sleep with your child or you baby wear your child or
And these can all be good, but they're behaviors.
They're just behaviors at the end of the day.
But when we categorize certain behaviors where we give our ten steps, what we do is temporarily
we reduce anxiety.
There's a model.
Okay, so if I just follow that model, then I'm good.
The problem is that when we do that, we also erase the capacity for reflection and curiosity.
and we increase anxiety long term because for some people they may not fit that mold.
Right?
I worked with a mother many, many years ago who felt she had to nurse her child till the age of three.
Because that, you know, as a World Health Organization, if anyone's hearing this and suddenly going, I didn't know that was the age, it doesn't matter.
Actually, that's the point of the story.
And so
The she was she was really important to her and she had a lot of trouble and baby was a pincher.
And this isn't, you know, a baby blaming thing.
Baby was actually a pincher and, you know, very tactile and really, really enjoyed touching and she began to resent.
maybe a lot.
And her inner world of I can't connect to my baby and I'm not a good mother got really big and really large.
And if we stuck in this category of this is how you feed and this is how long, we would have missed so much.
That was in the importance of
what it felt like for her to resent her baby, and how much that was a story she carried, where she always felt her mother resented her.
This was a story of a mother whose grandmother had resented her mother and due to wounds of
babies that came and babies that didn't come and there's a whole bunch to the story, but that's very, very unique feeling of resentment.
lived in her body in a really big way and it was growing just around the feeding relationship.
And so if we just got categorical around it, if we just said, Well, this is how you build the attachment relationship, we were causing a whole other problem
in the way of a singular prescribed behavior.
And so it gets really tricky when we do that.
We really have to make this a much more individualized approach to parenting.
What does it bring up for you?
How do you feel?
And yes, sometimes when we ask, you know, you said before, Jess, it's about the unit, it is.
But the other tricky part is navigating that that doesn't mean it's gonna match all the time
Right, to the best interest of the child and the best interest of the parent may be in mismatch and it's sort of taking a much bigger picture or I don't know what to call it, forest over trees or
It's a long-term view of relationship where we start to see like in the long run, there's never this balance.
It's sometimes it's focusing on the mother or the parents' needs, and sometimes it's focusing on the baby's needs.
And it's a little bit
of a really long ping pong game where eventually metaphor's so bad but I'm gonna stick with it where eventually like everybody wins.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
I think I don't think that's a bad metaphor.
Have you played Ping Pong before?
Oh well no.
Probably no there's never an everybody wins in ping pong.
But we see where you're going there
Yeah, I I I think that's true too, and and for parents to know, it's not like the one thing that you do that's gonna impact this relationship with your child now forever.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurtur.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unspeakable.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturefirst.
com slash body safety and to save 10% use the code
robot unicorn.
And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
In terms of interjection
generational trauma, I know I kind of want to hop back to that topic because I know that's something that you are such an expert on and something Scott and I have talked about.
I mean beyond that length in our relationship
I'm just thinking about so a lot of the work that we've done together, so Scott and I've been together since we were like babies essentially.
So when I
Talk about Scott's healing journey.
For anyone listening, like I know we talk about it a lot, but I feel like it's something we've just been on this road together.
Intergenerational trauma and cycle breaking is a big part of the story, right?
And it's something that I think before we had kids it was talked about.
By us?
Yeah.
I think we had talked about it.
Obviously I was
a therapist, so we had talked about it.
But it we we didn't live it out yet.
And then the feelings, the sensations in your body and all of this stuff started coming up.
So I'm just wondering, like when you're working with a person, so let's say it's an individual who is breaking a cycle of intergenerational trauma, which is so many of us.
What's like one place that you would kind of start or a message that you might give them?
I know that that's like a I'm trying to be open.
What's the one thing?
I'm trying to be open with my question, not be like Tanya, give us five scripts that you get But you can use me as an example.
You know, if I think that even I said earlier somatic, being aware of the body.
Even that is tricky.
Because for some people I made the joke about myself, so I'm allowed
Some of us walk around heads on bodies and we're not fully connected to our body.
Some of us don't have the not inner resources, but financial resources to be in therapy.
to be with a safe person who's going to turn to us and say, Okay, when your child wouldn't put on her shoes and you felt that what I described heat in my body
and you yelled at your child, maybe they didn't describe a body sensation, what did you feel in your body?
Somebody might not ask you that and you might not have any idea how to answer that, or it might feel really uncomfortable.
Like, what the hell do you mean by that?
I've never answered that
question me for.
I feel like that's pretty rare.
Like Jess is like that, obviously, because she's a therapist and I'm sure you are as well
I feel like that is relatively rare.
Maybe not.
To be asked that or to know how to do that.
Totally.
That's exactly my point.
It's really rare.
And so it's tricky.
You know, when I'm on a podcast episode, I'm not gonna speak
as though, you know, well notice what you feel in your body.
When you have the luxury of being in therapy, sometimes you're having the observing other person point it out for
for you.
So I might say something and I'll say, I noticed your cheeks just got red as I as I said that, you know, you looked warm.
And
Did you notice that?
Did you feel that?
So you might help them towards noticing their body.
That's actually possible.
But when not in therapy, it actually starts with what I said a lot earlier, becoming curious about the moments where you feel stuck.
And sometimes journaling is our first step.
And sometimes it's just writing out a moment.
I teach something in therapy
So I don't do five steps, but I guess I do like a bit of one.
I teach something called the repair map.
And that's because a lot of the times that awaken us, a lot of the times that are most important are actually the ruptures or actually the mismatches.
They're learning opportunities for us in parenting as much as they are with our children in the bond.
They're actually how we learn how to move through hard things together with them.
their child.
And so with a repair map, when someone comes and brings me any moment, take any moment, maybe you have one, Scott, we could talk about one.
And we just we kind of go through it step by step in what happened.
And I asked the person, you know, what was the event?
What were the present centered triggers?
So maybe it's
I didn't eat, I didn't sleep well that night.
All three kids were screaming at the same time, right?
So all the present center triggers.
And then I might say
Okay, have you ever felt that?
What were you feeling in your body in that moment?
You might learn to ask yourself that.
Or you might just say, have you ever felt that before?
Without body moments.
So maybe it's a thought.
Maybe you don't even notice you're feeling something, but is there is that reminiscent to anything?
I notice nothing about myself.
No, I think so this past weekend I had the girls
To myself.
I would say there was only one moment where I was probably visibly annoyed to them and I didn't yell, but I was just like kind of annoyedly saying, get your shoes on, we have to go
It's all about the shoes to I know it is.
Honestly we have a lot of shoes in our house.
We all have a lot of shoes in our house.
For whatever reason the girls some days certain shoes are good and other days they're not.
But
I would say it was to get out the door.
I was going to take them on a bike ride.
So with our bike trailer, go with our oldest daughter with bikes on our own and then the other two.
And the
The middle daughter specifically was the one that was, nothing feels comfortable, nothing will so she refused to go outside.
And then yeah, I got I would say it's almost like tingles in my s in my chest.
That's what I typically feel.
So if you were somebody who was listening and going, okay, well I don't have a therapist
Okay, but you notice after that moment, like Scott, you just did, you the story came to you right away.
Right?
Those stories where we know we go to work and we're playing it out in our head all day, where it's just not f
fitting where we feel stuck, where something went wrong, where we're not sure we why we replied that way.
Sometimes we don't react in major ways, sometimes we do
And we're stuck on it.
And so I often say to someone, okay, write it out.
What was going on?
What was the current trigger?
Okay, so the current trigger was she wasn't putting her shoes on.
What else?
You know, maybe you'd been in the house with them all weekend and you wanted to get out, you know, like I you were getting stirred crazy.
Um or you were feeling It was a long morning.
So long.
And so it starts that as you can see, like you could probably unpack it, right?
And then what happens
And you start to ask yourself the questions of what happens to me when I can't get anything done?
What happens to me when I feel stuck?
Yeah, don't feel productive
That's a key personality trait of mine, I would say, is always being productive.
No matter what I'm doing, it has to be producing or doing something.
And then, you know, the thing I often teach is something called the seven whys.
You don't have to do it seven times, but
Why?
Like why is it hard not to be productive?
And usually some you know you have an answer and then why is that?
I do.
I was actually thinking this while I was mowing the lawn on was it Friday
thinking about how I think.
So I have two feelings often in my body.
One is a high level of anxiety about just in general everything, which I'm medicated for now, which has been great.
It's actually helped me in terms of thinking through th these things.
And then there's also the guilt or shame of not being productive enough.
And I think the activation energy in my body is always higher for the guilt of not actually being productive enough.
So then I do something.
It overcomes, even though I have a high level of anxiety, it still kind of all always overcomes this.
We haven't even talked about this.
I'm fascinated.
I know.
So I was thinking about that last Friday, like the fact that I think other people in potentially different circumstances, it would have been the reverse.
The activation energy from the anxiety would have caused them to maybe
decide they wanted to sleep and like stay in a small space and and I don't know.
You push yourself past it.
You push yourself towards it.
Yeah, and I think it's not necessarily because being productive is the right thing to do.
It's just
my mind immediately goes to I can't not do something.
Like I have to do it because otherwise you're not being productive enough and then what does that say about you?
Like have you done enough today?
And so I feel like if you sit with that
So why, right?
And you don't necessarily have to do that.
Yeah, I'm not gonna get into all of that, but yes, I do know why.
To Tanya's point, right?
And you keep asking yourself, okay, well why then?
Like why do I have to be productive?
And
I think your story is is one that's many people's stories of needing to be productive.
And I see it.
I see it in you too, right?
This like this energy.
I'll say that to you sometimes.
I'm like, Scott, just
Just talk with me, you know?
Like don't feel like you have to do another thing.
I almost feel like I have to do two things.
Two things at once.
Yeah.
But once upon a time for a lot of us who are like that
Right, I referenced my urgency.
Probably comes from a similar space and maybe different, but once upon a time, most of us, and this is where the curious comes or merges with compassion.
It served a purpose, right?
And for most of us, at least the primary purpose, most of the things we get stuck in served
was connection.
Once upon a time it got us connection in some way.
Once upon a time it got us the responding we needed in some way.
Or at least we hoped it would.
And so we're very stuck
Sometimes in those old patterns.
But when we become curious about it as a parent, going back to the repair map, the last element of it is
How do you want to respond to that next time?
We return ourselves to our child.
So there's two pieces here.
There's w the what happened to me, the curious compassion of why what maybe got
triggered or drudged up in me in that moment.
But there's also what was going on with my kid in that moment.
The curiosity of their mind and how do I want to respond.
And that one might be
Oh, she's sensory sensitive to shoes and like I w I wanna go buy her new Crocs.
Like it might actually be pretty simple sometimes and sometimes it might be this
all the scripts we see, right?
It might be this.
I know that none of these shoes feel comfortable and everybody's ready to go for a bike ride, so we're gonna choose this one or this one right now.
And
Do you want daddy to help you put them on?
Or do you want to choose a pair of socks to wear under them?
Or whatever?
And I think a lot of parents get stuck in the script itself as opposed to why is it hard to deliver it or why is it hard for the child
take it and it's usually because of the unconscious transmission of something going on.
It's usually because of where we're feeling where we're stuck and they're picking up on it.
Too.
We're getting irritable.
We're getting agitated.
The reality is too I should understand this daughter in the way she's feeling because I'm the same way.
We were just talking about that because Jess got me these new clothes and it's very
Atypical of me to like all the clothes that Jess gets for me because of the texture of it.
The even this just fully sold on it
Yeah.
It's it's interesting.
Yeah, you guys are so similar my daughter in that way, but then in the same sense because of the fact that I it was a long morning.
I you were mentioning not eating enough so I never eat breakfast almost ever.
And today I had lunch because
We went out for a nice lunch with you, but typically I almost don't even eat lunch.
Yeah, I'm just very busy.
So productive.
He's productive.
He's too productive to eat.
Yeah.
Well because it's a right, it's such the opposite side of the same coin of curiosity is a pause.
Compassion is a pause.
Uh those of us who function in hyper productivity and doers and doing always want to know how to get to the next step.
And it can be very hard to train ourselves
to pause.
To be honest, part of it was I wanted to get out of my childhood home.
In high school, like I had three jobs at once, so I was working a full time number of hours while I was in high school.
So that I could end up paying for university and leaving.
It's like what Tanya said, it served.
It's served, yeah, one hundred percent.
So when you're saying that it served me
Also, I had comments from people saying, wow, I can't believe you can do that.
So then you feel good about what you're doing because no one else is doing that same thing.
So it did definitely served.
I was thinking it's a double faceted thing for me
Two different purposes that it served, but then now.
It's not as though it's really necessary.
I think it it served a piece of keeping you safe, right?
Yeah.
You had to be productive so that you could get out, so that you could be safe
It served a piece of connection because people were like, Oh Scott, yeah, like he put himself through university.
No one helped him with that.
He worked three jobs, like he's done this and this, and even in the jobs that you did get, they're always fast
pace jobs where you're doing so many different things.
Traveling.
Traveling.
I mean, unpack a job where you're traveling after a traumatic childhood, like I feel like
But using that word safe is so important, right?
We often talk about safety as though it's an objective reality concept where we all feel safe under a cozy blanket in a home surrounded by nice music or something.
Yeah.
And that's totally not what safety is, right?
Safety is such a subjective experience and sometimes it can look really chaotic and sometimes it could look like a perpetual flea response of moving and doing and doing and busy.
'Cause that is what the body knows.
And so we have to be kind to ourselves.
You said a little earlier, Scott, I hope it's okay to poke fun at you like lovingly a little.
I should know about your daughter.
I should know.
Well, I mean, cerebrally you know what uncomfortable shoes feel like.
But emotionally in your body, safety is
is move and that's actually what your body knows and it's retraining a nervous system, it's retraining your body to feel safe in in pause and slow and
For many people, many people, that is a tremendous amount of work.
And so at the beginning of our episode we talked about that kind of pendulation.
Somebody may actually learn that I, well, you're saying I feel more comfortable in the movement, in the go.
That's actually how I feel safe.
And so you're approaching stillness as discomfort.
And you're learning how to sit in stillness momentarily.
And that's actually the retraining for you.
It's not the opposite training you to move, because for you, movement is safe.
Yeah, your movement is great.
It's actually learning to sit and have lunch.
And those moments are the most uncomfortable for you.
Like when I'm like, hey Scott.
when I'm having a conversation with you, maybe just put your phone down and you don't need to be researching something for work on whatever Google at the exact same time it's talking to me.
Like why don't we just have one thing we're doing?
Yeah
That's hard for your body 'cause it can feel unproductive to just talk to me about the feelings I had that day about the children or something like that.
And Scott, I get that.
I mean it opened with that story with my daughter and it was my middle child that had to awaken me to that part.
so part of what we were talking about today was it's there's different parts to us.
And the part of me that always had to go, go, go was not a part that was awakened in grad school.
That w it served me in grad school.
It was not even a part that was awakened with my first child.
I somehow managed to move through with my first.
It was only a part that I really realized how much it was impacting me with my second.
and how much it was part of my story.
I was raised in a family where if you paused, bad things were gonna happen.
And so you don't pause, you keep going, you keep fighting, you never stop.
There's work to be done.
There's injustices in the world.
Don't stop.
Keep going.
And so I learned that.
Like literally bad things happen if you sit was almost alive in my body.
So if you're having that feeling or Scott's having that feeling, what are some ways for those like ultra productive people, like myself as well?
To slow down and to f restore a sense of safety in your body.
And I'm not saying like we need like a five-step approach.
Actually before you answer, Tanya, why don't I I'll say one thing that's worked for me.
Yeah
Because I hit a really bad burnout and I've talked about this before in December where I went, went, went, went, went, had a baby, kept going, had a second baby, kept going, had a third baby, kept kept
Until finally, I think I hit like a post-weaning depression last June.
Never really dealt with that.
Kept going, kept going.
December, I crashed and like I just
couldn't physically keep going anymore and it was awful.
It was an awful feeling.
Scott was worried.
I was worried.
I was like, I've never felt this feeling before.
So for me, I feel like the last seven months have really been about
How can I tune in with that like that desire to be fast and also introduce slowness?
And so for me it's been things like doing more mindfulness.
And my daughters are not all asleep till 839 some nights, right?
So it's like before I go down and do something else and have another conversation or go on social media, I'm gonna go lay in the bedroom and lay on the bed and put on a 10 minute meditation.
You pretty much do that every night now.
Yeah.
I do that almost every night and it's like I don't want to even talk to anyone or open my phone until that's done.
It honestly felt physically painful at first when I first did it.
Like my body was fidgety and I'm like, I'm not being productive.
Can I just make one comment?
Yeah.
That to me, going back to my feeling of un or productivity, that feels like the least productive thing I could do.
Even though I know that it's it's health healthy and a good idea.
And maybe that's that's actually exactly the answer, right?
It starts with like if there was a rubric.
It would s it starts with the awareness of the discomfort.
And for somebody it might be the discomfort
of not doing all the time, right?
I need I can't pause.
And for somebody else it's a discomfort of mood symptoms.
I actually get really sad or depressed.
Other people might
it might be physiolog physiological.
I joked about this with many of my patients.
I recently had shingles and I had shingles and my doctor goes
to me, you know, Tanya shingles and so I said, Why did I get it?
And he said, I don't know, you're not sixty five.
He's a he's a funny guy and I was like, that doesn't answer and he goes, Stress, do you have anything to be stressed about?
And I'm like
No.
And of course that was a joke.
Of course I did.
And in those moments your body sometimes tells you, we know your body keeps a score.
For some of us it's health.
For some of us it's a mood symptom.
For some of us it's a thought.
I can't stop.
But it's these moments where you first become curious what is the meaning of this.
And then it becomes an intentional awareness of a boundary setting.
So we often think of boundaries as no.
Like, no, I'm not gonna take on that job, or no, I'm not gonna go out for dinner with someone.
The boundary doesn't have to be the no, the boundary has to just be the intentional awareness of curiosity or the pause
The moment where you decide I'm just gonna pay attention or listen for a moment, take a moment.
It's uh it's the pause really.
That's the boundary.
And so in your example, Jess, I realized that I had to do something
different.
What that different is, for some people will be mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the best way to train the brain, for sure, to learn to be in pause.
But for some people it might be an intentionally aware walk, uh, where I'm just gonna be in my body or be with my thoughts.
And so it's a it's a hard one in a way, because it's really depends on the person and what's going to feel comfortable to you.
Yeah.
It starts with curiosity.
Yeah, always.
I'm getting curious.
Yeah, see sometimes I walk, usually for roughly an hour every day, but I don't know that I'm
It's for that purpose.
Yeah.
Well I'm usually thinking through different projects that we have going on or different But it is there is like a productivity piece to the project.
I've just noticed that I'm able to think th
things through more clearly if I just even sometimes I walk around the same block like ten times.
In movement.
Yeah, I'm just in movement and I'm trying to think through a problem and that's how I can do it best
Yeah.
But I wouldn't say that that's the most mindful.
Honestly, biking probably does that for me.
That's the time where I am.
Yeah, I think m biking does that for you.
I think the struggle to be still and to be slow, that's something that is
the discomfort that Tanya was talking about, right?
Where I do think it and you'll have to figure that out for yourself, right?
Like I know for me that served me.
And even like building in yoga or something like that, that is
I used to think if I work out, well I'd better do a HIIT workout, you know?
Oh and then I hurt my ankle doing it.
But I better do a workout that's intense so that it's worth my time.
But I like what Scott's talking about is that awareness for some people it is stillness and movement.
Yeah.
I think where I'm sort of trying to focus the flashlight is the awareness as opposed to the physical action, right?
Not everybody's pause needs to look like
incense and a yoga mat.
Yeah, turn off all the lights and you just stick it out.
For some people that is actually not possible.
And so it becomes intentional.
awareness of I'm going to take an intentional pause for myself, maybe in movement, maybe in a walk, maybe the action or the
practice is I'm not gonna be planning the next podcast episode during my walk.
I'm not gonna get back and tell the team 10 things that we're gonna now do on this walk, right?
I think probably a joke here at this point, coming back from a walk and then like, okay, we have
But also moment to moment, right?
Like I think the tricky part is also expecting ourselves.
I've been teaching mindfulness for twenty years and I remember there was one mindfulness workshop that I led and I
had left my wallet at the top of my car on the way to go teach the mindfulness workshop after filling up gas and drove away.
And I have used that example for years because
It was such a stark opposition to what I was about to teach.
Here I was teaching like presence and awareness and and I left my wallet at the top of my car and drove away.
And the thing is human consciousness moves like that.
It's always constantly moving.
We can't be constantly present in our bodies.
Sometimes we're in our bodies, sometimes we're planning.
So the intention is just can I get better at moving that flashlight?
Can I get better at moving
That awareness flashlight so sometimes it's productive and sometimes it's looking at my body and sometimes it's looking at my emotions and sometimes it's thinking about my past.
Can it be better at the intentional control of that flashlight
as opposed to that flashing controlling me.
I think that makes sense.
Yeah.
Thank you for letting us use US over there.
I feel like you're getting used to it at this point.
Yeah.
It's uncomfortable, but I get it.
It's yeah.
We can use my experiences, it's fine.
Yeah, and I I mean I feel like your experiences for someone listening is gonna be so many people's experiences.
Right.
Like I think the inability to like
Like pause and be still and reflect like that is a collective experience that so many of us have.
I share that with you.
I think it's I mean
Who gets her PhD and has three kids and when people say things like that oh I don't know how you do that or that's so amazing what you've accomplished
It misses very often, right?
It gets reinforced.
It misses very often.
You have this amazing podcast or you have this following or you it misses very often what that means and what the person is
probably going through in order to accomplish all of that.
A lot of us are hyper functioning overdrive most of the time.
It's a lot of us.
And a lot of us were taught that that was the way to be.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, Scott and I have talked about that at at length and Honestly sometimes I think about getting my PhD just because
I feel like that would be the productive thing to do.
Why would he not do that?
Yeah, we we talk about that and and that was both of our childhoods too with
parents who grew up with immigrant parents who didn't have any money, you know, like that's what's passed down to you.
So that's what you feel like you learn as a kid, oh I have to be productive, I have to do everything.
And then that stays with you into adulthood
But then it's like what you were saying, just to kind of wrap up our discussion too, I feel like when you have your own children, like for me, I guess that part of me of like, oh, do I want to give that message to my kid
It's that their productivity or their work is that's their worth, right?
And that, oh, if you just work harder, you get a job or you do like that's not the message I want to give them.
So I feel like that's like the kind of like
summarize our discussion, like those things can sit in us and we can get our doctorates or our master's degrees and start businesses and do all of these things.
And then all of a sudden you have a seven year old looking at you.
And being like, mummy, why do you work so much?
And you're like, oh boy, like that's now something that I need to reflect on because do I want to pass that message down?
to my kids.
And and I think for some people we've been talking about like when when are you ready?
Maybe sometimes that's when you're ready, when you start to see the impact it has on on your children as well.
And our kids always call us to it.
That's their job.
So if anyone's listening going, Oh my god, yep.
All our kids, it's their job.
They're the flashlight.
Yeah.
That we're talking about.
They're the ones that call us to shine the light at the things we haven't looked at.
Often I find that they're for me like a little mirror.
They mirror back what I give them.
So when you're talking about before, the idea that me being frustrated was causing more
issues or frustrations in our middle daughter.
I I see that.
Almost every time.
Anytime I'm frustrated, one of them will feel the same way.
So I agree.
And that's supposed to happen, right?
We often feel shame about that, but actually what a beautiful thing.
Our kid is there to help.
shine the light and say, hey, this this is bugging you, Daddy.
Uh maybe think about why so it doesn't bug you anymore.
Right.
It's it's actually not something to feel ashamed about.
It's
It's sort of this little gift in a way.
And when you can come at it from that, like hey, my child's just flashing a light on these things in me instead of my child's bad or they're trying to trigger me or they're trying to manipulate me or make me upset these things that we hear
I think that is the most powerful thing on this parent-child relationship that we always talk about as being the core, the most important thing for our kids.
when I can hold my child's truth in my mind and be like, Oh, okay, they're just trying to show me something about myself.
It's not about her being manipulative and trying to make me late for work.
It's about her having a hard time and me feeling triggered by my own wounds.
then I think we can develop these beautiful relationships with our kids that are still get ruptured all the time.
It's not about not rupturing them, it's about this reflection and repair process.
Well
I think that's a beautiful spot to end.
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you, Tanya.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Yes.
Oh I'd love to have you back.
There's so many things we could talk about.
Especially the two of you, we could talk for hours on this.
Hours.
We probably should just put mics so when we talk and then we don't have to record.
Yeah, exactly.
They just turn it on.
Yeah.
Let's head over to Coffee Time where Scott and I share some of our reflections from this amazing conversation.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
I know we covered a lot today.
We talked about so many topics like sleep training and trauma.
And I love how Scott was willing to be open and share his story
and talk about like this need to be fast and to be busy.
I didn't want to do a big coffee time to this episode because I felt it was heavy
And there's just a lot already to sit with.
So I hope as you leave this episode, you'll have some points to take away.
I know that there's a lot
that even a month after recording this episode with Tanya, I'm still thinking about things like having heat in my body and learning to identify when that heat
comes up and what I can do about it.
I've still been thinking a lot about movement and how we can help our bodies through things like mindfulness or like Scott, how he bikes
There's just so many different ways that we can take care of ourselves and break these cycles of intergenerational trauma.
I hope that you also took something away from this episode, and I would love to hear from you if you did
Definitely send us a message at RobotUnicorn on our Instagram page or send us an email and we'd love to talk to you more about
what you took away from this episode.
And if you want Dr.
Tanya back to talk about any of these topics more in depth, let us know as well.
So thank you again so much for listening and we'll talk to you again next time.
Hey
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
We are glad that you are here.
If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review.
Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all.
A five-star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there.
Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.