Ed Bloch: The Diagnosis Dilemma

Are you finding yourself as perplexed as we are about distinguishing between "typical" child development and conditions warranting a diagnosis? In this engaging podcast, licensed therapist Ed Block challenges the current culture of labeling and delves into its potential impact on the healthy development of adolescents. Drawing inspiration from the theories of Polish psychologist Dabrowski, specifically the concept of Positive Disintegration, Block explores the idea that personality evolves through acknowledging inherent tension arising when external circumstances collide with internal emotions. Join Ed on a journey as he unravels the intricacies of the brain's role in child development and survival, offering insights on guiding the next generation through their experiences to confidently become their authentic selves.

BIO:
Ed Bloch is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker & Therapist in Colorado and Kansas. His whole-person, integrated approach to assessment and treatment creates a safe and open environment for his clients. He has over 30 years of professional experience helping individuals with past trauma, stress and anxiety, eating disorders, depression, and life transitions.

RESOURCES/ REFERENCES:
Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration

The Presence Process: Michael Brown

Transcript

We are here today with [00:05:00] Ed Block. Ed is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Colorado and Kansas. His whole person integrated approach to assessment and treatment creates a safe and open environment for his clients. has over thirty years professional experience, helping individuals with past trauma, stress and anxiety, eating disorders, depression and life transitions. Ed, thank you so much for being here with Andrea and

Well, thanks for having

Welcome, Ed.

Um, Ed, I think it'd be great just to start I mean, it's talking about your experience as as a therapist and how you are working with individuals through, um, thought patterns and making positive change in their life.

So the bulk of my experience for the first, I would say half of my professional life was working with young women with eating disorders [00:06:00] and specifically, bulimia and anorexia.

And it was in that experience that I learned a great deal about how difficult it is to make changes, uh, how complex emotional struggles are. And most of these young women were in their teens and early twenties. Um, so everything that I know about therapy or how to be a therapist or how to work with young women, I learned from them during those fifteen years. I would have probably preferred not to have been my own client in those first five years of that, um, because because we all kind of come into the to be the therapist with a certain understanding of what it's supposed to look like and what it's what it's like. But in fact, it's nothing like what you expect.

And if you come in with any predetermined ways of working, you're not gonna do well. So they taught me how to work with individuals. [00:07:00] I also learned a lot about what is really pathology versus is just human struggle and trying to make those differentiations and how important that was to the client to be able to make those Differentiations. So, um, I'm not sure that I'm answering your question exactly, but, um, I think I've learned over the years that every client has a very unique and very nuanced experience, and my job is to really help them understand their own experience. They know it because they lived it, but they don't fully understand it.

So it is about trying to understand their experience More so than just knowing what their experience was.

Oh, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, can you expand on that? I mean, the way I I if I were to think about that, I would think it's perception that you've got a perception of what your experience is, [00:08:00] but is that perception reality, or is that the way that it's it or is it a healthy perception? Is that correct? Is that what

Yes. Yeah. It's it's I think a better way for me to have said it is that we're trying to take what is unconsciously driving their experiences and making it conscious so that they can fully understand it. And in making it conscious, have some authority over it, uh, some opportunity to manage it.

Um, and one of the failures I think that we have as mental health practitioners is the ability to depathologize an experience that someone is having. We tend to look through that pathological lens and hand a client a disorder or an illness that then they can't get out from underneath and it kind of starts to form a sense of self around these disorders. So, I think the nuance is be able to [00:09:00] really understand that this is a life experience that they are trying to work through, and they're struggling. And there's and we can talk a little bit about, uh, psychologists from the '50s and '60s by the name of Dabrowski who, unfortunately, is hardly recognized nowadays who had this theory of positive disintegration, which basically was a theory that the adolescent mostly during adolescent times, during those central developmental times, They go through these tensions, these struggles as a way of formulating as growing their personality. And it's in the overcoming of those struggles that they do it through their values, they understand their values, they understand their creativeness, they understand this way to have a greater sense of self, that they actually begin to build their personality through these struggles.

And when we come along and say, you've got a disorder, [00:10:00] then they don't really understand it as something that they're supposed to work through. It's something now that we have to treat them for. And so now they're just receivers of treatment Rather

you have a big light bulb going off over your head right now? I feel like you just said Something, Ed, that is just like, wow.

I wish we would have I mean, that's so enlightening. Not that it's, you know, Jesus like, but it's pretty enlightening.

Well and this, you know, this guy started writing this stuff back in the forties, nineteen forties. So it's something that we've kind of dismissed. And I think it's because for to a large degree, maybe mental health practitioners have to validate their existence in some way, that it's not enough just to be supportive of someone and help someone understand what they're experiencing, but you have to be able to actually intervene and do something else.

So I think we I think that, uh, being able to differentiate that For a young [00:11:00] person who's going through a normal and most of these kids in this theory, most of these kids are gifted. One of the things that was really striking for me in working with all the individuals, the young women I've worked with over the years, is that their potential, unrealized potential was so obvious that something was stifling them from being able to reach that potential. And in part, it was because they saw themselves as disordered, as something wrong with them, as flawed, and they never really understood that they hadn't developed a real strong sense of self that would enable them to then show up in a different way. And they never really had a sense of what they valued what was important to them. They had just been kind of taken off the rails and

think that is? Why is that a common pattern in women or young women?[00:12:00] 

Well, uh, I think there's a variety of factors.

Certainly, there are cultural factors. I think that that, um, you know, the objective you know, we can go through all all the lists the long list of them. Right? How women are objectified There's a there's a great book, which I really appreciate I think everybody should read just as a way of kind of viewing our development, which is called the Presence Process. It's by a guy by the name of Michael Brown.

And, The book details, uh, the stages of development that we go through. And there so in the first seven years of our life, basically, we're just absorbing everything into our emotional body. Next seven years in these time frames, of course, are are not exact. Next seven years, we're kind of developing our mental capacity, so we're starting to look at the world through our through our cognition. And then in the last seven years, we start to develop our physical relationship to the [00:13:00] world.

And if you think of a young woman coming through those stages and If there's any significant emotional upset going on in those first seven years, it gets locked into the emotional body. They then, in their mental efforts trying to understand that are doing it through the lens of a twelve, thirteen year old ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen year old who is not really capable of understanding that it's not really about them that their father is this way or it's not really about them that the world is this way, but They kind of see themselves as kind of the responsible one for what's going on around them. And so, they're not getting that curative piece, right? They're not overcoming that emotional experience that they are carting around with them, and now they're engaged in the physical world. Well, unless we're really good as parents and unless fathers are particularly good, which kind of is a oxymoron, at [00:14:00] being able to mirror back to a young girl her value as a human being, as a female, who are they gonna turn to?

So in those fourteen, age fourteen, fifteen, they're gonna turn to an adolescent Boy, well, that's a scary thought if you're gonna try and find your identity through an adolescent boy. So, you can see that there's Their ability to develop a sense of self to get the mirroring they need about their value in this very complex society, If they don't receive that, then they just don't have any place to turn to and get that internalized. So, they end up relying on their physicality, How they look becomes exceedingly important. And then that's where all the eating disorder stuff starts, it's where all the all the, identity crisis start, and that's where the anxiety fits in. Um, and, again, going back to Dabrowski's view of this, uh, the tension [00:15:00] between how the world should be In a young person's experience and how the world is, that tension is what creates that anxiety.

And that anxiety then, for them to overcome that is to begin to understand, once again, to understand who they are, what they value, and to understand that it's good for them to be feeling this disconnect between how things should be in their experience and how things actually are. So if the family's disorganized and struggling, and they feel that, if their peers are acting in ways that they can't accept, But yet, there's this tension because they want to be a part of the group, but inside, they feel like that's not appropriate way to act, that's not how I wanna show up. That [00:16:00] tension, how to overcome that and be okay with how you're feeling and be okay with, You know, maybe saying setting a boundary with their peers, that's important for them to overcome to develop their sense of self and to develop their personality. And that's all happening while their frontal lobe, their executive functioning, is all developing at the same time. So it's a very complex experience for them, particularly in modern culture.

So, Ed, I would I know this is probably many, many, many, many, many sessions that somebody would go through, but you I think the biggest piece for me would be what identifying what their values are and what their importance is, which was the second piece of it. As a parent, do we help?

What are a few things that we can do to help them in uncovering that? Because I even know as an adult, sometimes understanding what I want [00:17:00] or need or who I am is difficult. So how do you know, what are some prompting questions or something that we could do as as parents?

So, the first thing we have to do as a parent is not react in fear. Because that I think we all have and we all do.

Mhmm.

This is not something that any of us are really well trained in. Uh, so so you're forgiven. I mean, we're I guess because I have to be forgiven as well.

So we don't yeah. Do we have to get our fear out of it? In the present process, Michael Brown likes to play with words. And he says that we interfere when we enter fear. So,

so

good. 

I think that's an incredible way to look at it that if I'm interfering with their process and I'm doing it out of my own fear, I'm just afraid of what's happening.

So, first, we have to somehow deal with our own fear based experience, and then we have to allow them [00:18:00] the freedom to go through this process. So it it's, you know, without and I know it's hard because we're afraid they're gonna do something God awful if we don't get this fixed right now. Right?

Well, it's hard to watch your child struggle or feel any pain.

Absolutely. And that's why he called it positive disintegration, right, is we have to look for the positive part.

And the positive part is that this is their job as adolescents to start to identify their own values and compare themselves to their peer group, to their family, and to reject those things that don't fit and to accept the things that do. And if they can do that, then they will have an internalized experience of self rather than something that's driven by the external. So if they just give in to their peer group and act just like their peers, even if it doesn't and that doesn't resonate within them, they [00:19:00] lose their sense of self. They lose that opportunity to develop, um, their own personality. And we lose, therefore, as a society, We lose an individual who's going to develop into someone who concerns with the other more than with themself.

They just don't develop that sense of other. So, I think it's essential. So, that's the piece for first, let go of the fear. And then it's to be able to validate what they're feeling what they're experiencing to just keep saying over and over I know this is not easy for you. And if you need to chat, I'm here to chat and to allow them to have a different opinion than you might have.

And to play with that a little bit, let them play with that and see how that fits. And so, you know, a lot of times, they're just concerned that they're going to get rejected by their [00:20:00] peers, they're gonna get rejected by their parents if they really vocalize what it is they're feeling.

Wow. This is not where I thought we were gonna end up, but this

is 

good.

I know it's so interesting because I think Andrea and I can both directly relate to what you're saying. And we've had these conversations more times than I could even count now on how could we have parents have done a better job, a different job. How do we allow our child to struggle enough that it's helpful to their overall growth, but not to their detriment where now they can't get out of bed.

You know, there there's it's such a slippery that's a that is a tricky, nuanced experience from my perspective. I don't know, Andrea, if you feel the same, but balancing when it's okay to watch my kid barely making it. Is that good? It's painful for me. It's painful for them.

I don't know [00:21:00] when to step in.

Mhmm.

Yeah. And I think you're identifying what we, as mental health professionals, at least some of us struggle with ourselves is when do we draw the line? When does psychoneurosis, when does a mental health struggle becomes psychopathology, become an actual disorder.

Exactly.

And then when it does, What's the intervention then? I mean, then, you know, we have to we have to save the vehicle. Right? So so if someone is depressed, so depressed that they can't get out of bed, or so anxiety ridden that they can't function, then we may have to look at interventions that are more along the lines of Western to med kind of interventions. But it seems to me that if we're effective, and maybe this is part of the educational system too, is that if we're effective in really educating kids on their experience, you know, we don't do that.

We just don't [00:22:00] prepare them for what it's going to be like, partially because it's so different than it I mean, for me, it's like night and day compare what my twenty one year old is going through compared to what I did. I'm a little bit older dad, so we have these huge generational gaps in what our experiences are. Um, you know, I worked with pencil and paper. You know, I never saw a computer, Right? So, I mean, my world was not that complex, yet I was introduced to war through television in the late '60s.

Mhmm.

saw war on TV for the first time we were doing that, and, supposedly, my generation was tremendously impacted by that. Well, think about what these kids are going through. So it's hard for us to be able to validate it because we haven't had the same Experience that they're having their their savannah is far different than what our savannah was

So let me ask you. So Emie and I [00:23:00] have talked to so many people about this, about data is showing that especially anxiety and depression are on the rise in, Really, everybody, but in in in children, especially. Um, and some people have come to us and said, well, It just wasn't labeled when we were younger, or it was there and nobody talked about it. But what I'm hearing you say, which is Something I think I agree with is that maybe because we didn't talk about it, that and we didn't really, um, it It just wasn't as widely well, back talked about it. I should just cut that out.

Anyways, is that children had to process through that stuff themselves Anyways, because nobody was interfering in that, and they weren't labeling them, and they weren't stopping that development because And then they had to learn it themselves. And now as adults, they're [00:24:00] less likely to say, I'm anxious or depressed if it's not like you said, it's not a pathology and because they've got the coping skills

Yeah. So that that's that's I mean, they're you're hitting the nail on the head in a lot of ways. So So my experience when I was a teenager was that I was anxious and depressed.

Nobody would have called it anxiety or depression. They called it acting out. So they called it laziness. They called it, you know, whatever. So they didn't have the diagnostic labels for it.

Then we begin and the way that I work through it is at some point in my thirties, I grew up. I'm not even sure of all the different catalysts to that, but I was lucky. Uh, but but I struggled through most of my twenties. Now, we have the diagnostic categories. Far too frequently, kids are using diagnoses [00:25:00] as, again, identifiers for what they're going through.

And I think that that's somewhat dangerous in that it pathologizes their experience rather than seeing it as, I try real hard to stay out of words like depression and anxiety. I try and talk about, I'm a little low today. I'm a little, you know, I'm a little, uh, stress filled today. I try and stay out of the diagnostic terms. Uh, and I try and get my clients to stay out of them as well because it's very easy for them to say I'm depressed today.

Well, now you're depressed. I mean, are you really depressed? Is that what we're talking about? Are you really you can't get out of bed? No, no, I'm you're out of bed.

You're no you're moving through your day. It's a struggle. In terms of what the kids are experiencing today, when we go back to that theory of positive disintegration, the tension between whether what I think the world should be and what it is. They're getting [00:26:00] that in the kind of intensity through social media and through all the other mechanisms, the way that they experience that tension is happening at such an unconscious level and happening with such rapidity that they that it's overwhelming for them, completely overwhelming. So they have this Absolutely.

They're having this unconscious experience. And then again, it's about us being able to step in and say, Let's help them make this conscious. Let's give them the words to describe what they're experiencing. You are feeling this way Because the things that are going on around you, they're incongruent with the way you think it should be, the way your system, your innate humanity feels it should be. And when you're having that kind of experience, it feels very, I just went to a word discombobulating, but that's what it is.

I mean, you just feel very [00:27:00] disorganized and unmoored. So, helping them at least get that piece so they realize that, you know, it's something that's going on external to them that's causing them to feel this internal struggle. But they can work through it. They can work through it, um, and and help them understand. Now this is what this is telling you is you have values and beliefs and feelings that are important to you, and something external is disturbing a little bit more about how you are going to show up in the world, what's going to be important to you.

Um, now, when they're having this experience at age six, which we're seeing a lot of kids, you know, experiencing these things at younger and younger ages and more numbers and more intensely, uh, it's [00:28:00] harder because you don't have the language. They don't have the language at that that point.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

um, but it is about reflecting to them, you know, some kind of it's okay. Just you're working through something, and just try and help them understand that as best you can and be there for them. So there there are no magic words.

It's more about listening, you know, and just kind of trying to respond to what the need may be in that moment, But, uh, there's no science to it.

Mhmm. And I didn't hear you say, fix it.

No.

Fix it, mama.

No.

Just yesterday, I was listening to another podcast. I think it was actually, uh, like, a commercial for a podcast, but they were talking about a golf ball, and that the golf ball originally was smooth on all sides. And what happened as you played more and more golf, you had, um, [00:29:00] it got nicks and divots in it. And what they realized was that the nicks and divots in the golf ball actually helped it perform better.

So As I relate this to to children, their experiences, their nicks, and their divots that they're creating as they're going through life, that's helping them develop into a more solid human,

It's required.

Yeah.

It's kinda like Andrea and we we were talking with another guest, a different episode, um, and we were talking about

the trees in the biosphere experimental habitat. Ed, have you heard of

I I I don't know. I don't know if I'm familiar with that.

the biosphere was that experiment where people were gonna live inside this contained environment. Fully fabricated, but it would be a self sustaining environment. But they didn't account for the fact that these trees grew, and eventually, I can't remember if they fell over, but they didn't thrive. And so there are so many [00:30:00] analogies now to that exact situation speaking about how, um, that okay. So the the biosphere trees failed because they didn't have wind. They didn't have the the hardship of that natural element element to develop the proper rooting system and strength. And so as you can imagine, you know, people are talking about how people need that struggle.

They need the hardship to stand tall and strong.

And they need models for that Two.

So, you know, when you what can we do? I mean, we can model kind of persistence and resilience and not overreacting and and those kinds of things. But, you know, we have to work through our stuff in order to get there.

Yeah. Is there anything physiological in the brain that is contributing to these situations, especially with the younger kids. Because when you talk about a six year old, maybe that is displaying, um, anxiety And and and you're also talking [00:31:00] about it in, uh, from the perspective of some individual's value system. I I can only imagine a six year old, do they have concrete values? I don't know. And so then is there something in about their brain that's different

Oh, of course. Yeah.

I mean, it's all coming from the brain, Right? So, I mean, the brain's experiencing, uh, threats to its existence, Right? So in response to those threats, whether those threats are psychological, physical, or the brain is nondiscretionary. So, if it is experiencing a threat, it is going into fight or flight to deal with that threat. And it's doing that when it's doing that at a young age, It's developing a pattern where that fight or flight side of the brain is getting more and more neuronal matter and getting more and more energy, and eventually is going to create an imbalance, which kind of leaves that child or [00:32:00] individual In fight or flight all the time and the way that our lives are in terms of the stress that we undertake all the time that we'd see as normal.

I mean, we're you know, we get into, uh, these large pieces of steel and fly thirty thousand feet in the air and we think that's normal. Well, the brain doesn't. The brain doesn't believe that's normal. So, it's going into fight or flight in those moments. So, we normalize a lot of what we go through every day and don't view it as stress, but it's stress.

So, when it's in fight or flight, then it gets stuck in that pattern, you start to experience anxious feelings, start to experience, reactivity in situations that don't seem to call for that level of reactivity. Well, that's because the brain is primed already to be in that reactive state.

can we go back to what you just said with the we get [00:33:00] into, basically, airplanes, And we don't

could have said airplanes, couldn't

you you could have, but you were just so much more eloquent.

But, um, I couldn't remember exactly what you said, so I just went back to the 

Hendrick's like, I'm in a metal box.

Right. That would stress me out. But you're saying that, um, that being in an airplane, we it's normal for us, But our brains don't think it's normal. So are we in situations on a daily basis that maybe our brain is interpreting as a threat Even though we're consciously not interpreting as a threat?

Is that what you were saying? Oh.

Yeah. And and it's not just that it's it's a stress induced experience.

Even if it's not a threat in terms of Life or death, it's a stress experience that the brain is going through. And when the brain goes through stress, what does it do? It shuts down digestion. So, people that people are always a lot of people who are on these, uh, weight loss programs or nutritional programs where [00:34:00] they're hoping to lose weight and they're finding they're not losing weight. Sometimes it's because they live such stressful lives that the brain never allows them to go into rest and digest, So the body never is processing in a way that's going to enable it to lose weight.

And we see this quite often. I work with a program around, uh, for nutritional weight loss and things like that, that we see this a lot where somebody is not managing their stress well enough and as a result, their body is just not responding well to things. And the brain doesn't we think the brain is in it for us. And the brain is not interested in us at all, doesn't care about our experience, it's only out for its own survival. So it will develop patterns that are it believes are required for it to continue to survive, And it doesn't care that those patterns are resulting in anxiety, depression, other aches and [00:35:00] pains, illness, other things that we're going through.

It does not care about our experience. It's an alien in our body. So, we have to Respond to that by finding ways to engage the brain and retrain the brain, instruct the brain on how to get out of that fight or flight. So, we have to use different, you know, things like Breathing techniques and meditation and all those things that people don't wanna spend forty minutes a day doing, but are required in order to get the brain to get unlocked from that fight or flight

if we don't feel consciously like we are anxious or depressed or or even stressed. We should be engaging in these breathing or mindfulness programs to de stress the brain because we may not be consciously knowing that we're going under that.

Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely.

I mean, who [00:36:00] goes to therapy, the two eighty people that get on the plane or the one person that panics and doesn't go on the plane?

That's what I'm thinking. I mean, I go on a plane, I have no problem, now you're stressing me out because now I'm supposed to be stressed on the plane.

Yeah. We have just learned we have learned how to manage that experience, all but that one person who's now gotta go get a Valium or something to try and get back on the plane. Right? But they're They have to go to some kind of desensitization behavioral health program in order to get on a plane. To me, they're the wise one. They're kind of in recognition of the fact that that's kind of nutty that we get on this point.

It's true.

we've overcome that because we can use rational process and all that stuff. But it doesn't mean that the brain is accepting that. When the turbulence starts, I can tell myself, Oh, it's nothing. I can do a couple of breathing techniques, but my brain is going, what's what's going on? What's going on?

It's having a [00:37:00] reaction to that. So that is a stressful experience for the brain and it's making adjustments. There's a video of a mouse. And this is just maybe a little bit off topic, but there's a video of a mouse getting a stroke. And the video shows the stroke happening in this blood vessel.

The blood vessel pops. You see all this energy from the mouse's brain from other parts of the mouse's brain rushed to this blood vessel. And in time lapse photography, the brain heals itself. Within twenty four hours, you see the blood vessel working again and all that. But twenty four hours later, that energy that was sent to that part of the mouse's brain is still there.

It's not sent back to the other areas of the brain. So, what has happened now is the mouse can't peep and the mouse can't walk. So, just like a human being has a stroke, the brain heals itself pretty quickly, but then you have to go off to rehab to learn how to walk and [00:38:00] talk again. So, the brain is going to organize itself in whatever way it wants to deal with the stress that it's under without any consideration for how you feel. So, when we're under a bombardment of stress or going into stressful situations all the time, the brain's all these adjustments to deal with that.

We are going along with the crowd most of the time because this is what we're supposed to do in this culture. So, we're not experiencing stress, this is normal behavior. This is what we're supposed to be doing, but it's stress.

So trying to track you, and I'm trying to think of this other analogy in my head, so Bear with me on this. I'm thinking about young, young people and having higher numbers of young people encountering high level stress to the point where people do label them as anxious or, um, depressed. [00:39:00] now I'm learning about how your brain is on its own it's on autopilot. It's detached from your cognitive thoughts and the things you you choose and recognize.

Not detached from them. It's causing them.

It's at the yeah. Right. I mean, the patterns that the brain is creating is causing us to think, feel, and behave in a certain way.

So then is there is part of the reason why, yeah, there are higher incidences of these issues for young people that, um, the exposures the heightened exposures and the complexities of life systems, social media, everything, screen in their face, is causing this dissonance in the brain?

It's causing yes. I believe that what's happening is that while the brain is certainly reacting into it, but it's more at a in terms [00:40:00] of how they are experiencing themselves in reaction to all of those things.

So, again, we're talking about that tension between the way I feel like things should be and the way things actually are. And and as a child, I'm experiencing, You know, if my family is struggling, if my parents are fighting all the time, I'm picking up that there's something wrong here, Right? And I am having this experience. Now, if I'm having this experience at five years old, I don't even have words for it. I'm just gonna have it.

So I feel this tension in me all the time. And it's and the tension is the world should not be this is not the way it should be. I don't want the world this is not what I value. This is not important to me, but we don't have words for that at age 

Yeah. 

And then as we grow older, if we're not given the opportunity to develop the words for that, to begin to understand that, it just gets further and [00:41:00] further moved along into this anxiety experience that one's having unconsciously and cannot explain.

And as and then as people step in, if they step in out of fear or step in with authority and say, you've got a problem and I'm gonna treat you, then what you're doing is reinforcing this something is wrong with me experience rather than there's something wrong with what I'm feeling compared to what's going on out here, and I I need to resolve that somehow. I need to be able to understand why I feel bad because my peer group treats people poorly or treats each other badly, and I don't And that doesn't feel good for me, but I'm not able to identify that because I wanna be a part of my peer group. So that tension and struggle is what they're trying to overcome.

Yeah.

more complex because of social media, and they just have so much more of it that they're dealing with.

Okay. Yeah. Because Andrea and I are always like, why? [00:42:00] Why? Why is it happening in these numbers?

Is it us? Is it environment.

Is it nutrition? Is it what is

Well, you know, as I'm sitting here listening to this too, I'm going back a hundred years.

Mhmm.

were surrounded by people who cared and loved for us from a very young age just because We had to.

Right? I mean, families families were big. They worked on a farm. They didn't work far away from one another. So there was a constant support system around children whether or not they, you know, It was a healthy support system or not.

You know, that's irrelevant, but there was a support system. And now We're so dispersed doing so many different things that I'm, you know, I'm just questioning now is Is you know, going back to we need a tribe, I kinda hate that term, but I I I get it too because there is They're not learning at a young age [00:43:00] how to how to regulate or feel safe because there's not as many people around there to support them to make them feel safe. Does it make sense?

Yeah. And I think part of it is that we've lost our customs, right? We don't have customs that enable us to learn from our wiser folk, right? I mean, those things are just not being handed down anymore.

But again, that's because of that huge difference in what that landscape looks like, there is no way that my son at twenty one and me at seventy are going to have are going to be able to talk about having the same experiences. Experience is entirely different than mine. So I I've had to learn how to be a listener because I don't have a hell of a lot to offer. Right? Because he's got to educate me on what his experience is.

And then for me, it's about not going, Oh, my God, in front of him.

That actually is a good point, though, is is that their experience is their experience, [00:44:00] And we cannot relate to it. We can't. There's just no way to relate to it. So being a listener rather than a contributor is probably a huge stepping stone in a positive relationship with your kids as they're moving forward because we won't and we won't have a way to comprehend what their experience is.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we're always, no matter who we're talking to, trying to understand what someone tells us based on filtering it through our own experience. It's like a vicious cycle.

Right.

Can I tell you both my analogy?

Can't I don't know if I've ever told you this, Andrea. This is how I always thought about this when I and I think it came to me when, They had my sixth grader working from an iPad a hundred percent of the time for everything, and excellent school, high level technology, um, available to them at all times. And my, um, [00:45:00] my son asked me to help him with his homework, and it's on iPad. And he said, here, here's the the science questions. And I said, okay.

Well, where's the text? And he has to, like, exit out of the screen and pull up another screen that shows the text. And I go, okay. So go back to the question. Go back to the question.

Switch it out. I see another screen. And then where do we put the answer? He's like, oh, just a minute. I gotta exit out of that and get to the page where you put the answer.

And I almost had a nuclear meltdown. My brain could not flip through screens. I you know, I grew up with, My textbooks are laying to the left of me. My paper is right in front of me. My other resource might be on the right, and then I got a glass water.

And everything is right there for me to see. So just the visual aspect of that, my brain could not do it, and I just, like I I don't think I can help you. But so from that, I started to develop this idea. Like, I think what we've done to our kids is along these lines. Let's say we found we have a a mama dolphin and a baby dolphin at SeaWorld, and the baby [00:46:00] dolphin was only born and only knows its little SeaWorld tank.

Can I say SeaWorld? It doesn't matter. Right? So, um, eventually, they're gonna plan is to release the baby dolphin into the Pacific Ocean. But everybody knows from a scientific standpoint, if the baby dolphin is just bred in that captive tank and only knows that, they're not gonna take baby dolphin and chuck tuck him into the Pacific Ocean, he's not gonna survive for all these developmental reasons. I have always suspected that because we have put our kids in front of screens and screens and screens. And now they're doing everything on an iPad, and now they have social media. So not only are there those social pressures that come with social media, They are exposed to the world's pain. Uh, everything happening in the world, all the information is available to our kids. They can see anything at any time. I feel like that level of exposure to all of the emotions, all the pain, all the information even is like we took the baby dolphin and chucked it in the Pacific [00:47:00] Ocean. It's not supposed to. Those little brains aren't supposed to be computing all those things. Those little brains aren't supposed to be responsible for that little level of understanding and empathy. That's my that's my rant.

Yeah.

Well, I think that look, we're, uh, we've been a science experience experiment for a long time now, right? So I I think we continue to be, and our kids are the latest to undergo that experiment. Um, and This evolutionary process, whatever it is that we're in, and I don't know, is it gonna be a couple of thousand years before the brain adjusts all of this and then what's gonna be then, right, that's gonna be causing the brain to have to try and figure these things out? Yeah, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming.

And I don't think that we can effectively introduce answers in a constantly changing scenario like we have. So, you know, where we wanted where we were [00:48:00] taught, we're talking about limiting things in certain ways and all that We're too far gone past that. And every time we get to the point where we actually try and introduce some limitations, they're meaningless at that point. So, uh, and then Well, I don't wanna get into all the other stuff, the crazy stuff has gone on since COVID, but it's all overwhelming. And even that sea of change since COVID, I'm gonna get into it.

Anyways, that sea of change has been, um, has been dramatic for kids that now are so under socialized. So it's and they've missed the ones that missed those critical years you can see it. You can just see it falling apart, and they're reaching more to social media to try and find it. And that leaves them very susceptible because it just depends on which route they take in social medias whether it's safe or unsafe for them. So, this is an ongoing journey, [00:49:00] But again, we gotta stay out of panic.

that's what I was just gonna say. I

Send by New York.

first one that I need to not be fearful because because peep humans are resilient. Right? I mean, we've been through a whole slew of things. This is just the next block of growth that or evolution that that humans need to go through, and we will get there.

And Right now, I guess, my insides are at conflict with what's going on in the outer world, so I'm feeling a little anxiety based on this conversation.

Right. And if you wanna globalize this just for a moment to kind of see what's really going on, it's kind of interesting that when you take the theory of positive disintegration, and you apply it to what's happening globally, we are at that point where we are actually at a point where we are having to decide just how we want to show up when we grow up as human beings, [00:50:00] that this is an opportunity for us to overcome, to figure out a way to really deal with how we want to show up as human beings, whether we're gonna be people that care about each other or people who don't. I mean, it's really almost that simple.

And and that's what kids are going through all the time when they're going through adolescence is they're trying to understand how they wanna How they're going to show up in the world and that creates this tension and it's the same tension. We're feeling globally right now

Wow. 

think that is a great way. We're at fifty minutes to segment out of this, don't you think, Emie.

Yeah. I do have one more question before we wrap

That's okay. That's okay.

Ed, is there, I'm such a guilt ridden mom. Is there something about our generation of parents to speak of [00:51:00] that just could not fathom our kids suffering in different ways than other generations. Does that even make sense? Why did why did our generation of parents evolve into these rescuers, and and we don't want them to feel any pain.

So we wanna mitigate everything for them and and protect them more than other generations maybe.

Well, I mean, that's a I don't have an easy answer for that. But I think in part, our experiences were like the precursor to everything that they're going through now, And we got a little bit of that and we see things changing so quickly and we kind of I think there's an intuition that's correct that they're taking on a lot, and I think that we're reacting to that. [00:52:00] So and I think we're not we're impacted in same way that they are. We're having these tensions as we were talking about.

We're having all these tensions ourselves, so I and none of us want to see our kids go through this. But We a lot of us I don't have a good answer for you, but a lot again, I think a lot of people just have not learned that capacity of overcoming it themselves, that we didn't make that essential growth, take on that growth challenge and do it for a variety of different reasons, and that we don't understand what our kids are going through as a result of that, so we overreact to it. So I think in part, it's our having not done the work ourselves.

But 

it is my fault.

but I'm thinking in the past, Adults adults have [00:53:00] been less, um, in tune with their own mental health in the past. Right? I mean, I don't I can't sit I can my grandparents would have never been able to have a conversation about their mental They would've just been like, you know, I'm going to work or I'm you know, whatever they're doing to just make things move forward. So

Yeah.

or

Yeah, so yeah, I think Freud screwed us all up.

We're gonna yeah. We're not blaming it on you, Emie.

It's Freud's

Yeah, because I mean, we got just enough information to be dangerous and to be fearful. Right? Because we really didn't know. I mean, they could've he could've thrown out any theory he wanted, and he ended up throwing out one that just the hell out of all of us.

So, I think that we just didn't We got introduced goes back to the idea that knowledge is not understanding. We got introduced to things on a knowledge level That we really didn't go through on an [00:54:00] experience level. We never really gained that understanding, so it creates fear, creates uncertainty, and we deliver that to we all did this I think we all done the same thing to some degree, um, but they still do okay in spite of us.

Yeah.

Right? If they get the right mentors and they get the right experiences and they're able to rise above these struggles and figure it out, they're they're fine.

I mean, I know at least one that is associated with this group, who is a magnificent human being?

Thank you, Ed. I'm just kidding, not me.

Well and I just think this is such a it's such an important conversation for the parents and caregivers in our podcast community to take a breath. Yeah. [00:55:00] We're we we do.

We're on autopilot when we come in to care for our kids and wrap the glass coffee table in bumpers so they don't crack their head open. We are wired to protect those little people.

Yeah.

to the emotions, thoughts, and feelings, that's that's a different That's a different game, and that's a different playing field that we need to by what you're saying, we need to take a different set of thoughts for ourselves and challenge our own beliefs about what they're experiencing and just know that it's really normal to some extent. The these processes, these these hardships. They have to have those.

Yeah. Yeah. And not to overreact and to and to respond when appropriate in the right way

Yeah. Yeah.

Or not respond as you said, you know, and and just let

respond.

right.

Yeah. We all I was thinking too. We Emie, I think our generation is a bunch of control freaks too. [00:56:00] You know? I mean, we we were given the confidence that we can do all.

Right? You know? And so we became a bunch of control freaks. So now we're like, hey. I can control the, uh, the trajectory of my child by controlling everything that's, uh, that they experience.

And in reality 

I just wanna understand everything.

Right? That is.

wanna know and understand it all. Because there was a time in life where, you know, that funny, um, I shouldn't say funny, but that sport called curling,

you know, where it's like trajectory of that little stone on the ice. Sometimes there was there was a time when my kids were very little, and I was single mom in it on my own, and it was a really stressful time.

I felt like the person with the sweeper, and I was just, like, furiously sweeping to make the most optimal path for them to just glide off into the sunset with no no

No 

No friction.

I'm like, what? Yeah. What the hell am I doing? This is this is not this is not helpful.

That's not the point. They are supposed to go off course. They are supposed to bump into things. They are supposed to get a divot knocked [00:57:00] into them so that they can go off and be healthy. And I think I'm over exaggerating, and I wasn't that bad.

But, uh, that I remember watching the Winter Olympics, watching that that furious sweeper, and I went, well, I do that sometimes.

Yeah.

kind of part of being mom.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is, you know, that's inherent in all mothers, so I don't think it's gonna be something that the kids aren't able to overcome. A slight shift in how we approach them is significant. We're not talking about this major thing we have to do differently.

It's just listening more than talking. I mean, these are really small shifts of behavior and swallowing our fear and just kind of Not letting it be part of that moment. Go talk to somebody else about what you're scared of, but not to them.

You know what I love

listening more than talking is huge.

in what you've shared, Ed, is that, you know, a lot of, um, what we hear sometimes As a mother of an eighteen year [00:58:00] old and a twenty one year old, I think, oh my gosh.

I wish I could go back and change it all. But you just said that you have a twenty one year old, and you're doing these practices with him. And I am just so thankful that I know that both of my Kids' frontal lobes are not developed yet, so I still have time

It's still wiring. They're still wiring in.

Yes. I'm not too late.

And then so and when the frontal lobe is done at twenty six, the personality keeps developing until into their thirties. So there's time. There's time.

time, Emie. We got time.

We can do it. No guilt.

No.

hope for us.

Ed, if we could if you could impart A piece of wisdom to our our our listeners, what would you leave them with?

Oh.

I know.

a that's a challenging question.

Ed, you're seventy.

You've got

has it has to it has to assume that I have some wisdom to impart.

Oh, I think you [00:59:00] do.

Um, I I Well, let be, let go, and let in. How's that?

Oh, I love it. That's

Very good.

And that'll fit on a social media slide perfectly.

Oh my 

be, let go, and let in. Oh, Ed, you can come back.

Can you come back? Let that's what I'm gonna I'm not gonna say you can come back. I'm gonna say, can you come back? Because I think I could talk to you.

We didn't hit anything on our list. We went totally off topic.

I had a feeling that was gonna happen. Yeah.

No. I'd be happy to come back because I'd love to talk that video at

Yeah.

love

So much good information. Honestly. Honestly, such good information.