Practical Tools to Help Kids Manage Anxiety With Anna Housley Juster, PhD

0:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to hang out with Dr. Anna Housley Juster. Anna brings over 25 years of experience supporting children and families as a mental health clinician, education consultant, award -winning author, and parent. Her career began as a Head Start teacher, which is pretty rad, and she later served as director of content for Sesame Street. Ever heard of it? Where she shaped educational content for the series, interactive technology, toys, and books. She's now in private practice and Anna specializes in early childhood trauma, anxiety, and behavioral challenges, blending her expertise in child development and mental health to support families, teachers, and social workers. She's also the author of How to Train Your Amygdala, a powerful tool for helping kids understand and manage big emotions. Anna's approach is informed by evidence -based therapies like TF -CBT, play therapy, and SPACE parent guidance. She's passionate about equipping caregivers with practical strategies to nurture emotional well -being. It was so rad to get to chat with Anna because I love her kids book, How to Train Your Amygdala, and how applicable her information is. I'm obsessed with talking to kids about their bodies and really teaching them how they work and not shying away from terms like amygdala because they feel really big and sciencey and foreign for a lot of us, and really leaning into that. I so dig that about Anna. I'm stoked for y 'all to dive into this episode and can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback over on the gram. Come follow us at seed.and.sew on Instagram and let's chat more about this bad boy. All right, let's dive in. 

00:01:47    Alyssa

Hey there, I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm a mom with a master's degree in early childhood education and co -creator of the Collaborative Emotion Processing Method. I'm here to walk alongside you through the messy, vulnerable parts of being humans raising other humans with deep thoughts and actionable tips. Let's dive in together. 

00:02:08    Alyssa

You're in Brookline, right? 

00:02:10    Anna

Yeah. 

00:02:11    Alyssa

Yeah. I was the director of a child care center in Brookline for a hot minute there and then worked over at Brandeis University has a child care attached to it. And so I worked there and did research in conjunction with Brandeis University. 

00:02:27    Anna

Oh, that's great. 

00:02:28    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:02:29    Anna

I wonder which childcare setting were you at in Brookline? It's possible it's still here because there's not that many. 

00:02:35    Alyssa

It is. 

00:02:35    Anna

Some of them have been here for a long time. Oh, okay. 

00:02:38    Alyssa

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. It is still there. Yeah. It wasn't my favorite job I ever had. 

00:02:45    Anna

No? 

00:02:46    Alyssa

No. No. It's maybe better not to say the name. It was just like a small for -profit child care and the owners wanted to make a profit and we had different values. I have found myself, Anna, I don't know if this resonates, a lot in my career being like, oh, if I get inside this system, I can fix it. And so far that has not yet been true, but I keep trying, I keep trying. 

00:03:18    Anna

Well, it's such a big system. 

00:03:21    Alyssa

Sure is. 

00:03:22    Anna

Yeah. 

00:03:22    Alyssa

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do like that about Vermont. I've been able to, I serve on the board of Let's Grow Kids, which is an organization here that does a lot of work in early childhood. The size of Vermont makes things very changeable, that you really can know your legislators and advocate in a way that actually leads to change. And that's been very cool about being here. 

00:03:50    Anna

That's gonna be especially important right now. 

00:03:55    Alyssa

Unfortunately so, yes. 

00:03:59    Anna

Yeah, I'm feeling like on this day in particular for some reason, like especially hopeless. So I'm as grateful for this conversation happening because I was so excited to talk about something tangible, like something that I do all day long with the kids I work with that's a thing to talk about that seems somewhat hopeful. I'm having a hard... Yeah. 

00:04:31    Alyssa

Well, I'm excited to chat about this too. We get a bunch of pitches of books and authors and stuff from folks and screen them and your book came to my house and I was like, oh, yes, actually this is an easy, yes. I'm super stoked about it, thanks for writing it. Yeah, I think that we often don't talk to kids about their bodies and we just want them to know how their brains and bodies work, but we don't talk to them about it. 

00:05:00    Anna

Yeah, or we talk about, I think that kids get more information about the parts of their bodies that they can see with their eyes. You can see your hands moving, and therefore you could kind of think, oh, there's muscles and bones in there. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do this thing that I'm currently doing in my head. I wouldn't be able to move them. I can feel my heart beating. I can look at my body and see my lungs when I breathe all the way in. I see a change. And then I think we also, as adults, don't know as much about the brain. And so we might just literally not have the information to share about it. So I think for some reason we stop teaching kids about their bodies, even though your head is part of your body, we stop teaching about the collarbones and up. And yet, obviously, there's so much happening above the collarbones in our brain that impacts what's happening in our body and how we feel. And the words we use to describe that sensation in the body are the words that we use, they're called like emotions and feelings. We have words for that. But I think, I would like to think that at some point as we're moving forward with how we think about kids and their bodies and brains, we talk more about their brains as well as their bodies. 

00:06:19    Alyssa

Yeah, I agree. And that like, they're all different, right? Like when we, I have two children who, a little boy and a little girl, and they're vastly different humans. Like their sensory integration is just very, very different. And so the way that they experience the world, the way they move through the world, the way that they connect with other people, what they need for regulation are all different. And we talk so much in our house about exactly that. Like, yeah, buddy, that's what your body needs, or that's what your brain likes to have to feel calm. What does Sissy like? What helps her brain feel calm? And I think there's a fear of talking about differences often. I mean, even we're seeing it sweep through right now and like cancelling of DEI programs, right? Like if we can't talk about differences in our bodies, I don't think we can talk about how our bodies work without talking about the differences in our bodies. 

00:07:24    Anna

Mm -hmm. Yeah. And a lot of the decisions like you just mentioned are being made based on a perceived threat or harm. And that is why we have to start talking to kids about their brains early and helping adults understand. Because basically, if you can think of a time, I have many as a parent myself where I, like, said or did something I wish I hadn't done, like, in the context of being frustrated at my kids, angry. 

00:07:59    Alyssa

I can think of, like, 24 within the last six hours, yes. 

00:08:05    Anna

Well, I mean, transparently, just this morning, I knew I was coming on your podcast today. I was so excited about it. I'm going to talk about my book, How to Train Your Amygdala. It's all this really important information to share with parents and teachers and mental health clinicians about how to translate complex neuroscience for young kids and give them self -regulation tools. And I have a 15 -year -old daughter at home and I have an 18 -year -old who's in school. So my 15 -year -old did not want to go to school today for a very specific reason. And I had 15 things that had to happen today, this morning, before coming here. And my brain went into like the literally the thought is I can't do this right now. Like I do not have the capacity for this. I want to be here for you-- She's like, why are you so good at helping so many other people you're not good at helping me. Like these words are coming at me and I'm just I literally was like knowing what's happening I'm feeling like I'm in danger. I know that's not true because I'm looking at my child. But my mouth is like saying these frustrated words. And if that's what I had to like take a step and just get out of the room, partly because I knew what I was gonna be talking about later today. And like, so it was like this dawning of like, this is what's happening to you. You're going into threat response mode. You know what's happening in your brain. Can you be calm? 

00:09:27    Alyssa

Those are two different things. Knowing what's happening in your brain. And you know, like, yeah, I understand what's happening and I'm still in it are two different things. 

00:09:40    Anna

Yes. Right. 

00:09:41    Alyssa

And learning how, that's where like the training of the brain, the understanding of the amygdala and that perceived versus real threat. 

00:09:52    Anna

Yes. 

00:09:53    Alyssa

It isn't just a like, we find that out and then you're like, yeah, I'm Anna and I wrote this whole book and I do this work all the time. And so now when it comes up, I'm just like, yep, flying right through it. And I think that that is one of the misconceptions for a lot of folks, is that like, almost like it's a checklist. Like, I'm going to learn this and work on this, check, and then it'll come easily. Or I'm going to do these things with my kids and then they're going to always come in and be like, mom, I am experiencing a perceived threat and here's what's going on. Like that's not how this is going to play out. 

00:10:26    Anna

Please offer me one of my coping strategies that we've practiced in the past, then I think we could co -regulate together and everything. No, because each thing is a new, like our brain, my brain is different today than it was yesterday. You know, like it's always changing. And that's good because we have this plasticity where things can evolve and change. But there's also like, well, first of all, there's new real threats that can happen to a child, right? There's new actual danger. And then it's like that, now you have to kind of go back, repractice some of the strategies from that used to work for you, maybe you need to think about things in a different way. But I totally agree with you. It's partly the knowing, and then it's, like I talk to the kids I work with, where it's a practice. And trying to decide you wanna be a faster runner in the middle of your race is not gonna be super effective. You need to decide beforehand hand, that you want to have a practice of running over time to be the best or fastest runner you can be. And it's the same with tuning into what's happening in your brain and your body. So you can't offer a child a strategy that they've never heard before when they're already in the middle of a fight -flight -freeze response and hiding under the table at school or running out of the classroom or kicking somebody. It needs to be built into the DNA and the culture of a space or any relationship and everything we learn, we learn in the context of relationships and all of our behaviors can be kind of relearned in the context of relationships. But it's a constant like art and practice, not a checklist where you can say, okay, we did our SEL curriculum. It's done forever. 

00:12:17    Alyssa

Oh my God. One of my biggest bad news. 

00:12:17    Anna

It's going to be a practice. 

00:12:19    Alyssa

Every moment of the day is SEL curriculum. 

00:12:22    Anna

Yeah. Right. 

00:12:23    Alyssa

They're going to feel frustrated when they're in math too. Yeah, that is one of my biggest pet peeves. We put MTSS on the curriculum and now check. I love so much what you're just saying with like the pre -teaching and that like we don't build new tools in the hard moments. We access some of the tools in our toolbox in those hard moments. And I think it can be hard to to kind of remember that as a parent, of like building that in, because we have seven million things going on, right, all the time. And so when I'm outside of the moment where my four -year -old is driving my one -year -old nuts or vice versa, my brain's like, yeah, now on to making dinner, now on to doing these things. And so do you have, I think your book is a great tool for doing this in terms of building these things and having these conversations outside the moment, do you have other suggestions for parents or teachers or caregivers on ways that you can kind of naturally incorporate some of this into your day -to -day that isn't just in those hot -button moments? 

00:13:31    Anna

I think that one of the best things to do is to really tune in to what our natural tendencies are as the adults, in this case, working with kids or if you're living with a child. Because it took me decades of life and three graduate degrees before I actually realized what was happening in myself all those years of time. So partly, it is just the awareness. And I'm not totally unraveling. I'm having these feelings. I can do something about them. But truly, truly embrace that in yourself first. Because if we're pretending our kids know,  if I'm like, oh my gosh, just take a deep breath, just relax, just take a deep breath, and I'm not doing anything that looks like what I'm saying, that's not only disorienting and destabilizing for the brain, it also doesn't teach what we know would be useful. So I guess the first thing is just a real deep dive of what are the things, not with any self -blame or shame, but just what are the things that make me most likely to be threatened myself. And then being aware of that, thinking about what decisions you make about when and why you engage with, with kids. 

00:14:52    Alyssa

Yeah, 

00:14:52    Anna

I used to be a Head Start teacher. And I know that you can't, once you're in that role, you can't decide to like, leave for a couple hours and come back, like you're faced with the day -to -day and everything that's involved. 

00:15:05    Alyssa

Can I tap out? This is getting hard. 

00:15:06    Anna

I mean, sometimes when I'm working with teachers, if there's the option, I actually say, do that if you can. Because if you have someone else there and you know you've been with that child that's been dysregulated for a long time, yeah, pass the baton. And not because you can't do it and there's something wrong with you, just because something is happening in that moment that's not working for either one of you. And maybe both of you are feeling threatened, and not on purpose, but that's just what's happening. But basically, one, two, and yeah. 

00:15:40    Alyssa

Sorry, just that gift of like, I also have taught in early ed, and that gift when you have that co -teacher relationship where we can tap each other out, right? Like a teacher just came to mind who was so good at this for me, she would pop in and be like, hey, do you want to switch? And when I couldn't see it, and then I could do the same for her, and it was just like this judgment -free, shame -free space. Like, yeah, we're both gonna get to places where we're dysregulated and it's more beneficial for the classroom as a whole, including this child, but the classroom as a whole, if we can tap each other out. And it's such a gift to the nervous system when you have that relationship with someone around you. 

00:16:20    Anna

Yep, 100%. It's why we need a community of people that are willing to be vulnerable because there's a vulnerability in admitting that, even if it's a situation with two or more adults helping children grow in a home, whatever the dynamic is, being able to say, like, I just know I can't do this right now. Can you help right in this moment? In order to do that, you have to be willing to be vulnerable. And when we feel threatened, it's harder to be vulnerable. And so I think a lot of this just relates to generally parents and teachers being quite under a microscope in some ways today and that there's this idea that there's like a one right way to be addressing something and if it's not coming to you you can kind of feel like what's wrong with me I can't help this child right now and it's not about like some sort of perfect way and if and it's more of like an acceptance of all of these feelings happen they happen for this very specific neurobiological reasons and if I accept that that's what's happening and have that knowledge, to your earlier point, it's not just, have the knowledge and then I think like, and then what is the, what can I do? Knowledge and action. And like, sometimes action is no action, to be extra confusing, which would be like, I'm gonna decide that I am not the solution right now to the child in the classroom having this challenge. I'm gonna ask for help or take a break and come back. And then my second thing, when you ask what can adults do, is to once you are truly in touch with that, you can name it, you can say out loud, like I feel like I just really need to take a deep breath right now. And I'm gonna sit down and I'm just gonna take a deep breath and I'm gonna regroup. My kids joke that that has always been my favorite word, like we're just gonna regroup and then we're gonna see what we're gonna do next. And then the third is play, which would be that if you don't know what else to do, play is always an option because it immediately shows vulnerability. Like I'm willing to sit down and just mess around and play with something and be with kids' stuff. Already as an adult to a child sends a message that I'm willing to be vulnerable. I'm using play as a strategy to calm my amygdala and regroup. And then it's an invitation without language if language is not accessible. So, yeah, tuning into yourself, modeling some strategies and play is always an option, in my opinion. 

00:19:04    Alyssa

One thing that I'm so curious to pick your brain on here is in having these two very different humans, they both have different kind of go -to default nervous system reactions. In my household, we've done, for the fight -flight -freeze-fawn, we have done animals, where my almost four -year -old likes to know. He'll ask when we're reading a book, he's like, what does a bear do when that bear feels scared or if they're having a hard feeling? And so we'll talk about like, oh, that is an animal that goes into fight mode or that's an animal that flees or that's an animal. And so for our household, we have four animals that we'll use to talk about them. We have a puppy dog is the fawn that meets you at the door and is like, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I got into the garbage again. I know I'm not supposed to, but I did. And we have a frog that's flee from, he was trying to catch a frog in our backyard and it kept popping away. Possum is freeze and the lion is fight in our household. And so we'll talk about how for him, he'll often flee or freeze. And frankly, from a parenting perspective, it's generally way easier with him because my daughter usually goes into fight mode. And so she's going to scream in your face, she's going to grab, pinch, hit, throw something, and he gets quiet and wants to go into his own little quiet space. And that's easier to parent. And we'll talk about, like he recently said, mom, sometimes it's hard to live with a lion. He was talking about his sister and I was like, it is, sometimes it is hard to live with a lion. And when we're looking at this from that amygdala perspective, I think this is something that we don't talk enough about. And so it looks like it's a choice. It looks like self -control on the surface, that kids are choosing to go into fight mode, that they're choosing to yell back or they're choosing to elope or run away. And, or as they like shut down and now it looks like they're ignoring you or they're not answering, et cetera, that they're choosing that. And I think that the more we can talk about these nervous system reactions, these amygdala reactions, as just that like involuntary reactions, the more compassion we can have for kids in those moments and be able to see beyond the behavior. 

00:21:37    Anna

Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, I think it's brilliant that you have given those sort of confusing to talk about reactions that are autonomic, like this automatic response to fight, freeze, run away, or fawn, animal names for young kids, because that's such a good example of a way to take something abstract and make it really concrete and seeable. I love the idea of your son being able to say out loud, like, sometimes it's hard to live with a lion, which sounds like a really good children's book idea. It's like, it's hard to live with a lion, and all the other animals are like, hmm, it's being a lion, it's being his lion self again. And I think that, you know, one of the things, especially if there has been, if I'm thinking about a classroom, Like, you know what your children have experienced in their lives, because I don't want to presume. If you've been living with your children for their whole lives, then they know. 

00:22:40    Alyssa

Yeah, I grew and birthed them both. 

00:22:42    Anna

Okay, so in this case, you know most of their lived experience. They're also very young, so you know most of their lived experience. In a classroom setting, we don't know all of the history. We might know some, and the behaviors that we're seeing on the surface are always based on a need on the inside. And if we assume that the behavior is to prove a point to us, to make us angry, to make us scared, to do something like that, like as if the child is in control, then what does that do to how we would respond? We will respond as if we are in threat mode because we think that something is happening to us from the child. And that's the first misconception about behavior is that like it's something the child is intentionally trying to do to us. And, you know, I, parents can feel like that too. Like I just said this morning, I felt like that was coming at me as if it was something directed at me, but behavior is only an expression of an internal need. And when we see it like that, especially for kids who have experienced trauma, being the overwhelm on the brain and body, not the event itself, the thing that's happening. But if your brain goes into fight, flight, freeze mode, and your brain and your body are overwhelmed by an experience, then any little thing that the teacher couldn't see could send you back into that fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode, and it has nothing to do with the teacher because it's like the traumatic experience coming through the child and out in a behavior into the world, which is how I try in the work I do with teachers to help people see that this is not a personal thing. This isn't something that's happening to you from the child. The child's re -experiencing something and it's coming out. When you can name it and say, when the child's calm, is there a lion that you need to tell me about? But identifying what the lion is, and I use the poor lion, so poor lion's always the usual suspect for the most threatening animal to human survival. Asking that question, like what is the lion? What might have just happened? What might you have thought about? Is a way to get access to where that need, what the need is that's driving that behavior that's been challenging. 

00:25:14    Alyssa

I think part of the challenge, we do a lot of work with schools as well, and I find this both with parents in schools, I find it within myself, that not all needs are valued equally. That for my son, who is sensory sensitive, for him, like his need for food or his need for a quiet space or whatever, really in my brain I'm like, yeah, his nervous system's flooded and overwhelmed. He needs a quiet space before he can function or he needs to not be touched or he needs to eat before anything else can even go through. My daughter whose greatest driver is connection and will have a connection need where you will see behavior after behavior until she has that person's connection and has their attention. 

00:26:13    Anna

Yeah. 

00:26:13    Alyssa

I grew up in a culture where having needs was not valued, that I'm one of five kids in a low -income community, like the last thing I ever wanted to be was high maintenance. And so what I learned was like there's your basic needs, right? Like sleep and food and whatever, and that there's this hierarchy of needs. And connection is so far up that hierarchy that it is like a want, that it's like a desire. And my daughter and I are very similar. We have very similar nervous systems. And I love connection. I thrive on it. And so I see this in her when she's like, we were at dinner. It was a work dinner for me and a bunch of our team members, and she was there, and she was maybe seven, eight months old. And she's sitting in a high chair at the dinner, and she just went like person to person around the table trying to get their attention. And so she got like the person next to her, she's playing back and forth, et cetera, like great has her connection, goes to the next person. She first is like waving, she's saying hi, she then starts to scream or like tap something, And just like all these different strategies, once she had that person's connection, she would smile and wave and say hi and like have a little kind of serve and return back and forth and then go to the next person. And I was like, oh my gosh, I just like watched her do this, right, and like have this need to feel included. 

00:27:44    Anna

You're like, I kind of want to do exactly what she's doing. 

00:27:47    Alyssa

I'm like, Mila, teach me more. And it was just like so clear, but it is one where like the need for connection I think both with a lot of adults, whether it's parents, teachers, caregivers in general, the need for connection is not valued as a need. It's looked at as a want and that you're attention -seeking and that's a negative thing and this is something you want attention being a bad thing versus like I need to feel connected and included and like I belong in order to feel safe. 

00:28:20    Anna

Yes. Well, yes. One of my least favorite phrases that we talk about with education settings is like attention seeking behavior. And I will actually ask sometimes, what does that mean? Because in a sense, every behavior that humans use is for attention. That behavior is a communication form. So if I raise my hand, I'm showing I want to answer a question. If I come up close to you and I'm snuggling up to you, that's also a behavior. Yeah, maybe it's because I want some attention. If I run out of the room, I'm showing you that I did need to get away from something. If I turn in my math homework on time, it's a behavior indicating that I was like, the math homework was easiest for me, maybe, or I worked really hard, I turned it in. Every single thing I just said is a behavior that gets attention, and it's all designed to get attention because humans are wired to connect because we're wired to survive. And so if we ignore the desire to connect as a behavior that's attention seeking, we're ignoring one of the most fundamental drives humans have. It's literally what would keep us alive if we were surviving thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago. So I totally agree with you that it's sometimes seen as like something that's too much, you need too much from me, etc. But I also think that that might just be a disconnect in how it's being read.  And to your point, once your daughter gets the attention that she was looking for, she feels connected. And she's moving on. So it's not it's like, it would be so much easier to turn turn to a child for a moment and say, Hey, I see you. Like, is there something you need from me right now? Can we do something quick? Because I also have to do this other thing than to say, stop. You're just seeking too much attention. Because then the brain says, oh, now this is threatening. Because now the person I know of as the one who I'm supposed to connect with, who has all the power here, is telling me they're not going to connect with me. And then what I think happens is they try more attention -seeking behavior. And then, I mean, if you play that out, what happens, now that student is found to be like annoying and like... 

00:31:04    Alyssa

Well, and the behavior is just escalates. 

00:31:05    Anna

The worst thing we can do is give her attention. Right. Because the brain keeps saying, the brain is driving that saying like, this is not what's supposed to be happening. And so I need to make that, I need to fix that and make it work. but then there's a misread in like how the child tries. And yeah, I mean, that's how, and that can cause conflict. And once there's conflict, everyone is feeling that they might go back into threat response mode. And so it's definitely a problem. 

00:31:35    Alyssa

But I think it's a huge part of the problem of like behavior, because 100 % behavior is communication of a need. But I think part of the problem of that phrase is that we don't break down what needs might be and that connection is a need. And so over and over we are hearing that of like the attention -seeking piece or even when we can reframe it and go into like connection -seeking, it's like, okay, yeah, but like we gotta do X, Y, and Z. It's still an inconvenience for the adult. And this just happened the other day with my kids. Mila, aggressively driven, she's 13 months old, aggressively driven by connection. And Sagey had just come home from school, so she hasn't seen him all day. And he is playing and she came over and she's got her hand up in the air and she's going, hi, hi. And he's not looking at her. And so she goes and she gets a toy and she brings it over and she starts playing like right next to him. And he was like, stop, go away, I want space. Great, she's so crafty, like such a good idea. And he's like, stop, I want space. Mom, make her stop. And I said, hey, buddy, what is it that makes Mila feel the most loved? And he was like, when I connect with her. And like, and that's like, correct. And I was like, if you want her to stop asking for you to connect with her, if you pause what you're doing and turn to her and connect with her, she'll stop asking to connect. Her brain always says, can I be included? Do I belong here? And he was like, okay, fine, and he turned and he was like, here, Mila, and like played it there for a second. And then she felt, she was like, okay, great, I'm included. And then she left him alone. And it hasn't always played out that way. He's gone down the road of like, no, I'm not going to connect with her. and then she just keeps trying and then it gets into very annoying for him ways that she's trying. And we'll just keep saying like, looks like she's still trying to connect. I wonder what she's looking for here, bud. And staying curious and allowing her to keep asking for that connection. And then we'll hold physical boundaries. Like I won't let her hit him or whatever. I'll stop those. I'll say, oh, she's still wondering if she can connect with you. So that he can see like, you ain't going anywhere my friend. And this is here to stay until she feels connected. 

00:34:12    Anna

Yeah. It's so hard. I mean, it sounds like he has good insight to be able to repeat that back to you. And know, it's so hard because also it's not as simple as like the like connection is key, but each person, to your point, connects differently. And so, like, a lot of times when I'm doing parent guidance, I'll basically be asking, like, so I work with a lot of parents of anxious kids. And I do a lot of parent guidance when I have that child in my practice, and then I'm doing parent guidance. A lot, because I think with young kids that the therapeutic process without that collaborative effort with the adults that see them all the rest of the time is really just not that effective. But what's interesting is a lot of times, the anxiety serves a function of connection. What I mean by that is that I will find that there's relationships where a parent and a child are connected through the child's anxiety. And so the child is asking for the parent to regulate them and cope for them. And that starts tiny over time. And by the time the child is eight, for example, it's a big challenge. And the parent says, I don't know why they're so anxious. And they always want to come to me and talk about it. And so my question is like, what function is the anxiety currently serving? And if the anxiety is serving a purpose of connection, we need to find other ways to connect. So I can help and you can help the child to learn how to cope. Because we know they can. It's just that they are not accessing the strategies because they're checking with you instead and repeatedly checking with you or coming to connect with, yeah. 

00:36:08    Alyssa

Let's go into this, because our village will love this. When we're looking at, oh, I love that, anxiety as connection. So much of this, when we were doing our research of the CEP method, anxiety obviously comes up a lot in emotion processing, and we outlined five phases of emotion processing. Number three is security in your feelings, where you know, I'm safe to feel this because it won't last forever. No feelings do. Right? Clouds in the sky. And that is one that there was a lot of adult challenge around, of adults having a really hard time allowing kids to experience an emotion without us trying to make it go away because we don't believe that this is temporary, right? In the moment, it's like, this is my new life. This child's going to be sad forever. For instance, I'm driving Sage to school and he had just started a new childcare program. We're on the second week of going to school and he said, "mom, I'm going to be at school and I'm going to feel sad and you're not going to be there. I'm going to be all alone." And in my head, I'm like, I can quit my job. I don't need this, right? And… 

00:37:26    Anna

Yeah. What else do you need me to do? I'll go to school with you for the day. I'll get a job at the school. 

00:37:33    Alyssa

100%. I'll go back to teaching because I want to avoid his sadness, right? Like, I don't want him to experience sadness. Watching anyone that I love be in sadness and not try make it go away is very challenging for me. 

00:37:50    Anna

So hard. 

00:37:50    Alyssa

And similarly with anxiety, like watching someone experience anxiety or experience fear and not take them away, not try to silver lining it, not try to make it go away as fast as possible. It's very hard to do, to witness your child feeling anxious and instead of being like, oh, buddy, there's no monsters in here. You're safe in here at night. You don't have to be scared in here in your room at night. Or like, we're going to create monster spray so that we can spray it and then you will be safe or whatever. We just try so hard to make that anxiety go away because it's so much harder to be with it and say like, yeah, bud, which is eventually when I said to Sage, after fighting my own internal battle of quitting my job, was like, yeah, that makes sense, but it's so hard to feel sad, sadness won't stay for a long time. It stays for a little bit, you'll feel sad, and then you'll feel something else. And you might feel sad again. And none of our feelings stay for a long time. And that's way harder to access in the moment. You know, and like that's, I think, when we're looking at that anxiety piece, I'm curious if when you're looking at that and you're working with parents collaboratively on this, Is there a big part of it of like helping parents, caregivers, teachers, whomever, learn how to allow it to exist without immediately making it go away? 

00:39:23    Anna

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. What do you think about this? I think it's harder emotionally, psychologically, to watch our kids experience a feeling than it is for us to feel it ourselves. 

00:39:38    Alyssa

100%. Well, because I think we're not great at letting ourselves feel it. 

00:39:43    Anna

Right. And also, the big critical piece for any feeling that you want to change is action, right? What I mean by that is like you have to recognize it happening and decide what you're going to do. When it's in yourself, like if I'm having a sad day in myself, I know what I can do. I'm also a grown adult with a fairly, fairly well -trained amygdala, fairly, ask my family. And so I can go to a yoga class, if I can build it into my schedule that day. I can call a friend, I can call my mom, I could call my husband, I could lay on the floor with my very big soft dog and like listen to him breathing and remind myself that this is temporary, it's gonna be okay. I can access all those things. My daughter is crying and she's feeling sad. I can see it all happening, but any of the things I just said are not going to help her. And so what we do is we attach to the, oh my gosh, especially if we're very connected people and we have these very close relationships with our kids, we are literally feeling the feeling that they're feeling, but all of the strategies that we would do are not the same strategies that they would need or that would be useful and we can't take an action on it. And that creates threat because that feels hopeless, threatening, and just scary, essentially. And so - 

00:41:25    Alyssa

Because it feels permanent, you think? Where it's like, if I didn't do anything, would it go away, right? If you don't step in, will it move through and they'll process it? 

00:41:39    Anna

It could, but the idea that it won't is threatening because our primary, if we're the parent in this case, like I'm thinking like it's a little different from parents and teachers in this country. The parent is thinking, that's where I do think we go back into a very, very deeply rooted, and if we have anxiety ourselves, we go even quicker back into a deeply rooted sense of like survival.  I have to fix this. I have to make the thing, I have to make the lion not attack my child. And then we're like, maybe school is scary. You know, like, yeah, like I remember that thing that happened the last time. No wonder he doesn't want to go back to school because this is his kid that's being super mean to him. And so I should probably take care of this. I need to stop a lion from continuing to make my child look and sound like that. And so you go, boom, like I'll quit my job, I'll do whatever it takes. And in a more realistic, basically, like a lot of times what it is, is there's no reason for you to be sad. There's no reason. And then what the message that sends to the child's brain is like the primary, my primary connection person doesn't see the thing I see, doesn't see the threat, which is very destabilizing to the brain and so ideally the parent has the chance to both acknowledge the feeling like you did like this is so sad and I recognize that you're feeling sad right now and it won't always be true that you feel that way you'll have lots of feelings today probably and also when you are sad I'm confident you're gonna be able to cope with that feeling. Like, you're both recognizing that it is true and you're also noticing that there's strength in your child. That can be really helpful because you're not ignoring the lion and you're also not aligning with the lion, which what I mean by that is basically saying like, just get tough. You know? Like, yeah, maybe the lion's coming at you, but you know, you're tougher than this. You don't have to let worry boss you around. All of those things have come out of my mouth, and all of them on one side or the other are kind of hard because, I don't know, if you ever get worried about something and someone says to you, like, oh, just don't even worry about that, like that's not a big deal. 

00:44:18    Alyssa

Yeah, never in the history of don't worry have I stopped worrying. 

00:44:23    Anna

It doesn't work, especially for kids, because for kids, it's like they're looking for you to at least see the perceived threat. Yeah, it's very complicated. And it's not like there's not a one size fits all, but I think naming what you see, helping the child put a word to it, and then reminding them that it's temporary and that they could do something about it. Like they could change something maybe if they needed to, what would that be? 

00:44:54    Alyssa

Yeah, and I think it's really like that reminding of ourselves, right? That when we're reminding them that, what I'm saying to Sage that he feels sad and like validating that and then he won't feel sad forever. As those words come out of my mouth, they're also for me that like, yeah, Lyss,  he's not going to feel sad all day long. He's not going to live in this state all day. He's got tools to pull from and teachers to tap into, et cetera, etc. And I think that if there was a world in which he's going to be sad all day long, then it's way harder for me to leave that classroom. And so for me, it's so much of what I'm saying to him is for me. And I see this a lot with anxiety. 

00:45:48    Anna

Yeah. That's a really good... It's a good reminder in the moment out loud for both of you. And as you're saying it, you're also like using language. So you're, because you're naming something and naming the feeling and then saying it's not gonna be forever, you're actually like exactly training your amygdala because you're using language in the language -based areas in the brain to calm that threat response, which doesn't have language. It needs to know language to function and go straight from zero to 60. You're slowing it down because you're giving it words and then modeling that for him. Yeah, it's such a good reminder that feelings are temporary. And also, I do a thing with kids that, slightly older than your kids, but like a what if and a to do, because action does, with a lot of things that make us anxious, it's because we're stuck in thoughts about our thoughts or about something that might happen or did happen with rumination or anticipatory fear, which is what anxiety is. It's like fear in the moment of a thing that's not actually happening in the moment a lot of the time. So if you have a what if, like what if I ask this new friend I have to come over after school and they say no. Okay, that's a big what if because that seems really threatening. What are some to dos? And I ask kids to come up with the things because then it's like you're deciding in advance that there's a thing you could change if you were to feel embarrassed, rejected, sad, all the numerous things we could feel when a friend has said no, you know? So yeah, I like action because it tends to get us out of some of the worrisome thoughts. 

00:47:39    Alyssa

Well, I think what you just hit on so much, we talked about building those tools outside the moment earlier and those what if games we wrote about in Tiny Humans, Big Emotions, my first book of like doing that with younger kids of like that pre -teaching of what if we get to the playground and the swing you want to go on isn't available, then what are we going to do? And being able to pre -teach is so huge because it gives us something to go off of. We're not encountering it for the first time when it happens, right? Like we have, even if it's not always readily available a script or guidance for what to do next. We also separate sensory regulation versus emotional regulation and emotion processing. And so much of what your book really dives into is that sensory regulation piece of when you're in the amygdala, we're not doing emotion processing work. We're not going to chat about, this is one of my pet peeves is when folks come in and and they're like, tell me what happened, what's going on, what are you feeling? And they're still so in the body, they can't access language and communication in that way yet, that we've got to regulate the nervous system in order to be able to access that. That's something that in the How to Train Your Amygdala, I think you do such a good job of, is the how to help kids understand sensory regulation. And that we have to regulate the nervous system first and foremost, that you're right, the anxiety is, I like the thinking about thoughts piece of the rumination, that it is so much about first getting into a regulated brain and body so that you can even acknowledge and recognize what's happening thought pattern wise. 

00:49:26    Anna

Yes. I totally agree with what you're saying. When I was taught to teach, the quote we always heard was like, use your words. 

00:49:34    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:49:34    Anna

And so at the back of the book and the parent and the adult section, I have like what to do when words don't work because like, it's so counterintuitive. I mean, it makes sense because what you want, you, instead of hitting with the truck on that child's head, you could have said, I'm really frustrated at you. Um, but you're not accessing that in the moment of this, of this challenge when you're already in fight, flight, freeze, fawn response mode. So yes, 100%, it's about first regulating in the body, even though that cortisol and adrenaline and everything is triggered by a process starting in the brain. First tuning into what's happening in the body and being calm, and then maybe you can access. I think in the book, I say something like, once you're calm, could you name your feeling to an adult that you feel safe with? That's the strategy that comes after the breathing and the progressive muscle work and the visual imagery to pull your body and brain back together in a cohesive way and then access language, for sure. 

00:50:39    Alyssa

Also, I just had this flash to last week. It was just like an afternoon where Mila had high touch needs, really needed to feel connected. And Sagey had had a long day at school and it was in that four to five hour where I pick him up from school, I'm home getting the kids ready, everybody's getting hungry, trying to get dinner going. Zach, my husband, comes home from work about five, and so there's that precious hour that's usually often hard and was particularly hard that day, and Zach came in and was asking questions that I found annoying, and I was being sarcastic and rude and snippy. And if he would have been like, Alyssa, use your words, like what I would have... There are a lot of things that come up in that moment for me that are not appropriate. And that idea of like being in a hard space and somebody maybe saying to me, use your words sends me into full rage. And I can't imagine like, as I mean, I guess I can imagine as a kid, if you're dysregulated and someone's like, use your words. I'm like, now I want to hit you with the truck too, actually. 

00:51:55    Anna

Yes. 

00:51:55    Alyssa

That's what I want to do now because I would love to use my words. I would love to be regulated enough to access all my tools and not be sarcastic and snippy and rude to you right now, Zach, but that's not where we are in this moment. If you want me to use my words, take a kid off my body first and we'll get back to regulation and then I can use my words. But first I've got to regulate. 

00:52:16    Anna

Exactly. 

00:52:17    Alyssa

And so that idea just like, it's so bonkers when you think about it as an adult, right? Like that example that just like popped in for me was like, yeah, that sounds nuts as an adult, but we do it to kids all the time. 

00:52:32    Anna

Exactly. And also you're really not seeing me. 

00:52:36    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:52:37    Anna

Like if you think that it would be that easy for me, you're not seeing me and you're not connecting with me. And that's really hard because back to the original point, I mean, I know your daughter really loves connection, but everybody, we all, whether or not, every single adult on this planet, whether or not they would say it out loud or recognize it and have the insight for it, desperately needs connection. And when you don't have it, it feels like not surviving, actually.  And yeah, I just was listening to, can I name another, do you ever listen to What Now with Trevor Noah? 

00:53:20    Alyssa

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:53:21    Anna

Like, I love Trevor Noah, What Now He had Robert Putnam on recently, who wrote Bowling Alone, and was talking about the new movie about this that's called Join or Die, about this idea of the critical importance of connection for health. And it was just such a reminder to me, he's talking on the older, like older people usually, but it's still relevant for the whole lifespan, just like how wired we are for to be connected. And so anything we can do with kids, especially play, that brings us back to that connection is going to make it so that when there is a threat, when there is something that the child is seeing and is going into that fight, flight, freeze response mode, But if you already have that connection and trust, you're obviously going to be maybe, maybe less likely to just say, use your words, and more likely to have another way to tune in. And the other thing is, when we don't remember to do that in ourselves, I help parents know you can always come back. It's never, you don't have to feel shame. But if you regret something that you said or did in that moment, I like to actually use the word amygdala like like I realized that yesterday when I looked like I was being a lion when I was really angry it was because my amygdala got confused and felt threatened by you leaving your clothes all over the bathroom floor and down the hallway in a huge pile and so I was looking at that and I went into threat mode and you saw me angry because I thought I was fighting against a lion. In fact, you're my child, I love you, and let's try to clean up better after ourselves. But that wasn't, what you saw wasn't what I wanted to be. And I was going into threat response mode because this is what's happening in my brain. And if the child already knows the word amygdala, either because you read the book or because you're just talking about it if they're older, you have like a little bit of science to both like not rational, not like explain away your behavior or try to make an excuse for it, but just to give it some like grounding in like reality of what's happening in the brain and the body and take the anger out of the relationship and that strong and the connection, which is so important. 

00:55:55    Alyssa

Yeah, and that's just not about them. I wrote one of the sentences in Tiny Humans, Big Emotions, Sometimes I open my mouth and my mom comes out, and sometimes that's great, right? Sometimes I totally want to pass that on. And sometimes I spend a lot of time, money, and therapy trying to not pass that on, and that's the like, you're okays. And I think there's, in a world of social media parenting, there's an obsession with like, what am I supposed to say in the moment? 

00:56:27    Anna

Yes. 

00:56:28    Alyssa

It, while words are important and have an impact, there is so much more that's worth our time than what are the exact words I'm supposed to say in this moment and that if we, I think also because of the gift of repair, right? That like we get to come back and say, oh man, earlier when this happened, and I did this and this is what came up and I'm so sorry. I was feeling overwhelmed and here's what happened or whatever. We get to navigate that repair later and you can tweak the language. But what I think is way more worth our time is the self -awareness work, which is sometimes feels less tangible than what do I say instead of you're okay. It's oh yeah, here's what I experience in my body when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel scared, and being able to focus on the internal interceptive work of ourselves, I think is less sexy on social media and more successful in the relationship we're trying to have. 

00:57:45    Anna

I agree. And it's like about connecting into what's happening in yourself to be able to know it and feel it and maybe eventually talk about it, but it's that first, like we're walking around in a body. We're walking around from our head and our brain is doing work all the time, but everything we're feeling is in this body, and it's so easy to be disconnected from it, to be so in thoughts. I mean, some people are really in their thoughts and not in their bodies, so I totally agree. 

00:58:22    Alyssa

Anna, thank you so much for writing this book, for reaching out for coming on and chatting. This is lovely. Where can folks find you learn more about your work all that jazz. 

00:58:34    Anna

So my website is Annahousleyjuster.com. And the book How to Train Your Amygdala is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere that books are sold. But I also really love supporting local independent bookstores and it's at libraries. So I would ask at local places and yeah, I hope people enjoy it. 

00:59:04    Alyssa

Yeah. And I hope that also any teachers tuning in like snag it, have a copy in your classroom, read it at circle time. It's a great in to talking about how our brains and bodies work. Love this. Thanks, Anna. 

00:59:17    Alyssa

Stay tuned after this note from our sponsors. Rach and I will be right back with the breakdown. 

00:59:21    

[Music]

00:59:26    Rachel

Hey. 

00:59:27    Alyssa

Hey. Hey. Hey. I have my... Yeah, go ahead. 

00:59:30    Rachel

I was watching from the last time we recorded. So last time we recorded and I was like, yeah, I'm getting over the flu, I'm getting so much better. And then the next day my fever came back and I had pneumonia and I was watching a clip that we put on Instagram and I literally could barely keep my eyes open during that conversation and like you could tell from my face that I was really sick. I don't know why I thought I was better. 

00:59:53    Alyssa

It's all perspective, man. It really is. 

00:59:57    Rachel

But yeah, now I actually am better. Got hit with pneumonia and norovirus the week after influenza. So I didn't have norovirus, Abel did. But yeah. 

01:00:11    Alyssa

Your classic one, two, three punch there. 

01:00:13    Rachel

Like what? 

01:00:15    Alyssa

I feel like that's been everybody. I was just chatting with one of the directors we support through the Seed Cert. And she was like, we have just had so much illness this winter. And she was like, I've been doing this for decades. And we have had so much illness. And I was like, yeah, it's like insane this year. Zach is now on a steroid. Thank God, because you know, I was gonna get divorced over this cough. As a sound sensitive human, like that nonstop cough. 

01:00:43    Rachel

Also, it becomes like a cycle in the body of like the cough irritates the airway. And then and the irritated airway triggers a cough. So any - 

01:00:50    Alyssa

And then it irritates the wife. 

01:00:52    Rachel

Totally. 

01:00:52    Alyssa

And the irritated wife and irritates the husband. 

01:00:55    Rachel

Yeah. 

01:00:55    Alyssa

And the children. And yeah, that is what was, that was the exact cycle in my household. In fact, Zach last night was like, I can go, I can like sleep on the couch so that I'm not coughing at night. And I was like, to be honest, I've been sleeping with earplugs at night. It's more annoying to be around you during the day. 

01:01:11    Rachel

Yeah, it's so hard. Repetitive noises are super, super hard. And, you know, we lived in Coughville for years, because Nora has subglottic stenosis, which we didn't know at the time. 

01:01:25    Alyssa

What is that? 

01:01:26    Rachel

It's a narrowing of the airway around the vocal cord area, like an upper airway narrowing, and hers is idiopathic. We don't know why it's there. But it resulted in just a crap ton of coughing. 

01:01:43    Alyssa

Yeah, there was so much coughing. 

01:01:44    Rachel

Like now she's older, so her airway's bigger, so the stenosis, it doesn't impact her as much, but as a young child, it was terrible. But I will say, it's easier for me to feel compassion towards a coughing child than a coughing adult. 

01:01:59    Alyssa

A hundred percent, yeah. I was halfway through a podcast interview yesterday and had to text him and be like, I need you to leave the office. Bye. 

01:02:12    Rachel

Yeah. 

01:02:12    Alyssa

Yeah, well, I'm glad that you're feeling well. 

01:02:19    Rachel

Me too. 

01:02:20    Alyssa

Okay, wait, for Memorial weekend, are you both going camping? 

01:02:22    Rachel

She hasn't committed yet, but it's like a super site with all of our friends and like we can bring our dogs and - 

01:02:30    Alyssa

So should we make this our first camping experience with our kids? 

01:02:35    Rachel

I mean, it has to be, it's tenting. 

01:02:37    Alyssa

Yeah, that's what Sage wants to do. And we actually told him that he should go camping with Uncle Coco because Uncle Coco knows all the things and his parents do not. And so this does feel like an opportunity. We were like, oh, we could go to Maine that weekend and like see y 'all. And then you were like, we're camping. And - 

01:02:59    Rachel

It's the same thing that happened last Memorial weekend. You were like, hey, are you around? And I was like, I'm camping. 

01:03:05    Alyssa

The whole weekend, like when do you go? 

01:03:07    Rachel

Just Friday and Saturday night. I think we come back Sunday. 

01:03:12    Rachel

And then we could sleep in a bed on Sunday and we could come home Monday. 

01:03:15    Rachel

Yeah. I mean, just talk to Zach about it. No pressure, obviously. We're going up to Lawroweld, which is like near Mount Blue area. It's going to be a lot of conservative Adventists, but come on in. 

01:03:29    Alyssa

Thats fine. We are very flexible humans and the people that we are around. I, this is the thing I think people have really, like if somebody were to hear that and be like, well, I'm not going, like then you're part of the problem. 

01:03:42    Rachel

Oh, totally. 

01:03:43    Alyssa

Because we have got to be able to be around and talk to and engage with humans who don't believe the same things that we do all the time. And of course there are like rights to exist for humans and safety issues for humans where I'm like, it's not your, but my, I feel like for me as a white woman in a hetero marriage. I'm like, yeah, I gotta be one of these people that's engaging in conversations with humans who might have different views than me. In fact, this has been something I haven't really shared much about, but I have been embarking on this year. It was like one of my challenges to myself was to find two people that I know in my life who I have either like muted on Instagram, or just actively not been following or unfollowed or whatever. And to not only follow them and unmute them, but to engage with them, either over text or DMS, in a way that is not to convince them of anything, but to just be in curious conversation. And there's one human who I've had a lot of back and forth with and we are, we have very, we voted for different people probably always our whole lives. We grew up, he actually grew up like four houses down from me. And I started off by saying like, hi, this might seem weird. I know we haven't talked in so long, like over a decade. I am feeling curious and I genuinely want to learn more about why you believe what you believe and where you're coming from. And I believe that at your core, you're a kind person and I want to learn more. And I feel like a lot of us are living in bubbles where we're surrounded only by the voices that we feel comfortable with. And I'm trying to step outside my bubble. And he was very open to that. The first probably six weeks of us chatting was him really trying to like prove his point and almost like convince me. And I just responded kind of briefly and with curiosity more like, oh, I'm wondering why you think like that's the media I consume, or I'm wondering what led you to believe that that's a belief that I have and things like that and it's been a good practice for me to pull back and not just assume that I know all of his beliefs and all the media he consumes and all that jazz and I just recently we got to a place where I said I have a request I feel like in this like couple months of engaging with you, I've noticed that it seems like you have a lot of assumptions about my beliefs, the way I live my life, what I want for my family, the media I consume, the choices I make, the values I hold, and you haven't asked me about any of them. And I'm wondering if we could start there. If any time you find yourself assuming you know one of those things, if you can pause and just ask me what it is and I'll be honest. And this is the first time in conversation where he said, you're right. He was like, I have been assuming all these things about you and I can do that moving forward. And it's been really cool. Like, it's been really cool. And a very good practice for me. I couldn't continue to exist in polarization. And what I found is actually socially, we share a lot in common values wise and some differences, but we share a lot in common. And then fiscally, we have a lot of differences. Or at least different ideas of how to approach similar goals. 

01:08:08    Rachel

I think that's what it is. I think because I'm outside of my bubble. I left my bubble when I really dove into our school community and now these are some of my closest friends. Very different ideas about if we sit down and talk about our goals, they're pretty much the same. But if we talk about what we think are the most effective strategies for getting there, they're very different. 

01:08:36    Alyssa

Yeah, and it was interesting, like at one point he said, I hate that now, like you can't question science, science just has to be something we say like, oh, well, it's science backed or based or whatever. And I was like, oh, interesting, tell me more. And he like dove in and I was like, what's interesting is that that's not a message I've received in my media or that my circle of folks are saying. In fact, science is something that is like the scientific method is something we're always looking at, like what works, what doesn't and learning from it and making. 

01:09:14    Rachel

Science is asking questions. 

01:09:16    Alyssa

Correct. 

01:09:17    Rachel

That's what science is. 

01:09:20    Alyssa

And I was like, I think what feels really important to me is that things are as data informed as possible because I like to make personally like data informed decisions wherever I can. And he was like, oh, yeah, no, yeah, absolutely. We should be making decisions from data and I was like, that's for me where the science part comes in is that I want data to back something up. But we could just like have conversations like that. And I was like, of course, initially when he says things, I'm so glad it's via DM because I can read it, I can have my internal reaction and all that and my assumptions and my biases, and then I can walk away. And there have been times where I've walked away for like 10 days where I'm like, I am still not ready to come back and be curious. And I had told him that, I was like, anytime you're not hearing from me, it's not that I'm ignoring you, it's that I need more time to get curious. And he's been a good receiver of that. 

01:10:30    Rachel

And that's like what's hard about, cause I have a lot of conversations. Interestingly, in our like large group of friends, I don't know, the girls and I, I think we are with each other alone enough that we like have these conversations in a different way. But when we're all together, I like always get into it with the husbands, always. And I'm really outspoken in a way that some of my friends aren't. 

01:10:59    Alyssa

Love that about you. 

01:11:00    Rachel

But it's hard because I really have to watch myself in the face -to -face conversations and try to not get super fired up because I don't want the other person to shut down. 

01:11:16    Alyssa

Totally. And to like close off opportunities for conversations. 

01:11:19    Rachel

Right. And I can get really fired up about this stuff because I'm like, this is like, we're talking about humanity here. Okay. We're talking about other people with lives and children and jobs and needs and wants and dreams and all these things. And so I get like kind of pissy if I'm feeling like that concept is not being acknowledged. So it's been good practice for me of how to continue to be kind and curious even when part of me is like, are you effing kidding me? 

01:11:55    Alyssa

Oh, yeah. No, I know. Thank goodness I can walk away in a DM. 

01:11:59    Rachel

Sometimes I say, well, sometimes I'm just like, are you effing kidding me? 

01:12:03    Alyssa

Well, and how cool would it be if we normalized the ability to say, I want to keep having this conversation and right now I cannot be curious. I just want to convince you of my side. 

01:12:15    Rachel

Totally. Or I'm feeling like frustrated with you. 

01:12:18    Alyssa

Yeah. Correct. 

01:12:21    Rachel

Because that's how I get. I'm like, I get back into that old way of like, if you would just listen to me. 

01:12:27    Alyssa

That's it. We want to convince them of our side. 

01:12:28    Rachel

Right. But yeah, so it's been really good practice for me. And I'm for sure the political minority in my group of friends. So yeah, all kinds of interesting, challenging, and of course it trickles down into parenting, right? 

01:12:45    Alyssa

Yeah, totally. 

01:12:47    Rachel

And I'm also the minority there. So yeah. 

01:12:51    Alyssa

I think we should do an episode at some point on what it's like to parent in a circle of folks who aren't respectfully parenting their children the way that we're trying to. Who do we get to chat about today? 

01:13:06    Rachel

Okay. Today, we're chatting about Anna Housley Juster, Practical Tools to Help Kids Manage Anxiety. 

01:13:14    Alyssa

Okay. Yes. This book, How to Train Your Amygdala, I got and read and we get pitched a lot of guests and I always want to walk in this balance of talking to guests who we're aligned with and sharing their voices and getting to have these conversations and also not living in a bubble and being able to have people on that maybe I'm not as aligned with and I can dance with on topics and things like that. And she's someone that I read that book and I was like, oh yeah, we're in such alignment. Come on over here. You know what I think really stuck out to me? I think we shy away from using real terms with kids and she doesn't, right? Like even How to Train Your Amygdala, not how to train your emotions, how to train your brain, how to, How to Train Your Amygdala is the kid's book. And I think that's so cool that she wasn't like, amygdala is too big of a word for kids. It isn't. In fact, people used to comment on this a lot when Sage was like one and two, where he would know words that were like common complex words, because we just never gave a substitute word for it. And now I can think of literally zero. Oh, I have one. He was like watching this video and it was all these different trucks and he was like, oh, that one has hydraulics. And I was like, yeah, and he was like two. And I was like, yeah. And my mom was like, did he just say hydraulics? I was like, well, that's what it is. Yeah. like we taught him that word and then we broke down what hydraulics are and what they do and that in like a two -year -old fashion and he'll learn more about hydraulics as he gets older and understand it in different ways and the science will get more complex but yeah he knows the word hydraulics and I really respect that about Anna's work is that she's like I'm going to talk to you about your brain and your body with real terms and it won't be too much for you. 

01:15:28    Rachel

Yeah for sure. 

01:15:31    Alyssa

What were your takeaways from this? I know anxiety has been a topic we've talked about so much. Kids who have experienced anxiety, you've lived with anxiety. What came up for you in this episode? 

01:15:43    Rachel

Yeah I think I love this idea of starting early, talking about brains and bodies with kids and something that I've done in my own home. A funny thing that's coming up for me right now is so Abel recently had norovirus and after he was done being sick, he was still like waking up in the night and thinking he might throw up. And so at one point he woke me up and he was like, Mom, am I sick or is it just anxiety? And I was like, yeah, you're not sick anymore it seems like it's probably just anxiety which can make your stomach feel funny. So yeah just like I think that normalization for kids and I didn't have I didn't even have like that as a kid and I had anxiety I mean starting in second grade I was like really struggling with it but I didn't have the tools or knowledge to identify like oh my stomach feels funny but I'm not sick. Okay, I'm having some anxiety right now. And then like, what can I do? And really, I didn't really cultivate tools for that until I was in my 20s. So yeah, I'm all about starting the conversations early. And like, it was funny to hear Abel say that. But part of me was like, this is good. Like, he's starting to recognize that, like, 

01:17:08    Alyssa

Its awesome. 

01:17:08    Rachel

He's having a physical symptom right now. And he's starting to suss out like, what does this mean about what's happening for me? 

01:17:17    Alyssa

A hundred percent. And I think it's something that most of us didn't get in childhood. A lot of us still don't have an adulthood where we can recognize, because it's psychosomatic, right? Like we are going to experience physical symptoms and it's really hard to ascertain what's the root of this physical symptom. Actually early on in dating, you might remember this. We were in Ocean Park--

01:17:43    Rachel

Oh I remember.

01:17:43    Alyssa

-At the beach and Zach, in the middle of the night, like woke up and this really early on in dating, he still, he struggled with anxiety a lot throughout his life and very much so when we were early on in dating and has done so much work around it and now it's not a big challenge for him, but he, when we were on vacation, he woke up, he was experiencing anxiety, but for him, it was like he can't breathe, he has a hard time breathing, It feels like he can't get a deep breath. And he woke up his mom, I'm also on vacation, but he woke up his mom, and who also has struggled with anxiety over the years, and then he came in and woke me up and was like, my mom's gonna drive me to the ER, I can't breathe, and you can come if you wanna come, but you don't have to if you wanna sleep. Obviously, I'm coming at that point. And I was like sitting in the back seat, driving to the hospital, just like watching this. And I didn't grow up in a household with parents who have anxiety as like a main-- there was a lot of other challenges that I experienced, but like anxiety really wasn't one of them. My parents aren't very anxious humans. And I was just like watching this play out in front of me, and there's mom driving him, and now they're both anxious about his breathing, but nobody's seeing it as anxiety. And it felt like I was just like an outsider looking in and I was not feeling anxious or concerned overly in this moment. I was actually kind of feeling annoyed because I had been playing a role which I didn't realize until that moment where when he would get anxious, he would turn to me, I could co -regulate him, bring him down and he could move through it. And so he had this like breathing thing that he always called it. I should like have this breathing thing. For years, since we'd been together and I had just always kind of unknowingly, co -dependently, co -regulated him and like saved him from the physical symptoms. And it would go away for a little bit and then of course it'd pop back up. And we're in the ER and like over and over and he's like, maybe I need an inhaler. And the doctor came in and they'd run all these tests and stuff and the doctor was like, have you ever experienced anxiety? And it felt for me very validating in that moment, but I was like, yeah. And he was like, yeah, here and there, like in my life. He was like, I think what you experienced tonight was a panic attack. You're experiencing anxiety. And he was like, I can give you an inhaler, but there are other strategies that are going to be more effective for you, both short and long term. And I was like, so cool, Doc, and like gave him a handout on navigating anxiety. And ultimately, Zach just went back to therapy and dove into it and all that. But it's tough in that moment where it's like, he's like, I can't breathe. There's no way it's anxiety. I can't breathe. 

01:20:52    Rachel

Oh, totally. The physical symptoms of a panic attack are so annoying. I used to have similar, breathing could sometimes be a panic trigger for me. There's a name for it too. It's called air hunger, when you feel like you can't take a deep breath. And air hunger can be caused by pathology, but it can also happen with panic attacks. So like my two triggers for panic attacks, my first panic attack ever happened right after my brother got in a car accident, and it happened following the ambulance to Mass General in a snowstorm. I started having chest pain. I was 16 and so I had never had chest pain before and my only association with chest pain was like a heart, a cardiac issue, right? 

01:21:38    Alyssa

Sure, I'm having a heart attack. 

01:21:42    Rachel

So I told my mom, like, I'm having chest pain. My mom, not an anxious human, is like, oh, honey, it could be gas, like, whatever. So this goes on and on and on where I keep having this, like, chest pain and it's it's getting more and more. And we're like staying in Boston because John needs to be at Mass Gen for weeks to get this very scary surgery that could potentially paralyze him. Whatever. And it was a long time between those initial times where I had chest pain to where somebody was like, oh, this is a panic attack. This is panic disorder. Like, here's what you can do in the moment when that happens. And then it was literally years of feeling a panic attack coming on, utilizing my strategies, realizing that I could come out of it, reminding myself, like, yep, this isn't gonna kill me. It feels definitely for sure like it is. But it's not going to. 

01:22:37    Alyssa

Yeah. 

01:22:37    Rachel

But like, I hate, the physical symptoms of anxiety are the worst. It's so annoying. And Abel with his, he's so interceptive sensitive. 

01:22:48    Alyssa

So's Sagey. 

01:22:49    Rachel

Oh my gosh, but it's like watching myself. So like one of Abel's, and this used to be a thing for me too, is like I would feel like I couldn't breathe or like couldn't swallow. And it would like usually happen after eating. Like if I was too full, like the pressure on my diaphragm would like, cause I'm so interoceptively aware, like the pressure on my diaphragm would trigger this panic feeling. And like Abel, I've never had it happen in front of him. It's been so long since I've struggled with panic that it's just like so bizarre to see like, oh, he's so me in so many ways. And now - 

01:23:25    Alyssa

And like the sensory systems at work, right? And like how that plays a role. 

01:23:28    Rachel

He literally can feel the pressure. 

01:23:30    Alyssa

Yes, yes. 

01:23:32    Rachel

So I have to reassure him like, hey, that's a normal bodily process. Your stomach's full and your stomach lives next to your lungs so sometimes you're gonna feel your stomach push on your lungs a little bit but you're still getting plenty of air and you're safe. 

01:23:45    Alyssa

Yeah. 

01:23:45    Rachel

But like, damn, you know, it's like, I don't want him and he already has more tools than I had when I was like 20. 

01:23:52    Alyssa

Yeah, these kids. 

01:23:53    Rachel

It's unreal. But it's just wild to see that like sensory component versus like, Cody is not very interoceptively sensitive. And he would never like notice his diaphragm feeling like pressure and then be like, I can't breathe. This is really bad.

01:24:20    Alyssa

Sure. I was listening to an armchair expert episode and it was with a neurologist and it was on the topic of overdiagnosis, but one thing that she talked about that I thought was so interesting was she was talking about seizure disorders and I think it was like 30 % of the who would come in, who had had seizures, where it was psychosomatic. And they would have a seizure, but what you can track and see in the brain is different if it's a seizure disorder or if it's psychosomatic. And it was so interesting to have that broken down because I think often when we think of psychosomatic things, we think of it as a choice. We're like, well, you're choosing to feel this way. 

01:25:07    Rachel

It's all in your head. Like, it's just all in your head. 

01:25:10    Alyssa

Yeah, you just gotta shift it, and it's like, these people were having seizures, and one of the things that she said has been helpful for a percentage of that population where their seizures were psychosomatic was just telling them that, of like, you don't have a seizure disorder, this is psychosomatic, your brain is experiencing anxiety, and is is then reacting to it with a seizure. And for some people, just knowing that actually stopped the seizures. I was like, how cool. For some people that did not happen. And she said, actually, for the folks where that didn't happen, there aren't good treatment avenues right now because the medical systems don't communicate very well. But I was thinking about that with just how powerful anxiety can be when we can't get back into our body. When you can't notice, that was honestly the key for Zach moving to the space he's at now with anxiety, was he knows what it feels like. And so he's like, ah, when I'm feeling these symptoms, I'm not dying, I can breathe, I'm feeling anxious. And then as he started to furthermore dive in in therapy to the parts of him that were feeling anxious and what they were anxious about and do some of the healing work, then he experienced anxiety less and less. And it doesn't mean it doesn't come up now, it still does, and, he can notice it more readily and can ground, even if the grounding exercise is like name five things in the room that are blue right now, right? Like count every toe touching the ground right now, things like that, that are just like really going to move you through the physical piece of it. But I think what's often left off the table is then the work of the parts, which is what you've done such an incredible job diving into of like getting to know the different parts of you and what they're trying to communicate and what they're afraid of. And we know that, yeah, some of them go back to second grade, you know, or like when you're four. And it takes a while to do that work. 

01:27:42    Rachel

And I think what's hard too, especially with panic disorder is it's not, the onset of a panic attack is not always associated with what you would recognize as an anxiety trigger, right? Like it can feel like, oh my gosh, which they're coming out of nowhere. And of course they are connected to trauma and things that you've experienced. And that there can feel like there's this disconnect and that can contribute to that feeling of like, oh no, this is a real physical problem. Like there's been no trigger for my anxiety here. Right? Why do I feel like I can't breathe? Why does my chest hurt? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so - 

01:28:19    Alyssa

We were like on vacation and he wakes up at night and I'm like, what do you got to be stressed about?

01:28:23    Rachel

 100%. And that can be how it is of like, even still sometimes like, well, I'll just be like, having a great day, living my life. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I feel a little tightness in my chest. Like, I wonder what's going on there. And it's very unusual for it to progress any further than that at this point. But you know, there would have been a time where it had been like, oh, tightness in my chest, definitely having a cardiac event. How far are we away from a hospital? Oh, my gosh, I'm short of breath. Like, this is so bad. 

01:28:52    Alyssa

Well, and now how it comes up for you around like cancer times around diagnosis times and all that jazz. And you're like, okay, now I feel this thing, I have this hip pain or I have this whatever. And I just think what's so interesting about Anna's work in the like amygdala piece is that our amygdala is designed to keep us safe, right? It is trying to find what it sees as a threat and let us know in whatever way it can. And we get to be grateful for it and let it know that we're safe and find all the blue things in the room and help it get back to being a part of us and not controlling us. 

01:29:41    Rachel

And that is the tough-- 

01:29:44    Alyssa

That's the work, man. Because what it means is like you're experiencing it and what we, what our urge to do is make that anxiety go away as fast as possible, right? To feel better as fast as possible. And so maybe that's going to the doctor. Maybe that's like doing something, trying to figure out how to share a story without sharing intricate details. 

01:30:08    Rachel

Well, how about this? It's when your kid 

01:30:09    

has separation anxiety and instead of helping them stay at school, you bring them home. 

01:30:13    Alyssa

Correct. Yep, exactly. We were just like, I need to make this feeling go away. 

01:30:18    Rachel

Which reinforces the anxiety. 

01:30:20    Alyssa

Correct, exactly. 

01:30:21    Rachel

So one thing that I, so health anxiety is my challenge. So the moose hunt was a big thing for me, not for myself. Bringing my kids up into the middle of nowhere, knowing that the nearest hospital was hours away. 

01:30:39    Alyssa

And having a kid throw up all night. 

01:30:40    Rachel

On dirt roads, yeah. I mean, that didn't help, but it was more the anticipation of the trip, of like, what's going to happen if one of them chokes and like the Heimlich doesn't work or you know, just all of these intrusive thoughts really that were coming up for me of like, what will I and obviously, like common sense, we took safety precautions, we had a-- 

01:31:00    Alyssa

I'm never worried about your safety precautions. 

01:31:02    Rachel

Yeah, like we, our kids were safe. But also, it's just there's a lack of control out there, because you're so far away from help. And so it was important for me personally to do the trip in a way that did not incite anxiety in my children. And that was a big deal for me. 

01:31:26    Alyssa

Yeah, proud of you. 

01:31:28    Rachel

It was a big deal, something I would never just for perspective, I cried on like a 20 minute hike when I was pregnant with Nora because I felt like my heart rate was getting too high in Freeport, which is a city. Okay, so that's where we were a decade ago. 

01:31:46    Alyssa

Very close to Portland. 

01:31:47    Rachel

But like it I was in zero percent danger, literally zero. Crying, panicking, couldn't breathe, etc.  So that was a decade ago. 

01:31:58    Alyssa

A long way sister, you come a long way. 

01:32:00    Rachel

Wow. But one of the things that I've learned along the way and something that I'm really working on with my children is if you make too many accommodations for the anxiety, you will reinforce the fear, whether it's rational or not. And if it's anxiety, it's not. And it's so hard as a parent. I hate to see my kids experiencing anxiety or fear, especially around social stuff that I can't help them like fix or control. Hate it so much. And I don't want to make their lives harder by feeding it. 

01:32:42    Alyssa

Yep. And that is, yes, it's so hard not to, or even just be like, you're okay, bud, you're safe up there. You're fine. Or you can do this. That response or the, okay, come on down. You don't have to climb up there. You don't have to try that out. Both of them are challenging versus the oh, you're feeling anxious about going down. You're wondering if you're safe up there. 

01:33:09    Rachel

Yeah. 

01:33:10    Alyssa

Your body and brain are so good at trying to keep you safe. Look around. What would happen if you fell? 

01:33:17    Rachel

Yeah, totally. Or like, oh, you're worried about what's gonna happen at recess? 

01:33:23    Alyssa

Yeah. 

01:33:24    Rachel

What can you do if that happens? Who can you ask for help? What else could you do? Who else could you play with? There's a part of me that's like, let's just homeschool. 

01:33:34    Alyssa

A hundred percent. 

01:33:35    Rachel

You know? 

01:33:36    Alyssa

Oh, yeah. Legit. 

01:33:38    Rachel

No, really. 

01:33:38    Alyssa

Boy, don't I know. 

01:33:39    Rachel

There's a part of me that's like, oh, I just want to pull you out of school and never expose you to anything hard or painful ever again. That part is real. There's another part of me that knows that whether or not I try to delay it or control it, they are going to experience hard things. And the best thing I can do for them is give them the tools. I hate it. I literally hate it. Yesterday on the phone with my sister, I was like, I want to homeschool. 

01:34:09    Alyssa

I mean, right before we got on this call, I was like. Same girl. And I want to homeschool for one kid and not the other, to be honest. 

01:34:20    Rachel

Same, actually, because Nora would not enjoy. 

01:34:23    Alyssa

No, Mila already, like she's 15 months and she is yearning for more humans around her all the time. Like now that it started to get warmer out and we have four girls that live next door, anytime she sees them outside, she'll say, girls, and she just like runs to the door and she like needs to go outside. She's like, I am so over just hanging out with you guys. Yeah, she's starting childcare in the fall and I think she's going to love it. 

01:34:52    Rachel

Yeah, she totally is. Yeah, it's Abey that I would homeschool. And I actually - 

01:34:57    Alyssa

That's Sagey. It's our sensory sensitive kiddos. 

01:34:59    Rachel

It is, and it's like, the other thing too is Abel cannot get enough of one -on -one time with me. His obsession with me is unreal. And I kept him home yesterday because he had like a rash from an MMR vaccine. And we hung out all day other than when I was on meetings for a couple of hours. And so it's like four o 'clock and Cody's home and they're going to go outside and go for a walk. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to stay behind. I don't really feel like going for a walk. And Abel was like, no, like, I really want you to go. I want our whole entire family to go. Like, he just doesn't get sick of being with me, which Nora does. Nora needs like other people. 

01:35:39    Alyssa

Sagey does not get sick of us either. In fact, he gets overwhelmed with other people. 

01:35:45    Rachel

That's Abel. Yeah. So helping Abel build tools at this point with both of them in school, he feels like my harder child to support because. 

01:35:57    Alyssa

Yeah, I think Sagey will always be my harder child to support when it comes to like school and social settings. And I like vacillate between, am I trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Of like, I heard this interview with Bill Gates and he was talking about how he hadn't been diagnosed with autism and it wasn't something that was like brought up in any capacity, but that his mom intuitively knew that he did better in a small group than he would do at school in a larger group. And they had the financial means to put him in a private program where he had eight kids in a class and always through all of his schooling. And he was crediting like that decision to so much of his ability to learn and grow into who he is today. And I heard that and I was like, yeah, am I trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Like, am I trying to make Sage thrive in a space that isn't designed for how his brain works? I just don't feel like there are adequate options for different brains. And that's actually where my entrepreneurial self steps up and is like, I want varying options of school days, of structures, of how kids are taught, of what classroom environments look like, of the length of time they're required to do something at a given time. Like, I want differentiation across the board and I presently in this moment feel fired up to try and create it. 

01:37:31    Rachel

Yeah, oh, I mean, Abel, we're lucky because Abel and Nora both go to a smaller school. So Abel's class is quite small, but just yesterday, Cody was asking if Abel would wanna do basketball. And I was like, he's definitely not going to want to. And he doesn't. But I think Cody was kind of disappointed by that. So well, because I heard him trying to convince Abel a little bit, which ended with Abel being like, "I'm nevah gonna  play." 

01:38:01    Alyssa

That's Sagey's favorite, never in my whole life. 

01:38:05    Rachel

And I knew that Abel wasn't going to, like, no amount of coercion was going to change Abel's answer. So as we were walking, and Cody was talking to me about it, I'm like, yeah, you know, I think after a full day in the classroom, like Abel's just fried. It's not gonna be fun for him to then go and spend an hour and a half in a gym with a bunch of different grade levels and so much noise and chaos. He's just, that's not the vibe for him. And honestly, if he never does sports, I don't care. I don't wanna add to what drains him. 

01:38:35    Alyssa

Totally, totally, exactly, agreed. Oh, parenting, too many choices. 

01:38:43    Rachel

So many choices, the decision fatigue. 

01:38:47    Alyssa

So real. All right. Thanks for doing this with me. 

01:38:50    Rachel

You bet. 

01:38:51    Alyssa

Love you. 

01:38:51    Rachel

Love you. 

01:38:53    Alyssa

Thanks for tuning in to Voices of Your Village. Check out the transcript at voicesofyourvillage.com. Did you know that we have a special community over on Instagram hanging out every day with more free content? Come join us at @seed.and.sew S -E -W. Take a screenshot of you tuning in, share it on the ‘Gram and tag @seed.and.sew to let me know your key takeaway. If you're digging this podcast, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We love collaborating with you to raise emotionally intelligent humans.

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