Raising Men with Alicia Davis ( A good one for everyone!)

Brett: 0:02

Okay, welcome back to the Fighting for Connection podcast. Today I have with me another guest, alicia Davis. Welcome on, thanks for coming on.

Alicia: 0:13

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Brett: 0:15

Yeah, and you and I we've had, I guess, not a few, but one conversation prior to this, and I enjoyed it because I guess, for me, the things that you are working on are things that are really relevant to me and my life. So I kind of like double dipping, in the sense that I'm going to have a conversation with you to help my listeners understand who you are and what you do. But I'm also looking forward to this conversation because I feel like I'm going to get a couple of things out of our conversation here today.

Alicia: 0:48

I hope so. Okay, let's do it.

Brett: 0:50

Super much Appreciate it and I guess before we launch into all of that good stuff, I want the listeners to know who you are, alicia, who you serve, and kind of your story, how you got into the work that you do.

Alicia: 1:04

Yeah, so my name is Alicia Davis. I am a certified life coach. I am a mom of four boys, who are fabulous. I've actually been a stay at home mom for 20 years and about three. Well, about four or five years ago I had a friend refer me to a podcast by a life coach and I was like yeah, yeah, yeah. And I took a little listen to it and was like, wow, this is actually, this is exactly what I need, Speaking of getting little nuggets of knowledge, right. So I followed the podcast, listened to it a lot and decided I needed to dive a little deeper into the concepts that I was learning. So I got certified as a life coach through the life coach school, which I loved, and that was about three years ago. So I have been coaching for almost three years and recently got an advanced certification in faith based coaching. So right now, the group that I serve is moms in particular. I'm I coach all moms.

Alicia: 2:07

I've got a soft spot for boy moms just because that's been my experience and I know that there are some unique challenges to raising kids that come up sometimes and I love helping people through those. So, yeah, that's that's pretty much my focus is coaching moms, helping them really develop confidence and more connection, not only with their sons, but with themselves, with their spouse, with God or a higher being, if that's what they're looking for as well. So just bringing that all in and helping them really parent the way that they want through through coaching and through the help that I can offer them.

Brett: 2:46

I love it and I'm always on the lookout for good podcasts, so which podcast were you referred to?

Alicia: 2:53

Yeah, it was Jody Moore's podcast. It's called Better Than Happy.

Brett: 2:57

Yep, yeah, and I'm sure. I'm sure there's people on here who listen. I'm pretty confident that there are listeners on here who are either listening to Jody Moore or are in her Be Bowl program.

Alicia: 3:11

So yeah, it's phenomenal. She was, she's been impetus for a lot of other people getting involved in the coaching tools and certifying and helping their families that way. So I recommend it.

Brett: 3:22

So I guess, from there, if I, if I'm here and you're right, you're a stay at home mom, you got the four boys, you get referred to this podcast and you get into coaching what, what tools were you receiving? That like made you feel like, okay, I got to go further into this, I got to learn more and I want to also help others learn these tools. Like what was it? Do you remember? Like some specific tools or anything in particular that was like I need to do this.

Alicia: 3:55

Yeah, and I think, rather than referring to a particular tool right now, I think the thing that I noticed from from the podcast was the radical responsibility that I was able to take for my own life as a mom like we're, we often feel like we're at the mercy of whatever circumstance comes up right, like husband might be working X hours, kids are involved in all of these things and we're kind of at the mercy of whatever the schedule happens to be for the day.

Alicia: 4:25

And the tool that I got from that podcast was the tool of being able to recognize like I'm not at the mercy of all of that what I'm choosing to think about it and how I'm feeling about it. Use my brain will kind of guide me to think about it a certain way, but often that doesn't serve me. So the tool that I found was being able to examine my thoughts and my emotions and and really learn why I was thinking and feeling a certain way and showing up the way that I was and then how to how to really show up as the the hero, I guess, instead of the victim in the story. So so the tool, the tool, is being able to examine your thoughts and feelings and really dive in deeper.

Brett: 5:10

Yeah, I'm just kind of picturing that Like oftentimes we as humans, when we're, when we feel like we're at the mercy of our circumstances, we have a lot of negative emotion that comes up with it.

Brett: 5:23

And if we feel like we're at the mercy of someone else's behavior and those are our circumstances we develop like resentment and frustration and we feel hurt by this person. And I think having the ability to kind of see that oh and there's a piece within this that I do have control over is super powerful, because when you feel like that lack of control, it seems like your brain just moves into like this weird, like I don't know if it's like a survival stage or something like that has like these drama emotions. But to be able to see that we don't have to control our circumstances to feel better, we can actually begin to kind of manage ourself. And when we begin to manage ourself through our thoughts, then so many other things begin to become fluid and change. And I guess that's kind of what I'm hearing your experience was is you found something that you're able to begin to manage, which was you and your thoughts and how you're feeling about these things, and that allowed for some radical shifts to take place in your life.

Alicia: 6:32

Completely yes, and I love that you brought up the circumstances too, because a lot of times, like you said, we want to shift what's happening or what, how a person's behaving or what they said or this. You know the circumstance we find ourselves in thinking that that's going to fix everything. And there are just some circumstances we can't change. And the more we recognize our power and ability to be able to manage our own thoughts around some of those circumstances, that that's where our power really lies. Sometimes we can change our circumstances and it's good and we need to, but we also have the ability to respond when you know, in a way that we want to when, when they don't have happening the way that we want.

Brett: 7:18

Yeah, I love it and what I think like, especially when we look at circumstances, there's, for sure, circumstances we can't change and then there are circumstances that we can change. But I think, even within those circumstances that we can change, they don't always get us to the results that we think would come out of those changes, right, for example, like if I could just get my husband to be at home more often, then we'd have a better relationship. Well, you move all these kind of things in your life to essentially convince him or get him to be home more often and it doesn't actually create a better relationship. So, because of maybe the way you went about that and the way you tried to like form that circumstance, it leaves like this push and pull, I look at a lot of relationships through like the complex cycle and I find a lot of people are trying to manage their circumstances through behaviors of their own to get someone else to show up a certain way so that they feel a certain feeling, and underneath that, like the idea that they're trying to get at, is this feeling that their spouse cares for them, and so they go to work and they spend a lot of time and energy to try and manage their spouse which would be a circumstance here so that they feel loved.

Brett: 8:44

But when their spouse is being managed in that kind of way, oftentimes their spouse ends up becoming resentful or getting frustrated or feeling hurt, and it's not actually developing more love. It's you're changing your circumstances, but it's not actually getting into the feelings that you're hoping for.

Alicia: 9:01

Right, and a lot of times when you're trying to control the person or the words or something like that like, yes, the husband's probably going to be resentful, but is the control actually going to help you feel what you're looking for or not, and dive into that a little bit no, we could get our husband to behave a different way, but if he did, because we're forcing him to, is that really going to be genuinely what we want to feel? Probably not.

Brett: 9:30

And our brains are so smart at seeing that. I see it a lot of times, with different situations that I've either heard about or clients that I've worked about, where it's like, more than anything in the world, I'd like for my spouse to plan a date. And then so we tell them well, you never plan dates. And then the next day, guess what they do? They go out and they plan a date, but it doesn't count, because we just told you that.

Alicia: 9:54

Because we just told them to exactly.

Brett: 9:56

It needs to come from this genuine space so we can see how we try. Our brains are really smart at even understanding, when we've tried to manage someone else, that our brains are like ooh, but we still can't trust that they really care. So what ends up happening is there is a way to better manage that, and that's through managing ourselves and our own thoughts and our own emotions and getting really clear about, or clear with, our communication with our spouse and our kids as well, which we're going to be talking a lot about here today. Yeah, absolutely.

Brett: 10:35

Cool. Well, that was a kind of a tangent on the introduction of who Alicia Davis is. So you work primarily I guess you said it this way that you have a soft spot for mom with boys, and I got my fourth boy on the way coming in January. So tell me what I'm in for here. What is unique about a mom, especially with boys, that you've experienced and you noticed in your life and maybe some of the experiences of your clients?

Alicia: 11:11

You know, when I think about this, the first thing that comes up is I'm a female and the children that I have are male, so we are quintessentially different. So the thing that comes up for me, and probably a lot of women, is like I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how to raise voice. This is not what I was expecting, right. So I think a lot of times what comes up is like the doubt of okay, well, I'm a stay at home mom, I'm with them all the time, love them, I know what they need. And at the same time husband comes home and does things very differently and he thinks he's got a great idea because he's a boy, he's been through this, like he gets it, but he hasn't spent all the time with the boys as stay at home mom has. And so sometimes what comes up is is either doubt or sometimes even, like I guess, defensiveness.

Brett: 12:17

Totally.

Alicia: 12:18

And it You'll have to ask me that question again because my brain is going a certain direction. I don't know if I answered or I'm going towards the direction that you're.

Brett: 12:29

Yeah, my question is what have you experienced that is unique to parenting boys?

Alicia: 12:38

Yeah, I think that that is. That's. What is unique about being a mom parenting boys is that there's always going to be a little bit of self-doubt about approaching it. Also, you'll think you're going crazy sometimes.

Brett: 12:52

Yeah.

Alicia: 12:52

Because my oldest is 20. I've been through the diapers, the potty training, the pinewood derbies, the soccer carpools. I've done all of it, now even sending them to college, yeah, and it's like you're just going to be surprised and you're going to be exhausted, because I don't like stereotyping any particular gender of child. But most of the moms of boys that I've talked with and coached have said they're just non-stop, they don't quit, they're always doing something. They've got so much energy and I can't keep up.

Brett: 13:27

That part of it, the overwhelm and the exhaustion, is a huge part of what I've noticed from being a boy and helping my clients with hey, I didn't know exactly where I stood on like nature versus nurture, men versus females, but we had three girls in a row and now we've had three boys in a row.

Alicia: 13:56

What have you noticed?

Brett: 13:57

They are different 100%. It's unbelievable just how different they show up. Obviously, each child is different in its own way, but for sure with the boys we've noticed just different things. When I'm working around the house, the boys are much more interested in what I'm doing and for whatever reason they look up to if I'm doing a house project. It's like especially those older boys who are a little bit more aware.

Brett: 14:33

They're five and three. They want their own tape measure and their own hammer, and then they'll find my hammer and they will hit anything that makes noise with that hammer. And for the first, whatever it would have been before, we had boys five, now 10 years I could have left a hammer by my project and the girls didn't even notice it, they weren't even into it at all and they were always playing their house and they wanted me to play house with them and they're much more aware of what mom's doing. It's interesting. It's just things that we've noticed about our kids, and definitely our boys are much more I want to say destructive, but maybe I should say much more explorative, and I don't know creatives, even the right word.

Alicia: 15:33

Definitely hands on.

Brett: 15:35

They're always into stuff. They're always, you know, they have hockey sticks and those things are going everywhere and into walls and all kinds of things. So I definitely feel that when we had the boys, it's like this is a different level of noise, it's a different kind of noise, and our house looks different with boys. I'll tell you that.

Alicia: 15:57

Well, and everything becomes a sword.

Brett: 15:59

Yep everything.

Alicia: 16:00

Eventually right. The cars are all over the place, the Legos too, right, and they are going to fall down around, at least until they become teenagers. They're going to want to do all the cool house projects with the screwdrivers and the hammers until they get to be teenagers, and then they're like do I have to? Is that really? So they definitely are different.

Brett: 16:21

Right about the time they're actually getting helpful.

Alicia: 16:23

You're saying Say that again.

Brett: 16:25

Right about the time they're actually becoming, you know, possibly helpful. Then they exit, but until then I was actually in my office here painting all the walls and my youngest son was here. He was just started learning. Oh, it was actually my second son. He was here and he was watching me take all the outlet covers off with the screwdriver. So while I was in one room painting, all of a sudden I see a big flash and the lights all go out. He'd taken a flat or a screwdriver and shoved it into the outlet and you know, he was just being helpful.

Brett: 17:03

I'm sure, but those are the things that I never had to worry about when I had girls. I could have left that screwdriver there and they would not have touched it. They probably would have taken the paint and started trying to paint some paper, but the screwdriver wasn't interesting to them. So I do think that, no matter how you slice and dice it, there are kind of intrinsic differences between you and the boys and girls, and so you especially seem to have a way of working with those moms who are overwhelmed with these boys, and I think you bring up some true experiences where, yeah, these moms, you or these other moms, they spend a lot of time at home with the kids and let me tell you, us husbands, we love our mamas, we love the work that you guys do, and we're a little bit short-sighted oftentimes and we come home and we think we have the best ideas ever. Let's, for example, let's get all the kids energy out by having a pillow fight. It sounds good in theory.

Alicia: 18:13

Always right.

Brett: 18:14

Yeah, until the energy just keeps going up and up and, up and, up and up. And now we're trying to get the kids to bed and my wife's, like you, really think that was the best idea. At the time it sounded like a really good idea. Yes.

Alicia: 18:27

Which is funny, because sometimes they really do need the pillow fight, sure, and I think that's where sometimes the parenting struggle happens, because we each have ideas of what we want to do and how we think it should work and what would be best for the kids, and sometimes we're spot on, sometimes we're not, sometimes we think we're right and our spouse is wrong and vice versa, like there's, just there's. I think that's where a lot of conflict can sometimes arise, when we have an idea and our spouse might have a different idea and we make one of them wrong and one of them right.

Brett: 19:03

Okay, I love this. So let's go here, because I think there's two areas of conflict when I think of, like parenting, and there's a conflict between the parent and the child, but then there's like this conflict that happens between the parents with the child, like in regards to parenting and that child, and that's the piece that you're kind of highlighting here is that sometimes we have different ideas on how to parent our children or our child, and it can create some conflict. So what do you do about that? Like how would you help someone in that kind of a situation, alicia?

Alicia: 19:44

Yeah, good question. So the with this particular instance right if? And it might be helpful to give an example here. So, for instance, my husband loves to play Ultimate Frisbee and for years he has had a Saturday Frisbee group where they they meet at like 730 in the morning, they play until about nine and he loves it and he has tried to get our boys to do it for years.

Brett: 20:15

This is like Frisbee golf Like.

Alicia: 20:17

Ultimate Frisbee.

Brett: 20:17

Ultimate Frisbee, oh yeah.

Alicia: 20:18

Yeah, it's like a combination of football and football and Frisbee.

Brett: 20:21

Yep, yeah, we love it.

Alicia: 20:23

Awesome. So we both want our kids to be healthy. We both have an ultimate goal as parents that we're reaching for. Like we want our kids to value their physical bodies and be able to be healthy, which includes exercise. So we both want that. And at times when my kids were out of soccer or the organized sports that they were in, we're like what are we going to have them do? And, of course, let's have them play Ultimate Frisbee and I was like okay, sure.

Alicia: 20:51

Well, do you think all of my kids wanted to play Ultimate Frisbee?

Brett: 20:55

at the time.

Alicia: 20:56

No, because there was a mix of adults and some older youth, maybe like 16, 17, 18, but my kids were younger at the time and they were like I don't know, if you know it doesn't work. So they didn't want to go to Frisbee. And this is where the difference of opinion happened. My husband was like well, we should just make them like they're not old enough to make their own decisions and be smart enough on this, like let's just go and we'll kind of make them do the Frisbee anyway. And I was like you know that I don't like that approach. I think we, if they don't like this one, like maybe we need to find a different avenue for them to get their physical. And so we differed in our approach with this.

Alicia: 21:35

And what? What can happen with these differences of opinion is that one or both parties think that their approach is the right approach, and when the other person disagrees, there's defensiveness, like well, I'm right, which makes you wrong, and I like feeling right, so I'm going to defend that.

Brett: 21:58

You're like me? Then I said you're just like me then.

Alicia: 22:02

Yeah, like all humans, love to feel right. It just feels good, right. So we end up feeling defensive. And when we feel defensive, what ends up happening is we start finding all of the flaws and all the ways to prove the other person wrong, like why their idea isn't good, and what ends up happening is we just build this wall between the two of us.

Alicia: 22:24

Totally and that wall prevents us from actually meeting the mutual goal that we have of helping our kids, because then, all of a sudden, it's about us instead of about how we're actually going to help the kids.

Brett: 22:34

Yeah, it does 100%. We get distracted and kind of that conflict between each other.

Alicia: 22:41

Yeah, and what it all comes down to is this this thought that I'm right and they're wrong. And as long as we've got that perspective and that belief, we're going to divide and with that division, again it's just more conflict. So what I like to help my clients with is helping them see okay, first of all, you're entitled to feel anything you want. I focus on the emotion part of it first, because if they're feeling some kind of intense emotion about it, your prefrontal cortex, your thinking part of your brain, is not going to be online being able to process and think clearly about what to do next.

Alicia: 23:20

So the first thing is okay, what are you feeling with all of this? And I like to help my clients feel where that shows up in their body. All of our emotions are really vibrations in our body and they show up physically. So, for example, the easiest way to explain this is like if you're feeling embarrassed, right when I, when I feel embarrassed, my heart starts to kind of pound a little bit and I feel this lump in my throat and my cheeks flush and get red, like that's the emotion of embarrassment in my body. So if a person in this conflict is feeling defensive, like, where does that?

Brett: 23:54

how does that show up in your body. Where does it?

Alicia: 23:57

where does it? Where do you find it? Is it in your chest? Is it in your gut, in your shoulders, Like where does it show up? And let yourself feel it. And that, that tool. Honestly, if I can help them recognize, name the emotion, recognize where it's at in their body and give them full permission to just take some deep breaths and allow themselves to feel it. 90 seconds or so the emotion has kind of processed and passed, and then we're able to go back and think about the belief that caused the emotion, initially Totally. But the first part is being able to process the emotion.

Brett: 24:34

Yeah, process and in a sense it's self-regulating, it's regulating yourself so that it doesn't become so important that someone else regulates you or you. And that's what I love about that process. And another example that comes to my mind of how this works in our body is if you've ever felt sad or mad and then you've cried, and then on the other end of that processing which is happening with those tears, you don't feel as bad Maybe it would be the word. You feel like, okay, you feel better. And even if you wanted to cry again, you might not even be able to because that emotion's kind of been dissipated through those tears. And so when we're able to just kind of let the tears flow, let the emotion flow, whether it's embarrassment or anger or anything like that, if you can almost imagine those things coming out through tears, but in different forms in your body, then you're going to find that the power of those emotions become less intense and then you're able to move forward. So I love that. So we have this emotion process it then what?

Alicia: 26:04

So once the emotion has dissipated, it's a good word for it.

Alicia: 26:11

That's when the curiosity, that's the next tool, the curiosity can step in, because the only reason the emotion is there is because what we were choosing to believe in the moment Because my husband could have said, yeah, we need to make him go to Frisbee and I could have thought, yeah, sure, you're right, let's do it I wouldn't have felt defensive. So the reason I did was because I was like, nope, he's wrong. So once we've actually felt the feeling and gone through that part of it and, by the way, I do have to say that that is a skill, that's not something that you can just like I'm going to go feel all of my feelings right now, Like it takes practice, just like learning to put it in piano so once we've developed that skill and we're really good and we've got that feeling dissipated, that's when we get to go back and ask all the questions Like, okay, so is it possible that both of us could be right here? Is it possible I might be wrong? Would there be something else?

Brett: 27:08

here that I haven't seen.

Alicia: 27:09

Is there a third solution that we haven't looked at yet? And being able to think clearly only happens after the emotional processing. The curiosity is step two.

Brett: 27:20

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And you said something about, like you know, one of us is right and one of us is wrong, and I think with that comes like, with that like if your spouse doesn't see your perspective, then maybe they don't respect you or care about you and value your opinion. So I think that can be tied to that to some degree and I think that with this we can also recognize that at the core I think you touched on this earlier both of you guys do want the best outcome for the child and I think sometimes that gets lost in this too, that your brain thinks you're on different pages, quote unquote, or you see things differently. And if we can kind of help your brain see that at the core, do you think your husband or your wife wants the best for the child. And I think that oftentimes we can really believe that, that our spouse wants the best for the child, and we just have two different ways of supporting best supporting that child and maybe neither are right and neither are wrong. They're just different.

Alicia: 28:46

Yeah, well, and I love that you brought that up, because you talked about being on different pages. It's almost like one of those books where you choose your own adventure, right? And if you choose this answer, then you go to page 64,. If you choose this one, then you go to page 32, right? So our brains are constantly looking for safety or danger and a lot of times when we see we're on page 64, but husband is on page 32, it's like don't go that way, because if you do, this might happen and this might happen and this might be dangerous, and they might not feel loved or accepted or like, and our brain goes crazy thinking about the possible future outcomes of what our other spouse might be doing.

Brett: 29:28

We're going to ruin our child.

Alicia: 29:30

Yeah, right, like it's just our brain doing what it's supposed to do, looking for possible danger, and sometimes we don't pause to step back and be like wait, okay, is this actually dangerous? Could it be really that detrimental? Maybe, maybe not. Like again, we got to work with our emotions on that one so we can think clearly and work with that as well, work with our human brain trying to find the problems.

Brett: 29:55

I love that. It's just your brain being your brain and your brain is an always right, just like you're right, your husband is an always right or your wife is an always right, and we can challenge our brain a little bit, and I think that's a good place to start is just be like okay, my brain has come to a conclusion here and can I regulate myself enough to actually look at my own conclusions and challenge those before I spend all my energy trying to challenge my husband?

Alicia: 30:25

Yeah Well, and which goes back to the function of our brain. Really it wants pleasure, it wants to seek pleasure and avoid pain and just be really efficient. So it thinks that there might be some pain along with whatever your spouse might be choosing. So it's like no, no, no, no, let's avoid that at all costs.

Brett: 30:44

Yeah.

Alicia: 30:44

Maybe better do it this way, right.

Brett: 30:46

Yeah.

Alicia: 30:48

But what's funny is that as a parent, we obviously don't want our children to feel pain or loss or negative emotions or negative experiences. So our brain is not only scanning for what might be dangerous for us, but what might be dangerous for them, and it's not always right about what might be dangerous for them. And they're going to have some danger. Yeah, it's part of life. They might not save them from everything, or else they won't learn, they won't grow.

Brett: 31:15

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think that's where we even have to challenge this premise that our children shouldn't experience any pain. Is that actually the case?

Alicia: 31:28

And here's what I believe. Like me as a mom, I'm trying my best, but sometimes I'm the cause of their pain. I don't do things the best.

Brett: 31:35

Something at the truth.

Alicia: 31:37

Right. So they're not going to avoid pain, but I think part of managing our brain is obviously helping avoid pain if we can and avoid danger if we can, but also if it does come up like, let's help ourselves learn how to process all the emotions that we think are dangerous and help our children process all that as well. And yeah, it's multifaceted.

Brett: 32:02

It is. What I think is clear about that part of the conversation, alicia, is that maybe our goal and this is the thought that's coming to the surface for me Maybe the goal isn't to prevent our kids from experiencing pain, but learning how to manage pain ourselves, so we can teach our children how to manage pain and how to navigate through these same situations, because these situations that we're facing are going to be the exact same feelings that our children are going to be experiencing in their life. It's like what do I do when I think someone doesn't agree with me? What do I do when I think someone isn't on the same page as me, doesn't value me? And it's the same process and the same tools that they can use in those situations that are going to help them navigate through these things, rather than having to avoid them their whole life.

Brett: 33:02

Because if you don't know how to do this, then the solution is you have to figure out how to manage your circumstances so these things never happen, which is impossible, it's next to impossible, for sure. So I think that's where, even in these situations, our brain is like well, if we didn't have a husband, then we wouldn't have these kind of conflicts, or we had a different husband or whatever. We're always trying to think of changing our circumstances, but here we're actually figuring out how to manage our brain so we don't have to change our circumstances, so that we can move through these difficulties and stay connected with our spouse who's, by the way, the parent of our children, and things like that. And I think those kind of skills are really valuable for us to learn, so that we aren't teaching our child to avoid circumstances at all costs. We teach them that there's actually things that we can do to navigate through circumstances.

Alicia: 34:11

Yeah, it's really empowering, yeah, really empowering, because then we're never at the mercy of something. We literally can take charge and decide how we're going to do it.

Brett: 34:21

Yeah, if you think about this Alicia, when we don't have these skills, that's actually what we're trying to do. We're trying to avoid these circumstances, and it makes sense that we then teach our children like avoid painful circumstances at all costs, because I don't know what to do about them.

Alicia: 34:39

And you know how this shows up? Yeah, and how that shows up, particularly for boys is in gaming.

Brett: 34:47

Tell me about that, because gaming comes up a lot in here.

Alicia: 34:50

Gaming is a huge thing, and I don't know why, but it's. I mean, boys in particular are like oh, that thing feels hard. I don't want to do all the work, I'm just going to escape into my phone for a little bit and it starts little games on the phone, it goes to the gaming system, like it.

Alicia: 35:06

I've seen over and over so many times that a parent's like my child won't give this up, and I'm like you know why? Because we've trained them that if they don't feel good, they can go escape. Yeah, Into this other world, into this game, where they don't have to think about feeling miserable or lonely, or sad, or whatever it is.

Alicia: 35:23

And they can just go and live in this alternative world for just a little bit of time and feel temporarily good if you earn points and progress in the game, like it just. It's such an interesting thing, and so I love what you said about being able, as a parent, to know how to process emotions and accept all the negative ones too, because we can teach our kids how to do it. It's so interesting. My youngest is 12 right now and he came to me and he was like this thing happened. This person said this thing to me at school and I really didn't like it, and it was one of those things where, five years ago, I would have said I would have told him what to do and how to handle it. Right, like well, maybe you should do this or maybe you should do that. Go talk to this person. Have you talked to a teacher?

Alicia: 36:08

Have you, you know and I would have given him directions. And now what I see he really needs is he needs somebody to understand that he's feeling something Like I'm feeling really lonely, I'm feeling sad. This is not good. I'm like, yeah, you are, I'm so sorry, like that's really hard. Where does that show? Like does your heart hurt right now, like you know? And talking with him about that and then letting him actually feel it, yeah, and the more I can help my kids and each kid feels it differently- Totally Some people want to talk about it.

Alicia: 36:45

Other people are like don't talk to me, it's all in here, right? So I mean, it just depends. But as a mom, the more I know about how to process emotions, the more I can be an example and help them process theirs, without going to these external things like games.

Brett: 37:01

Yeah, I love that and a few thoughts that come up Like what I've seen maybe in my own life or anecdotically, when, like our kid is especially having a struggle with another relationship, it can feel easy to like give this kind of advice of like just get rid of them, like don't be friends with them. And I think like that happens a lot with like supportive relationships. When they're giving advice to someone in a relationship, like I see it, with like marriages, you know, a wife will go to her mom and her mom will have amazing advice Get rid of him. And she's like well, I don't want to get rid of him, right. And then our friends will look or our kids will come to us and they'll say we're having a problem with this kid and our advice will be we'll get rid of them. But the thing is they don't want to get rid of them right.

Brett: 37:58

And we're just trying to eliminate like our own pain. Seeing our child in pain and being able to kind of even process through that, like as a parent, being able to manage yourself with your child's pain, I think is a skill that we can develop so that now our advice isn't to help our emotions but it's really there to help them process through their emotions, and who knows what that child will find is the most supportive for them. But I think oftentimes what is actually most supportive is to help our children communicate clearly to whoever they're in that relationship with, how they feel towards them, what they want from them, and versus moving into this reactionary place of like cutting them out of our life. I think so. I think the world would be a lot different if we could say hey, friend, you're important to me and I'm worried that I don't matter to you and I just want to have a good friendship with you. How can we do this?

Alicia: 38:59

Yeah, and it takes vulnerability to do that.

Brett: 39:02

Holy smokes, it does yeah.

Alicia: 39:04

And that's something again, especially with boys. Boys don't like feeling vulnerable.

Brett: 39:09

No, no, we don't.

Alicia: 39:11

And I mean who does right, but I think boys in particular like sometimes they don't feel like they're allowed to. We got to be the ones that are stoic and strong and nothing's wrong here. So giving them permission to like yeah, you can. You can feel a little bit vulnerable and these are the perks Like if you do feel a little vulnerable and take these actions might actually help you to have relationships with people and develop a little more confidence in yourself.

Brett: 39:37

Yeah, yeah, I think that that's been true. That's been a fairly consistent thing I've seen in my own practice is that women are have much more language around their emotions than men typically do. And I'll even have men come in and say that they don't have any emotions. Yeah, and I'm like interesting. And then in our work together, you know, I'll find out that they're punching holes in walls or you know, having some sort of emotional outburst, getting angry, swearing at someone, whatever it is, and that's when I just like pause and I'll be like so, if you don't feel emotion, what is going on there? And they'll be like well, I guess I feel angry, you know, or upset or whatever.

Brett: 40:25

But what's interesting then about like anger or frustration or anything like that? That that always is a cover emotion to a primary emotion which is much more softer and vulnerable. And if I can get those men to see that anger is always fueled by another emotion. And so if we just hold that as a rule, what's the other emotion? Oftentimes we'll get to like well, I felt hurt or I felt disrespected or I felt vulnerable. Sometimes it's just feeling vulnerable, it's like I haven't felt, like I was trapped, and so I got, you know I moved into kind of this fight, flight, freeze, response and attack or whatever it is. But just being able to get language to that, I think is really helpful in giving our kids access to that language. Like it's not just that you felt angry, but what's underneath that. I felt like you didn't understand me or I felt like I was alone, or whatever those emotions are, I think, are much, much more clear in terms of helping other people understand what's happening for us.

Alicia: 41:33

Yeah, and as you develop the language of emotions and you're recognizing the ones that come up, what I've found a lot to is that people don't feel safe to feel those emotions. Like it is safe to feel those things. They don't feel good, they don't feel comfortable, so it's not really safe to feel them, which means they're like pushing them down right, like I'm not gonna feel that. That doesn't feel good and that's why the anger or the rage comes up later because they're not giving themselves permission to feel it.

Alicia: 42:01

Yeah, and those feelings, if we look at them and we understand that they're vulnerable.

Brett: 42:06

Well, what do we do with our vulnerabilities? We protect them, and I guess I found kind of too this is kind of my own way of describing how we protect our vulnerabilities is we either like act like a turtle and we kind of put a shell around our vulnerable emotions and we just freeze, we kind of tuck our head in and our hands and feet, all these vulnerable spots, and we just protect ourselves. We're not gonna say anything, we're not gonna do anything. Or I find that we protect ourselves with, like porcupine quills. We show up with a porcupine and either it's not that we're out like attacking people, but as people come close it's like ooh ouch.

Brett: 42:48

It's like there's like these sharp quills that are there protecting those vulnerable emotions and it can be like, you know, resentment, frustration, criticizing, teaching, like all these things that we're kind of actively trying to protect our vulnerable emotions with, and so it's more of like an outward action to protect our vulnerability versus like pulling in and protecting and freezing. So I think you're spot on there, alicia, with some of those vulnerabilities and how we show up around them. I do want to just talk a little bit about conflict with our children. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I do want to just talk a little bit about conflict with our children and how we kind of manage that. So I guess my own experience has been that I desperately love my kids. I've never experienced a feeling like I've experienced when I've brought children into this world. It's like it's intense, it's strong, and yet I find that of all the relationships in my life, the relationship with my kids is probably the one that I experienced the most conflict with, even maybe more than my wife.

Alicia: 44:04

Yeah.

Brett: 44:05

So what do I do about that?

Alicia: 44:08

Well, again, what's the root of the conflict? It's not the behaviors of you or your children, it's not what they say, it's whatever we're choosing to believe about them. For instance, let me give you an example, and you may have had. I think most parents had experiences at some point. My 12 year old, probably about a month ago, was feeling some big emotions. He had some stuff going on we were trying to talk about it with him and he was not having it.

Alicia: 44:36

It was not going well and he didn't want to say this that loud, so he went and he texted me.

Brett: 44:44

Totally, we see that too, he goes.

Alicia: 44:46

I hate you Immediately as a parent. You're like, okay, because that can be hard to hear in a lot of ways.

Alicia: 44:57

So clearly he felt some conflict. So clearly he felt some conflict that was probably bigger than what I anticipated at the time. And in that moment or any moment where there's just not, there's not the relationship where you can move forward, like because of whatever disagreement there is, again in that moment like okay, time out, you got to take a pause right. Like he's not ready to talk clearly because he's texting me, I'm clearly not getting through.

Alicia: 45:29

I might have some feelings Like pause just pause, right, and that's so hard in the moment because you're like no, I got to fix this. If he hates me, I got to fix this. There's something wrong here and it's off. So, being able to just pause for a split second, either removing yourself or him, if he wants to, right, like just taking a pause and like checking in. Okay, what am I feeling?

Alicia: 45:54

Like, honestly, I'm feeling hurt because if my kid says he hates me, I feel hurt because it's like he doesn't value me, it doesn't appreciate me. And, as a parent, like that's what we really want. We want to fill everybody. Every human being wants to be loved and valued and appreciated. So, like processing that emotion, like, okay, he doesn't see that right now, it's okay that he feels that I'm feeling a little bit undervalued, okay, so feeling the feeling. And then like what's going on here? What's really going on here? And, as a parent, once we've processed our own emotion, that's when we can go back and be like okay if he's feeling conflict, if there's a big emotion for him, he's got a thought that's creating that.

Alicia: 46:35

What is it that he's believing is creating all this conflict Like?

Brett: 46:38

I know what I'm believing.

Alicia: 46:40

What is it that he might be believing? We don't know, because he may not have told us right, but getting that curiosity going and trying to figure out where he might be coming from. And in this particular instance he had said like you're not listening to me, you keep interrupting and of course, in the moment I was like of course I do because you're wrong. It was one of those things.

Alicia: 47:01

But taking a second to realize that and realize what I really wanted was to have a relationship with him, like it was interesting because I texted him back and after I texted I don't remember what I said, but I texted him back and then he came and he sat down at the table and we literally wrote out our conversation, like I would write something and I would turn the paper to him and he would write something and he would turn the paper back to me. And we totally resolved it that way because neither of us could interrupt each other in that moment and he was able to feel seen and loved and valued and appreciated and I was able to express what I wanted to as a parent as well. So, like it takes the pause, it takes being able to know what am I feeling, what's he feeling? What might he be thinking that might have led to all of this, and how do I wanna approach it? What do I really want?

Brett: 47:56

So, Alicia, and what I want to highlight there like I don't know that the listeners can even hear it in your voice, but there's a motion here for you and I'm able to see you and see that and I think, like that's what I also want to just share that I think parents it's been a universal experience of mine that they love their kids. They so much want to protect that relationship with their kids, and it brings up a lot of fears and a lot of worries and worries about, yeah, how we're gonna experience that relationship and how it's gonna be in the future and things like that. But to be able to really just slow down and see that all of these things are really coming from a place of love, and for you to believe that and see that and to even just hold yourself in that that, yeah, you might not always show up the way that you want to and your brain is gonna get confused at times, but you love your kids and that's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing to feel and it's an amazing thing for your child to have someone who just loves them like you do. And then from there, yeah, we can develop skills and we can develop strategies and tactics for creating a better, clearer, healthier relationship with those kids.

Brett: 49:32

But I think so many people do it from like this like self-loathing place, and I think we're best served to just recognize that we are coming from a place of love. We really care about these kids and that's what's creating like these confusing emotions that can sometimes drive a wedge between us and our kids. Is these other like emotions that can come, these secondary emotions like frustration and anger and things like that that pop up when we're especially vulnerable. And we're vulnerable because we desperately want that relationship and it's something that sometimes it can feel is outside of our control. And to some extent it is because our kids get to have their own autonomy and their own perspective and their own opinions, and it's a scary thing to experience as a parent at times. You know there's this idea that every time you have a child, a piece of your heart is now walking around in the world, and that's so true. And especially for all the moms out there, I've seen that they especially kind of implant a piece of their heart into their kids.

Alicia: 50:48

So yeah, Well, I love what you said about love being the motivator too, because if our motivation is worry or fear or scarcity or overwhelm, we don't show up the way that we genuinely want to as parents.

Alicia: 51:04

But if we're really remembering, the love part of it, like and we feel the emotion love more when we're seeing our children for who they really are little humans who are doing their best to learn yeah, and when we remember that that's where they're coming from and we're big humans still trying to learn, then that we have love not only for them but for ourselves, with all of our weaknesses in the process, and that's where the relationship really gets awesome.

Brett: 51:35

Yeah, I think, like when you just are willing to accept yourself as the parent you are, our brain thinks that we're somehow going to become complacent and I just I've never seen that.

Alicia: 51:48

Yeah.

Brett: 51:49

I've seen that it's actually allowed for you to change your emotional experience and you're able to show up less with these protective cover emotions and much more from those genuine places and spaces of love and care and compassion and vulnerability.

Alicia: 52:09

Yeah, I had a friend once who, along those lines, said something like you know, for our kids we have one in our bank, we have one checking account for each kid, one savings account for each kid, and then we have one account for the therapy that they're going to need, because we're in perfect parents.

Brett: 52:26

I love it.

Alicia: 52:27

It's just like you know what. We're going to do our best and we're going to screw up and it's okay. It really is going to be okay, because we're not going to damage them beyond repair. Like we provide some of the opposition that they need in order to grow.

Brett: 52:42

Yeah, and this is probably the first time where I've been like man. I wish this was a video podcast because it doesn't come through in your voice. But Alicia has tears coming down her face. She's tearing this, your whole heart's in it, and I just think that that is something that the listener should. I wish they could see that it comes from such a place of love and care, and I think that's the case for all those mamas and all those parents out there who are trying to navigate through this. And it's at the core, I think, of the conflict that shows up between the parents and the conflict that shows up between the parents and the kids. And what happens is, when we love and care so much like that, it creates these vulnerable emotions that we just naturally protect with confusing responses and emotions, and that confusion is emotions like defensiveness and anger and resentment and things like that that we're showing up in a way that makes sense but confuses all those people around us our kids, our spouse and to be able to get back down and access that oh, and these things are coming from this place of love and care I think is so important for us to then develop language around it and begin to communicate even to our kids that I get scared when these things are happening, because I love you and I care about you, and I think that oftentimes that's true, but what we do is we show up angry.

Brett: 54:35

I share a story on here one time where I was sitting in my in-laws. I had my in-laws in their living room and they have this big picture window and I watched my daughter, just her head, go by and her ponytail was sticking straight out the back of her head and she was going like I don't know, it seemed like 60 miles an hour down a hill on a road and I remember just like boom seeing her go by and then my brain kicked in and I was like that's not good and I jumped up and I made it to the window just as I watched her like totally yard sale all over the asphalt and it's just like the worst feeling in the world as a parent and I no shoes, no jacket I was running out there. I got to her and luckily my wife was right behind me, because the first thing I said is I said her name and I was like you can't be doing this on the road. That was my first response and my wife. She right away stepped in. She kicks me out and after she said that's not what my daughter needed at that time. But I knew that. I responded that way.

Brett: 55:42

It was like anger that she was scootering down the road at 60 miles an hour because I don't want her to get hurt again. It came from a place of luck, but it showed up as anger. And my wife she's an amazing mother. She's like Brett, take a break, process your emotions. I'm going to come in and take care of our daughter here and to be able to kind of do that more efficiently has always been my goal to be able to show up with love and care and definitely instruction, but I think that wasn't the time or place for it.

Brett: 56:15

It was right then when my daughter had road rash everywhere and hurting like you couldn't believe. So that's where our time brings us here today. Alicia, I've enjoyed this conversation. I feel like we've just started to scratch the surface and there's so much more we could unpack here and I just appreciate you coming on and sharing your heart here with the listeners and your expertise as well, and I wonder if you could just direct us where we could get more of you, where we could interact with you more, see more of your content, work with you, if we want to.

Alicia: 56:55

Yeah, absolutely. The two best places to go are Instagram and it's Alicia Davis coaching, and I know Alicia is usually spelled like five different ways, so you can put it in the show notes and put it.

Brett: 57:07

All the stuff that you share here will go into the show notes, so just give us. So there's that.

Alicia: 57:13

Instagram. And then there's also my website is aliciadaviscochingcom.

Brett: 57:17

Perfect. So Instagram or the website and you work with people one on one.

Alicia: 57:23

I do. I do one on one sessions, usually about 30 minutes, but if somebody wants more definitely an option. And I should mention too, I do have my own podcast, it's called seven minute sunshine. And it's literally like for the mom who is super busy and usually watches podcasts on two times the speed because they love them. But doesn't have time to get to them. So I'm like we're gonna be seven minute segments, so yeah.

Brett: 57:47

Which is really three and a half minutes. Right, I'll double speak. I love it, yeah. So so you can access Alicia on Instagram, go follow her on her website or you can subscribe to her podcast. All of those things will be in the show notes below. Before I let you go, Alicia, is there anything else you'd like to add or say?

Alicia: 58:12

Just that the work of learning how to feel your feelings and help your children feel them as well as one of the greatest works that you can do.

Brett: 58:20

I love it and I totally agree. Thanks for coming on, alicia, I appreciate it.

Alicia: 58:25

Thanks for letting me come.