Ann

One of the biggest issues we have to contend with as parents, is our own emotions. When you lose your shit on your teenager, do you feel like you’ve done the best job as a parent?

Yeah - not usually, huh.

But for some of us, we’re stuck right there. How do we not lose it? How are we supposed to keep it together when our kid just won’t listen, keeps doing the same thing over and over that we’ve asked them not to do, (or won’t do what we’ve asked them to do), and on and on.

Perhaps you’ve contemplated this. Maybe you’ve seen a counselor, read a self-help book or two, and still, you’re having a hard time and don’t understand why.

Well, today’s guest is going to explain where some of your emotional reactions may be coming from. Don’t go anywhere.

PODCAST INTRO

Stacy Uhrig is a Trauma Specialist and the mom of two adolescent boys. She specializes in healing emotional wounds that many of us have not yet realized we have. She is an absolute wealth of information and has a unique coaching program that can help you get unstuck and, and flip your mindset (which just happens to be the name of her podcast)

I asked Stacey to start off by sharing a little of her personal story because I think it may really resonate with you.

 

Stacey Uhrig

So my story with anxiety really started when I was 12. And it started right after I turned 12 years old. It was I remember very, very vividly, it was the night before my mother was being remarried. My mother was getting remarried. My parents had gotten divorced in August, my father had gotten remarried in November we moved in December and my mother was getting remarried in January. So in this four month or five month period of time, there was all of this transition and change and this was the 80s. Like this really wasn't that common. When you moved far away, you you were basically disconnected from your social unit outside of say a phone call or a letter, right? And also inherently I did not feel like this was a good fit for me from a step parenting point of view, in both scenarios. And so I had all kinds of things happening in my body that I could not explain. Cause again, this is 1984 at the time. I couldn't explain, but my stomach was a mess. I felt like I was going to throw up. I felt like I was being choked in the sense that like, I was so choked up and had such a tense sensation in my throat that made me feel like more nauseous. I was having a hard time breathing and I can vividly, vividly remember the whole scenario sitting kind of slumped over in this very cold room in my bedroom, this new bedroom that had only been mine for a few weeks and in the downstairs, it was happy go lucky.

 

We had a lot of people in the house. They were celebrating the fact that there was going to be this new union the next day. And I felt very, very, very disconnected from reality. And I did end up throwing up like my nervous system got so overwhelmed. ended up throwing up. But again, I did not know what any of that was. I grew up in this era of that must be a stomach bug. And if you don't have a fever, you're fine.

 

The problem is, is that that pit in my stomach, that heaviness in my chest, that grip on my throat lasted me till I was like in my 30s. And to the point of what we were talking about offline is because it started so early in my nervous system, this sense, if you will, that this is not right, or something's not right where I don't feel completely connected or I don't feel completely safe or seen or heard and or is significant or important because I was going back and forth between these two environments where I didn't really have a real route or real like I had a home base but it didn't feel like home I didn't feel like I really belonged. That became my standard operating procedure.

 

It started so young and there was no language for it. No one was talking about anxiety in the 80s. Nobody was talking. The only thing you would hear about is women in hysteria and nervous breakdowns. That's the only or psychiatric hospitals like there was no nuance. There was no understanding and so from the age of 12 until probably 32, so a good 20 years, this is the way I operate it. And I was always in a state of fighting off this sensation in my body. And it just kind of flipped at one point. At one point, I went from this very, very hypervigilant state to what I now know to be a very hypo aroused state, meaning this kind of drop and flop situation where I went from feeling very heightened to feeling nothing at all. I went from feeling very heightened to feeling apathetic and numb. And it's not that I didn't care about things, I couldn't feel anything anymore. And what I know now is if you run from a bear along enough, at some point your body's like, you can't outrun this.

 

And so in survival of our nervous system, we're gonna play dead. And I remember saying to my husband, people would look at this and think this is depression, but I'm not depressed because I'm not sad. There's nothing for me to be sad about. I don't feel anything. And I also can't function. I used to go to work and I could do these workbooks in Excel of 100 worksheets and I couldn't even turn on my computer, I would just stare at it. I wouldn't know where to start or what to do. If I wanted to go make a cup of coffee, I could just stare at that coffee machine. I didn't really have the energy to move through to even remember the steps to make the coffee. Like these kinds of normal daily activities. And it really took me quite a while to understand that everything that was happening in my body was a normal response to an abnormal circumstance.

 

Once I started to understand that and I understood how to address that is where my healing really began because I went through 20 years on and off of therapy still feeling this way.

 

Ann

No therapy helped.

 

Stacey Uhrig

Not really. I mean, it got to the point where at that 32 year old age, when I kind of did that drop and flap and I ended up going to a psychiatrist because I literally could not stand this state any longer. And I was prescribed Zoloft and you know, at that time,

 

I came from a long line of people that were being diagnosed with anxiety and depression. So for me to get in diagnosis of anxiety and depression, the message was basically, you come from a long line of this, this is inherited, you just got the lot and off you go. Here's a therapist and here's a psychiatrist. You know, well, the psychiatrist was saying here, go see this therapist, but I'll give you the medication. And I bought that.

 

That made sense to me. That was logical given the day and age. That would have been 2001, right? 2002, 2003. We're still not really understanding what we understand now in the mental health space. And that medication worked until it didn't work anymore. And I think it didn't work anymore because I was putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.

 

Because I really wasn't getting to the root of what was causing this activation in my system anyway. And when I would go to therapists, now 20 years in, they would say to me, I really don't know why you're here because you get it. Like, you know, you have this experience, you're able to talk about it, but nobody was helping me understand the impact it was still having on my body and my nervous system, and why it was still having that impact.

 

Ann

Yeah. Right. And then helping you undo the impact or I guess deal with it. Yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig

None of that really because that's not really, listen, when you can't CBT trauma, you can't rationalize what's going on inside the body because the body is not, it's deeply held inside your core belief system. It's deeply held in your subconscious. These feelings that we have, they're deeply rooted. If you see one of those iceberg images, where you just see the type of the iceberg, and you might see the word anxiety up top. But underneath, you've got all of these lived experiences. And this is just the way your body is reacting to it. Because it hasn't really been dealt with at the level of where it's at, which is how did that leave you feeling when they do a typical model of you have a circumstance and a feeling and then you have a circumstance, a thought, a feeling, an action, and an outcome. It's a very typical model that a lot of people get work through. What's missing is between that circumstance and the thought is your core belief. Your core belief is the filter through which everything happens. That is deeply rooted inside your nervous system. That's deeply rooted inside your subconscious. That's why I do hypnosis with people.

You can't just change your thoughts. You must go to the core of where that belief system that generates your thought lies. What was the interpretation I made about myself, others and the world around me that generate that thought, which generates that feeling, which then generates that action and outcome which in my body was anxiety was a physical reaction to the feeling and the thought. Nobody was talking to me about core beliefs.

 

Ann

Why is that? I mean, just a little off topic here, but I mean, why is that that therapists don't go there? Isn't that where you would think they would be going? Yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig

I can't really speak for that, to be honest with you, because I've never gone through the schooling that is required to become a therapist. But I do know, basically, from having enough trauma trained therapists on my podcast, is that in order to be trauma trained, you must go through extra schooling. It's not part of a general curriculum for somebody to become a therapist.

 

Ann

Gotcha. Okay.

 

Stacey Uhrig

trauma is in the word I'll use it, it creates a lot of core beliefs that are self limiting.

 

Ann

Right, well, let's talk about that. Okay, so, you know, a lot of people talk about big T, I hear the phrase is big T trauma and little T trauma and ACEs and all of that. So explain what we're talking about when we talk about trauma. You know, what is that exactly?

 

Stacey Uhrig

Okay. So I love, know, trauma is my specialty. So I obviously love talking about trauma, but I'm always concerned because I feel like the word is getting thrown around in such a general way that people don't really understand what it is. Right? So if we, if we go back a little bit further before trauma, the Greek root word for trauma is wound.

 

Ann

Right.

 

Stacey Uhrig

So what we're really talking about is in some way, or form, this person's internal system has been wounded. Their feelings have been wounded. Their emotions have been transformed and they've caused us to see ourselves, others in the world around us through a different lens that's self -limiting. Okay. So what is trauma?

 

In my, this is my personal definition, trauma is anything that leaves you feeling unseen, unheard, insignificant, unimportant, unsafe, not enough on a consistent basis during your developmental years. And I preface that by saying developmental trauma, right? Or childhood trauma, because there's a lot of different kinds of trauma. You can have medical trauma, systemic trauma, acute trauma.

 

For the purpose of this, I'm gonna talk about my area of expertise, which is developmental trauma. So when we have these experiences that create chronic prolonged sense of stress and stressors that are rooted in anything leaving us feeling unsafe, insecure, unseen, unheard, insignificant, unimportant, not enough, it impacts you.

 

It changes the way that you see yourself. It changes then the way that you think people see you. It's that perception and then that impacts the way that you navigate within the world. Right? So they say trauma is never the event. Trauma is the way that that event was experienced and stays in your mind, body and psyche. So if you had an experience when you were four years old, eight years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, and that created a belief system about yourself that then negatively impacting you in your 30s, 40s, 50s. That's the unresolved trauma. When you were little, did you learn to people please to connect or to stay safe or to find grounding in your space? And now are you burnt out in your 30s, 40s and 50s because you don't know how to say no to other people? That's unresolved trauma.

 

 

That's just kind of a simple, when it comes to Big T and Little T, the way it's designated in the space, as Big T trauma can be things like acts of violence, abuse, aggression, right? Whether it's physical, sexual, psychological, Little T trauma are these nuances of abandonment, neglect, feeling ignored, being ignored.

 

Having parents that are present but not present, maybe being in a situation where in the space we call it parentification, where the child is responsible for the parents' wellbeing, they're responsible for their physical wellbeing, their emotional wellbeing, where there's a lot of pressure put on the child, right? So there might not be acts of aggression, abuse, and violence, or even abandonment or neglect.

But you've grown up in this scenario where you still feel either over responsibility or unseen, unheard, insignificant, unimportant, and not enough.

 

Ann

Yeah. Let me ask you this. mean, when you define it that way, what percentage of the population do you think has that, I mean, at least the little t trauma, you know, the basic trauma?

 

Stacey Uhrig

Well, look, there's a lot of different studies out there. ACEs is one of them, right? Which we'll talk about, but you can have two people go through the same experience, same household, same events, same occurrences, same parents, same environment, same scarcities and walk out two very different people, right? You cannot go in with a sibling and walk out impacted in a different way. And there are things that can counteract, I guess is the best word. So what did you go through? But who could you go to? Did you have a sub? Yeah, like and resilience builders, right? So like in my case, I was impacted, but I never felt like I didn't have a voice. I always found a teacher. I always found my grandparent. I always found a guidance counselor, somebody who I felt like I could go to and I could feel seen and heard in a moment.

 

Ann

Protective factors, I guess. that what they call it? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig (

That's valuable. Right? Because it comes down to am I important? Am I enough? Do I belong? Do I matter? And when you have somebody that sees you and hears you and understands you and validates, it can kind of root. Okay, I do matter. I am enough. And you can start to separate. The earlier these experiences happen, the harder.

 

Ann

Mm

 

Stacey Uhrig (18:58.382)

Right? So, these experiences started happening for me when I was 11. Lots of studies show that zero to nine years of age is the most impactful. So for me, perhaps I had some of that resilience also because I was a little bit older because my sense of self was a little bit more secure because prior to 11 years old, my environment was very different.

 

You see where I'm going with it. There's a lot of different factors that mitigate how it's going to impact somebody at the end. But to your point, I think that most of us are walking around with unhealed wounds. It's just the difference of what we're talking about a bullet wound internally. Are we talking about a paper cut? We're talking about something in between. But I think everybody's walking with something unresolved. There's there's a scale of magnitude, right? There's a spectrum. But we're also talking a lot about this intergenerational trauma, right? Where we are being parented by, and this gets to a lot of the work that you're doing, other people's unhealed wounds. And so how are we showing up as adults? How are we showing up as parents based on our own lived experience, based on our parents lived experience in the way they parented us, or grandparents lived experience in the way that they parented our parent, our parents, or lack thereof, it's impactful.

 

Ann

Yeah, it really, you know, that that's something that I did not even think about until the past few years when I started doing all my research and started this program. But, you know, when I think back, you know, like my parents were at least my father was raised by a mother who had lost her husband before he was born when she was pregnant with him, had all sorts of trauma. And then the way they were taught to raise this was back in the 20s, early 30s. You they were taught authoritarian methods. They were taught you break the will of the child early so you can, you know, make them obey. And so all of those things, he was impacted greatly by this. And then the way he parented us was, you know, looking back, it's just, it all makes so much sense and it all fits together. And then the way I ended up parenting, it does, it's stuff that we don't think about on a daily basis. But we have to stop and examine this stuff. If we want to be better parents and if we want to, you know, if we don't want to pass these things on to future generations, we have to stop and try to heal these wounds in ourselves, right?

 

Stacey Uhrig

I agree. And it's almost like we're on autopilot and also we're either doing what we learned and observed or we're not. Right? So you've got kind of two camps. It's, I'm going to follow the model through which I was raised, or you're going to say, I'm going to do everything in exact opposition of the model that I was raised. And then we're overcompensating on another area. Right?

 

Ann

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Well, and even when you say that, when you say, I'm going to do the exact opposite, I still feel like you cannot help but be impacted in some way by how you were raised. And so that's going to come out in how you parent, no matter whether you're consciously trying to do the exact opposite or not. It's just there.

 

Stacey Uhrig

Listen, it's so funny because I'm always in school and I just was in a class right before we came here today and it was all about intent versus impact. What is the intent behind, let's just use parenting for example, something we're saying to one of our children, the way that we're saying it, the behavior that we're taking, the intention we're hoping will come out of that. And then actually what the impact is, is how was that received by the child? How was that interpreted and perceived by the child? And very often our intent, in many cases, not always is good. But the perception is off because either our intent is being given through our own unhealed stuff or is being received through someone's unhealed stuff.

 

Ann

Or being received through their developmental lens the only way they can receive it. Like as with, you know, adolescents who receive things much differently from children because their amygdala, their emotional part of their brain is much more sensitive and so they interpret things negatively so much that, you know, things that we do which we do not intend to be received negatively. But yeah, I mean, it's so, it goes so deep that I think we have to stop and think about these things and evaluate ourselves and why this is where we come at it from the point of emotions. when parents, when we cannot control our emotions and we get upset with our kids or we yell at them or we lecture them or we punish them, those feelings in us a lot of times we feel completely out of control. Like later we may even think, my God, why did I do that? Why did I do that? But then not digging deeper to really figure out why we did that, it's just going to keep happening. So yeah, so talk to me about that. mean, where do we as parents, what do we need to do about this and how do we start looking at it?

 

Stacey Uhrig

I mean, I think the first thing we need to do is be aware. Always. You know, the moment we can, look, there's, it's actually pretty complicated. There's two things that are coming to my mind right now. And I'm sure there's more than two. One is if we grew up in a household of dysregulated parents, and we grew up in a household where parenting was done by way of screaming and yelling and cursing and shaming.

We might do the same thing. Right? So we may not be aware because we don't know any different. Maybe we didn't witness any different or if we did witness something different, we're thinking that's wrong and this is right. Right? So we always yield to what's familiar. Or we do exactly what you just said. Like who was that person? I don't even like that person. I don't even like who I've become. Like I don't even like the way that I'm parenting.

 

That's when you can stop and say, okay, what responsibility and I'm willing to take in this? Where can I become more aware of how I'm showing up and get curious as to why? And I think you and I have talked about this when you were on my podcast. It's like, when we are yelling at our children, what is the intent? Are we trying to get them scared?

 

Are we trying to shame them into a different behavior? Is there a different way we can do that? How much can we really influence by the way we're showing up? If we're worried about something, would it be better for us to step back and say, I'm very concerned and I'm very scared? Now, obviously in the heat of the moment, but really at the end of the day, in the heat of the moment, if you were yelling and screaming at your child, you're afraid of something.

 

You're begging them basically through your action of screaming and yelling to stop a behavior because you're scared that it's gonna go down a certain path or that they're gonna go down a certain path or that they're going to find themselves in trouble in some way, or form. And often it's because we don't want our children to feel any discomfort whatsoever.

 

And so the problem is, that resilience is born through adversity. We're designed to make mistakes. We're not designed to be perfect. We're not designed to not falter or fail. That is part of the human experience. So for example, you and I have talked about this. I have two boys, my older boy and school don't mix as well as say school and other kids. Okay. I'm not saying he doesn't do it or do it, but he just, it's not his jam. And so he didn't do it well. When he was in high school, he had a lot of challenges and I would scream at him and yell at him. You're going to get that work done, right? Did you finish the book? How come you didn't finish the book? And in my head, I'm like, you're going to get called on, you're not going to know the material, that's going to be bad for you, your teacher is not going to like you, you're going to get a bad grade, you're not going to get into college, you're going to end up living in a car in the Walmart parking lot. Like it goes to that in like a split second, like did you read Catcher in the Rye? And I've learned that I did that wrong. And I have apologized profusely to my child, saying when I know better, I can do better. Now I have a son that's a sophomore in college and I have a son that's a sophomore in high school. And school just started back. He's a very good student in the sense that he students well, right? He just knows how to do that action. Well, he fits in the confine of the mold. Let's just put it that way. And I know he has not read this book that he needs to read. And I sat down last night, do you start that book yet? He goes, no. And then I, there was just a part of me that was like, what am I going to do? Yell at him? What am I going to do? Scream at him and say or say anything? Well, when are you going to read that book? Or you know, you need to read the book. Any nudge I give is just going to take him further away. He has to be intrinsically motivated. And if the outcome is not reading the book has a negative impact for him, that will then be motivation enough to maybe read the next one.

 

Ann

Possibly. Or not!

 

Stacey Uhrig

Exactly. Right. Or not. But it's not my job. And I learned that I didn't do that right or well with my first child. I will own that a hundred percent. And I've done a lot of reflection on that. So when we're getting frustrated with our kids, I have some clients who kids are dabbling with drugs and alcohol and in a really impactful, scary, negative way. And what do they do? They're screaming at their kids. They're yelling, they're begging through their actions. Please stop. Because they love their child. They're not getting the intended result that they want. They're getting more rupture than they are getting repair.

 

So we sit back and we look at what are you trying to intend? What kind of influence do you think you have? Is this the best way to try to influence the child in a positive way? And how else can we look at it? And what fear are you parenting through? What unhealed wounds are you parenting through? We've talked about that.

 

Ann

Right, Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, I do, talk about this all the time about the fear and the awareness part of it, because if you're not aware that it's fear you're even feeling or why you're doing this, because I wasn't even aware that it was fear. I mean, it had to really click in my head why I was yelling at my son for smoking weed because my brother was a drug addict and died a drug addict. So, it's that stopping and becoming aware that's the first thing. Well, guess the first thing is even understanding that we need to be aware because, you know, we kind of float through life and parenting and, you know, just do what we feel like we have to do. Put one foot in front of the other, reacting, reacting, reacting. And until someone says, hey, you need to stop for a minute and think about why you're doing what you're doing and reflect on it and then become aware of actually why you're thinking this way or feeling this way or reacting this way. We don't even know to do it. I mean, I didn't even know to do it. So just spreading that word alone, just, hey, if you're having a hard time controlling your emotions in the moment with your kids, you need to stop and figure out what it is that's coming up for you, 99 .999%, it's gonna be fear. Fear of what? What, usually fear of something that happened way back in our childhood, right? Yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig

And again, that core belief, it's like, what's your belief system as a parent? That it's my child to protect at all costs? That it's my job to make sure that they feel no pain? Is that part of it? Or is it that, know, beliefs are different than morals and values. It's not about how to live. It's about what drives, it's the motivator.

Right? I'm only a good mom if I'm worried all the time. I'm only a good mom if my child never gets in any trouble because if my child gets in trouble, they're gonna come look at the parent. I must be a bad mom. So being a good mom means that my child gets good grades. Being a good mom means that my child never ever gets in trouble. So when we're looking at the core beliefs of parenting,

 

And what is the motivator and what is the driver for the thought process that creates the feeling that creates the action and the outcome, which in this case could be screaming and yelling. And now the outcome of the screaming and yelling is rupture. And how do I repair that when I'm constantly running in this loop? If anyone's listening to this podcast, and this is why we do these kinds of interviews is to generate the awareness. That's your sign to stop and breathe and say, I want different, I don't know how to do different. And that's okay. You're here, I'm here. There's plenty of parents that are out here or coaches and mental health practitioners that are out here to help support people who want to get curious about why they're showing up in a way that's not resulting in what they want in their life.

 

Ann

Yeah, well, and I hear people say a lot and usually it's the moms that I hear from is I just don't know what to do in that moment to make myself stop. And so, you I tell people, you know, you literally just need to remember to take a pause because if you can take a pause and maybe even step away, if it's a big deal, step away and give yourself a break, you know, to reflect and think about what your intent is, like you said, and what you're wanting to come out of the situation. What do you tell people? How do you tell when they say, I just don't know what to do. I can't, you know, in the moment, stop myself from screaming or yelling or saying this or that. How do you help them stop?

 

Stacey Uhrig

So what's coming to mind for me is I do a lot of parts work with my clients. Are you familiar with parts work at all?

 

Ann

I am, but I don't know if my audience is. So go ahead and explain that.

 

Stacey Uhrig

So, I mean, I'm going to oversimplify it, right? So like in a way that like a parts work practitioner would be like too simple, but I myself as a part works practitioner will simplify it. Which is like basically we're all made up of a lot of parts and most of our parts are developed in, what's the word I'm looking for? They're developed in benefit of you in survival.

 

 

okay, so many, many of our parts are developed when we're very young, going through some of the experience I talked about earlier, we can have parts that are kind of coming up later on in life, but most of our parts are developed when we're younger. And we all know that we walk with different parts, because we'll use a simple thing. There's a part of me that likes the size I am and the diet that I'm on. And then there's a part of me that wants to go and eat that ice cream sundae.

 

There's a part of me that wants to get up and go and work out and there's a part of me that wants to stay in bed. There's a part of me that wants to build this business and then there's that part of me that's afraid to show up online to promote that business. There's a part of me that wants to be this kind of parent and then there's the part of me that rages when I'm parenting. And we all use this language all the time. We also hear things like I didn't even recognize myself. I don't even know who that was.

 

That's not me. Or we hear people say, my God, that was such a trigger brought me back to when I was five years old. So we have language that we use all the time that shows us that we have different parts working within our system. So what I try to do with my clients is get them to recognize self leadership and when there's not self leadership.

 

Many of us are not being self led. Many of us fractured ourselves so much from our true authentic self when we were younger in survival of connection or having certain needs met that we are not our full authentic self. Okay. And what is driving the bus of our life or is that the control panel of our life?

Are these other parts that think that they know this better than us? And they're all in benefit of us. It's all benevolent. It's all rooted in good. And a great illustration of that is the new movie that just came out this summer Inside Out 2. Where they showed these emotions and these feelings, but you can really think of them as parts of you, right? There's a part of you that's anxious. There's a part of you that feels joy. There's a part of you that's sad. There's a part of you that rages and gets angry.

 

There's a part of you that's apathetic. There's a part of you that's envious. There's a part of you that's fearful. And they all have a job that's beneficial to you. So when I can start to work with my clients in this concept, we start to identify what parts are most prevalent for them. And I have ways to help them identify that. A lot of it has to do with what nuances and shifts they feel in their body. Because you know, you feel anger in your body. You feel envy in your body, you feel sadness in certain places. And by the way, you feel worry for say your husband differently than the way you feel worry for your son differently than the way you feel worry for your mother. These are all different parts of us. So when I can get my clients to recognize that there are parts of them,

 

And then there's the self energy that we're healing and growing, that we can do proactive exercises to get as aligned to self as possible. When we are aligned with self, we're basically communicating with our other parts that we're in charge and that we're driving the bus and that we drive the outcome and the motivators and the intentions and we will pull on our parts when we need them and we create more harmony. Often when we're in a rage and there's fear or anger at the control panel, they think that they know better than ourself. So it's really teaching my clients how to identify the part, connect with the part and create harmony with the part. So in those moments, you have a higher likelihood of being more self -led than being led by fear or anger or whatever other thing is coming up in your benefit. Does that make sense?

 

Ann

Okay, so yeah, I mean, the fear and all of that, I mean, is that what I'm thinking in my head is they're trying to protect us. And so if we're self -led, we can tell the fear, just hang on a minute, we're okay. Is that kind of right?

 

Stacey Uhrig

Yes, correct. That that's exactly right. So, so for example, if you have a part that's an anxiety part, right, and that anxiety part can split off into lots of different parts, a people pleasing part, a perfectionist part, caretaking part, a no boundary setting part, each one is rooted in your benefit. So why would it be beneficial to people please? Well, if I people please then perhaps that person will not leave me or that person will like me. And if they're like me, I'm not gonna end up being alone. The alone is another part that what's in parts work, they call it an exile, but it's basically an unresolved heart, right? Where we didn't know how to manage what it felt like to be alone. We didn't know how to manage that big, bold feeling. People -pleasing came in, deflected.

 

We have less likelihood of that being touched to your benefit, but then it hinders you down the road because you're not really being truthful to what you want. You're deprioritizing yourself from putting somebody else's needs ahead of your own. So it starts as a helper early on becomes a hindrance. Okay. So when it comes to anger and, and, fear, and let's just use it from the angle of parenting.

 

 

Say a parent is screaming and yelling and they're losing their minds. I mean, I've done it. I know you've done it. I'm pretty sure every parent has like, literally come out of a room or come down the stairs and been like, I don't even know who that was. I sound like a possessed demon. But I am trying to put the fear of God into my child. So they will take action. So they will not feel the pain that we're predicting or the discomfort that we're predicting, they're gonna fear and feel. And if they do that, if they take that action, then that removes me from possibly feeling not enough as a parent, not enough as a person.

 

Make sense? mean, this is really simplified, like 1000 foot view, but because it's a it's more complicated than that. I'm not going to try to simplify it because that doesn't do the model justice. But it's that kind of concept. helping a parent, it's it's really guiding them towards self leadership. How can I be more self -led? How can I be more connected to self? Because when we are rooted in self,

 

Ann (43:10.568)

Makes total sense. Right.

 

Stacey Uhrig

The qualities of being self -led, we will say things like, feel so grounded or I feel so centered or I feel so aligned or I feel so in flow. But the qualities when we're self -led are, we're confident, we're courageous, we're curious, we're creative with getting things done and solving problems. We're compassionate and we're calm.

 

Ann

Yeah, that's the biggie. Yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig

We're calm and we're collected and we're resourced and we have capacity. We have capacity for big scary shit because we're more grounded. sorry, I just cursed on your podcast. I'm so used to a person. Okay. I'm just so used to a person. You know, I'm Jersey, but you know, so, you know, the goal is, and in this space, we call this a window of tolerance.

When our window of tolerance is wide, we have a wider bandwidth and a wider capacity for life's normal stressors and triggers.

 

And we're more self-led in that scenario. When our window is narrow, we are more likely to have other parts show up in our benefit.

 

Ann

Yeah, mean, that it all makes so much sense and it really puts a different spin. I think in people's minds, I think it would put a different spin on, okay, that's why I'm acting this way is that it's something, it's trying to protect me. It's trying to get to a certain point. But if I can just, if I can understand all these parts and understand that they are all a part of me and they're just trying to protect certain things about me, then I can see it from this self -led, I mean, it just makes so much sense to me. And I do have another, I have another friend who's a therapist who does parts work. So I had heard her talk about this. And I just think that that whole concept is so valuable for people to understand. And just like we said a minute ago, just understanding that you know, where this is coming from, you know, and what emotion it is, and then backing up to where is that emotion coming from and that, you know, it's coming from a place of protection for us, you know. So I just think it'll all make sense. And is this the kind of thing that you then, when you work with people, I think you do what is it called? Trauma informed, what is it called? Okay, yeah.

 

Stacey Uhrig

So I'm trauma trained, right? So I'm certified as a trauma care practitioner. Okay. And I'm also certified in therapeutic models that use hypnosis. I'm certified in parts work and something known as polyvagal theory. So I take a very trauma trained lens when I'm working with someone. So when I'm working with someone as a coach, so I consider myself a coach and a trauma specialist.

So when I'm coaching someone, they've typically come to me because they feel very stuck in life. They feel very disconnected from themselves. They feel they're not living their full authentic life. They feel they're people pleasing too much. They're burnt out from it, right? Or they're having a hard time in relationship, right? So who are they having a hard time in relationship with? Themself, their partner, their child, their coworker, their mother, their father, their sibling, life in general, their perceptions, their questioning. They want to get to the root. They want to understand why does everybody think I matter, but I don't think I matter. I feel like an imposter. Why do I get all these accolades, but I don't, it doesn't register with me? Could be an example. Or somebody knows that they have, and they don't know in that scenario that they have say,

 

I'm gonna put in quotes unresolved trauma. Okay, maybe they just lived in a mist of dysfunction, but everybody in my block lived in that dysfunction or everybody in my family had the dysfunction. So what makes me so unique? Why should I be so stuck? I get that a lot. Or maybe somebody knows that they do have a pretty significant trauma history. And they've tried a ton of different therapy models with different people and nothing's really stuck and they're curious, and they've heard about me through someone else or on a podcast or whatever, and they want to try a different approach. Right? So there's a lot of different reasons why somebody might come. And right now I have a really cool caseload of people that want different things in their relationships. They want different things with their children. They want to be parenting differently, which means they just generally show up in life differently. I've got people that want to understand intergenerational trauma you know, or know that they have things that are unhealed in their life that they haven't figured out how to heal yet.

 

Ann

Right. Yeah, well, and you do this, you can do this like long distance and over zoom or okay, that's what I thought. So nationwide, wherever. Okay, that's what I thought.

 

Stacey Uhrig

Yeah. All my clients today are all over zoom. So, I see people I really can see people all over the world. Actually, have a client today coming to me from Mexico. So yeah.

 

Ann

That's awesome. Well, so let's go ahead and get this out there then. I wanted you to tell people about your podcast and where they can find you and all that good stuff.

 

Stacey Uhrig

Sure. So a really great way to find me if somebody's on social media is Instagram because I very intentionally use my Instagram platform as an educational tool. So that's a really great place to start. You can go to my website. It's flipyourmindset .com and I have lots of free resources there.

 

I have workshops that I offer that you can download. Some are free, some are very low cost, like $10. I've got eBooks there, articles that I've written for different magazines. And then as you mentioned, my podcast and the podcast is also known as Flip Your Mindset. And you can find that wherever you listen to your podcasts. And then there's a video version, a visual version of that on YouTube. So I also have a YouTube channel, also Flip Your Mindset. And that's

 

You know, I would say go to my website, check out the podcast, go to my Instagram. It's a wealth of information. I have a very strong pillar in my business of offering as much low and no cost resources possible. And then for those people that are really curious, I offer a consult and they can do a 75 minute consult with me at a very reduced rate- kind of lay down what their biggest challenge is and see how I work and see if I resonate with them. And then we can always just go from there.

 

Ann

That's wonderful. Gosh, Stacey, thank you so much. I feel like we could talk. I know we could talk forever because I still have there's so many things, but maybe we'll do this again. Yeah, part two. But thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it and I know my listeners will as well.

 

Stacey Uhrig

Thank you, it's always such a pleasure to be able to generate this kind of awareness. So thank you for the platform.

Alright, that’s it today for Speaking of Teens. I hope you got something out of today’s episode and will come back for more.

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Until next time, remember, find a way to connect with your teen in some tiny way, every day.