Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Nobody Likes You When You're Like This

Transcript

Nobody Likes You When You're Like This · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast. Recently, missus
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Happy Families said something really harsh to me and how
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to do with how likable I am or maybe in
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: this case, how unlikable I am. The reality is that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: in family life or in life generally, we put too
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  Speaker 1: much on our plates. We have an unbalanced schedule, We
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  Speaker 1: try to do too much and sometimes we don't know
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  Speaker 1: what to do about it because everything has to be done.
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  Speaker 1: It's just the way life is today. We talk about
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: how to create margin, how to be nice when you
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  Speaker 1: don't have the capacity to even think about being nice,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and how to avoid being told by your wife or
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: husband that nobody likes you when you like that. Stay
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: with us. That's next on the Happy Famili's podcast. Hello
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the Heavy Families podcast, where you get
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: real parenting solutions every single day. This is Australia's most
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin and Kylie Colson today
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  Speaker 1: and insight into how life goes sometimes when there's just
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  Speaker 1: too much going on. I shed it a news lind
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it just recently and it involves Kylie setting the record
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  Speaker 1: straight and pointing out that I'm just not getting things right.
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  Speaker 1: All the time. Here's how it went. Can you imagine
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  Speaker 1: trying to sweep the kitchen with a broomstick, a broomstick only,
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  Speaker 1: no broomhead, no bristles, just a broomstick. It's not going
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  Speaker 1: to be effective. It's going to be an exercise in
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  Speaker 1: futility and frustration because you need the whole broom. When
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  Speaker 1: you try to do something with a broken tool, it
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  Speaker 1: doesn't work. It's exhausting. And the greatest tool that we
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  Speaker 1: have is not our phone, it's not our planner, it's
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  Speaker 1: not our inbox, it's our mind. But when your mind
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  Speaker 1: is full of fear and worry and regret, whether we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about heavy stuff like depression of mental health challenges,
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  Speaker 1: near divergent challenges, or just the light of stuff like
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  Speaker 1: overwork and overwhelm, and I'd say lighter inadverted commas, everything
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  Speaker 1: gets harder because that tool is broken. It's inefficient, it's
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  Speaker 1: not working properly. The flow doesn't get swept. So mishappy families.
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  Speaker 1: How many edits do you reckon? I've done on the
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  Speaker 1: Boy's Book, which is going to be published in the
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  Speaker 1: next six weeks or thereabouts.
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  Speaker 2: I've lost count as have I.
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  Speaker 1: And every single time that I have to do one.
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  Speaker 1: It turns our life upside down, like because the publisheder
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  Speaker 1: will say, well, we need it back in a week,
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  Speaker 1: or we need it back in forty eight hours, or
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  Speaker 1: we need answers to these questions quickly. The manuscript deadlines
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  Speaker 1: that I've faced, the editing that I've done, I've been
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  Speaker 1: upside down fourteen times, fifteen times over the last year
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  Speaker 1: or so, and so have you, so has the family.
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  Speaker 1: As a result. It's like my brain has not been
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  Speaker 1: working properly. It's like a broom with no bristles or brushing.
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  Speaker 1: And during the final stretch a few weeks ago, did
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  Speaker 1: I mention that it was the fourteenth edit? I think
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  Speaker 1: I did fourteenth? Yeah, right, at the point of maximum overwhelm.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You mishappy families pulled me aside, and you said, in
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  Speaker 1: these words directly, justin nobody likes you when you're like.
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  Speaker 2: This sounds pretty harsh.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that's when I say it like that. But was
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  Speaker 1: it deserved?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't remember saying it.
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  Speaker 1: I was going to say, was it accurate? You probably
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  Speaker 1: don't remember either. Let's just think what am I? Can
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  Speaker 1: you describe what I'm like when I'm trying to do
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  Speaker 1: all the stuff that I would normally do it, so
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  Speaker 1: the travel and the normal writing and the podcasting and
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  Speaker 1: the present presenting, present, hating, present.
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  Speaker 2: The capacity to say all your words probably and put
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  Speaker 2: them in the right places. But like all of us,
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  Speaker 2: when we've got too much on our plate, our capacity
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  Speaker 2: actually gets smaller, not bigger. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: When I wrote my first book, which is still such
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  Speaker 1: a popular book, What Your Child Needs from You, I
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  Speaker 1: talk about this idea of emotional bandwidth. It's like the Internet.
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  Speaker 1: You've got too many people using the Internet in your house.
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  Speaker 1: There's too much information trying to get down this one
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  Speaker 1: little channel where it's just not wide enough. You need
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  Speaker 1: more into nenet, you need a bigger bandwidth, and so
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  Speaker 1: there's just been too much going on.
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  Speaker 2: I actually like to think of it more in relation
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  Speaker 2: to the idea of high emotions low intelligence. When we're
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  Speaker 2: feeling really stressed and we're feeling the weight of everything
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  Speaker 2: that we're carrying, our emotions are actually more heightened and
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  Speaker 2: our capacity is lessened, and so in those moments you're
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  Speaker 2: really hard to get along with because you only see
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  Speaker 2: the big list in front of you and don't recognize
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  Speaker 2: that everybody else around you is carrying their own.
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  Speaker 1: Big list kind of lose perspective very much so, and
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  Speaker 1: the focus is the dragon that I have to slay,
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  Speaker 1: and everything else is just an obstacle to getting that
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  Speaker 1: dragon slain.
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  Speaker 2: And when it comes to a book, though, the book
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  Speaker 2: is only one component of your busyness. But there are
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  Speaker 2: lots of things that you would normally do to participate
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  Speaker 2: in family life that then fall onto me as well. Right,
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  Speaker 2: And so you're feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling overwhelmed that you
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  Speaker 2: can't see that your overwhelm's actually increasing my overall health.
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  Speaker 1: Well, part of the problem is actually that I know
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  Speaker 1: that it is, and I can see it, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: helpless to do anything about it. That only adds to
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  Speaker 1: my feeling of stuckness and overwhelmedness, if they're even words.
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  Speaker 1: Because I know that I should be doing these things.
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  Speaker 1: I want to be doing those things. I typically would
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  Speaker 1: be doing these things, but right now I can't. And
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  Speaker 1: so compounding my pressure and overwhelm is the guilt that
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  Speaker 1: I'm failing you and failing the kids. And so I
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  Speaker 1: become like this, I become short, snappy, blunt. My expectations
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  Speaker 1: of myself are already high, and so then I start
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  Speaker 1: to pass those expectations under everybody else.
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  Speaker 3: If I'm being this productive, you need to be this
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  Speaker 3: productive as well. I'm maximizing. I'm optimizing. I'm fulfilling everything
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  Speaker 3: that I have to do. Why aren't you doing yours?
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  Speaker 3: Because normally I'd step in and pick up that slack,
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  Speaker 3: or at least try to.
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  Speaker 2: So.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this instant or not, Kylie,
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  Speaker 1: but do you have any reflection, any recollection of what
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  Speaker 1: I did when you told me that nobody likes me
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  Speaker 1: when I'm.
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  Speaker 2: Like this, I don't, but I can have a pretty
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  Speaker 2: good stab in the dark.
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  Speaker 1: I'm really nervous about what your stab in the dyke's
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  Speaker 1: going to be. What do you think I might have
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  Speaker 1: done when you said that to me?
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  Speaker 2: When you're feeling really, really under pressure and you come
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  Speaker 2: in and you notice that people are not being as
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  Speaker 2: productive and under pressure as you.
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  Speaker 1: Are, you're going to go there, oh my goodness.
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  Speaker 2: Or the house isn't exactly the way it needs to
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  Speaker 2: be to function. Do you mean, like when efficiently.
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  Speaker 1: When it's three point thirty in the afternoon and we
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  Speaker 1: have at least three adult children in the house and
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  Speaker 1: they still haven't done the breakfast dishes. Do you mean that? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think that's a high expectation. And I think
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  Speaker 1: whatever you're about to say is justifiable and reasonable, even
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  Speaker 1: if I do have a lot of extra pressure. But
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  Speaker 1: go on say it anyway, you.
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  Speaker 2: Might just lose the plot a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Well, that's not what I wrote about in
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  Speaker 1: my newsletter.
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  Speaker 2: So it wasn't that one.
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  Speaker 1: No, it wasn't that one. So in other words, when
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  Speaker 1: I get it right, as I did in the newsletter story,
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  Speaker 1: you don't remember those ones. You only remember the ones
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  Speaker 1: where I get it wrong.
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  Speaker 2: Hey do when you put me on the spot like this.
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  Speaker 1: So in the newsletter, and this is actually what happened,
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  Speaker 1: because the newsletter is based on.
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  Speaker 2: True facts and my story is not based.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying in the one
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  Speaker 1: that I wrote about, not the ones that I didn't
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  Speaker 1: write about. I said. And so, despite the deadlines and pressure,
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  Speaker 1: I stopped just for five or ten minutes, just enough
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  Speaker 1: to check in, just enough to listen to the kids,
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  Speaker 1: just enough to hug my wife, just enough to walk
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  Speaker 1: in the garden and pull a few weeds, touch the ground,
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  Speaker 1: breathe and be human just enough to reconnect to the
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  Speaker 1: stuff that really matters, and like magic, my brain started
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  Speaker 1: to work again. I was more productive, more present, I
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  Speaker 1: was a better person. People started liking me again, well
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  Speaker 1: my family at least. So after the break, I want
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  Speaker 1: to talk about what we're supposed to do when nobody
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  Speaker 1: likes us. When I like this, because it's really really
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  Speaker 1: hard to regulate, pull ourselves back from the brink and
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  Speaker 1: get things back on track. That's the conversation next on
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  Speaker 1: the Happy Families podcast. Stay with us, We're back. This
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  Speaker 1: is the Happy Families Podcast. Okay, what do we do
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  Speaker 1: when emotions running away from us? Pressure is mounting, We
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  Speaker 1: can't see past the massive to do list in front
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  Speaker 1: of us, or just the one thing that's enormous that's
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  Speaker 1: taking up all of our bandwidth cognitive and emotional. Kylie,
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  Speaker 1: this is the great challenge that we have in family life.
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  Speaker 1: This is the stuff that where I was trying to
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  Speaker 1: work out where to move forward to. And I've got
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  Speaker 1: a couple of ideas that I think are useful. You
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  Speaker 1: might have some to add as well. First thing that
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  Speaker 1: I want to suggest is the importance of taking action.
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  Speaker 1: There seems to be something really profoundly helpful about just
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  Speaker 1: moving your body, whether it's giving somebody a hug. There
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  Speaker 1: are many many times where you have said something along
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  Speaker 1: the lines I've justin nobody likes when you like this,
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  Speaker 1: or something along those lines, and I've just moved towards you,
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  Speaker 1: grabbed you in my arms, hugged you and said I'm
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  Speaker 1: so sorry, like literally just ask for forgiveness. But you
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  Speaker 1: and I will then go for a walk, or will
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  Speaker 1: go sit outside or worll lay on the grass, or
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  Speaker 1: will do something to move our body. I talked about
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  Speaker 1: weeding the garden for five minutes. I don't know why.
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  Speaker 1: I actually hate weeding. I'm not a really big fan
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  Speaker 1: of this, but sometimes just weeding the garden feels really good.
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  Speaker 2: It's called earthing.
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  Speaker 1: Earthing, Yeah, okay, earthing works. That's fine.
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  Speaker 2: Bare feet on the ground rounding.
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  Speaker 1: You, just breathing. I've recently discovered the power of the
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  Speaker 1: four seven eight breathing technique. You breathe in for four
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  Speaker 1: seconds three and I was hold it for seven and
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  Speaker 1: then breathe out for eight. Do that twenty times if
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  Speaker 1: you can't go to sleep, and it changes the game
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  Speaker 1: like that puts me to sleep almost every single night.
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  Speaker 1: It's very rare that I get through twenty reps of
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  Speaker 1: that and can't do that getting enough sleep. Oh my goodness, Like,
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  Speaker 1: what a difference that makes. So these are just a
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  Speaker 1: few ideas that I've found to be really useful. What
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  Speaker 1: about you.
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  Speaker 2: I think the only other thing that I would add
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  Speaker 2: is nutrition.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, when I am overwhelmed, one of the very first
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  Speaker 2: things to go is good eating patterns and habits. And
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  Speaker 2: It'll be two or three o'clock in the afternoon and
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  Speaker 2: I've lived off a chocolate bar and maybe a piece
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  Speaker 2: of fruit. If I'm lucky, I might not have even drunk. Bader.
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  Speaker 2: Just the impact that giving your body nutrition has on
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  Speaker 2: your capacity to cope with the day to day riggers
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  Speaker 2: of family life, I think goes understated. Yeah too often.
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  Speaker 1: Yep. I've got a couple of other things that I'd
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  Speaker 1: throw in as well. Connect the power of connection. So
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  Speaker 1: whether it's saying, hey, let's just go for a walk,
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  Speaker 1: or if you're fortunate enough to have a pool, let's
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  Speaker 1: jump in the pool together, or let's take the dog out,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: or jump on the trampoline, let's play hide and seek,
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  Speaker 1: there's something powerful that happens when you know that you're
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  Speaker 1: getting out of control because there's too much to do. Bizarrely,
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  Speaker 1: there's something powerful that happens when you say, I'm just
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  Speaker 1: going to let the list go for five minutes, and
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  Speaker 1: I know that sometimes you can't. Sometimes you have to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: get out of the door because you've got to be
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: at an appointment, or I'm talking about those times where life
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: just feels overwhelming by pausing and doing something trivial and unimportant,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: playing a card game, playing hide and seek, kicking or
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: throwing a ball, going for a fifteen minute bike ride,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: or going for a skate with the kids, any of
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: those kinds of things. Picking up a musical instrument and
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  Speaker 1: playing it. Maybe you've got a guitar or you don't
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: really pick up a piano, but that kind of thing,
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  Speaker 1: when you start to do those kinds of things where
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  Speaker 1: the time on the clock is sort of irrelevant, it
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just gives you new perspective. It helps you to reset,
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  Speaker 1: It helps you to re enter the atmosphere in a
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  Speaker 1: much more positive way.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it just breaks a cycle. Yeah you're stuck.
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  Speaker 1: Takes the pressure off. I like to crank up some
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: music every now and again, you've been annoyed with me
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  Speaker 1: and my music choices lately, the pressure. I've been playing
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  Speaker 1: a lot of Concrete Blonde. You haven't loved it.
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  Speaker 2: Nah, not really.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why. I just think they're one of
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the best bands ever. In short, In short, when it's
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  Speaker 1: all too much, do something I think that is completely human.
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  Speaker 1: Go analog, get away from digital, shift away from the deadlines,
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  Speaker 1: even if it's for five and ten minutes, stop being
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  Speaker 1: a human doing and remember how it feels to be
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  Speaker 1: a human being. And in case you worry the work
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  Speaker 1: the list.
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  Speaker 2: It'll still be there.
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  Speaker 1: It'll still be there when you get back, but you
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  Speaker 1: will probably find that you're at your best when you return.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: That is a very simple, but hopefully very helpful Happy
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Families podcast today. Thanks so much for listening to. The
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast is by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: with additional support from Mimhammonds. If you'd like more info
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to make your family happier, you find it at Happy
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Families dot com dot you. And remember right now, if
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you pre order the book Boys Building Strong Young Men
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: from the Inside Out from Booktopia dot com dot you,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you'll get twenty seven percent off twenty seven percent off
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: the book. Preorder it now at booktopia dot com dot
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Au