Latest / You're Not Too Much / I'm Not Yelling at Him, I'm Yelling In His Direction. If I'm Quiet, You're in Trouble

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I'm Not Yelling at Him, I'm Yelling In His Direction. If I'm Quiet, You're in Trouble · You're Not Too Much

• 0:00
  Like, if I'm yelling or I'm being loud, there's communication happening.
• 0:04
  We can come to an agreement. If I'm quiet, you are so super fucked.
• 0:08
  I'm not mad at dad. I'm not. He literally has nothing to do with this
• 0:12
  at all. And she was like, but you're yelling at him. And I was like,
• 0:14
  no, I'm yelling in his general direction. This is productive.
• 0:18
  Like, I might as well have just chugged rocket fuel when one of my
• 0:22
  kids tells me that something is annoying. Because, man, I'm gonna do it 10,000 times
• 0:25
  now. All right, here we go.
• 0:29
  I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.
• 0:34
  Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.
• 0:37
  Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our
• 0:41
  podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking
• 0:44
  around feeling broken. And the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
• 0:51
  Now, I want to be very clear about something. My husband has an excellent life
• 0:54
  that I facilitate for him in so many different way.
• 0:58
  He gets to be a full time househusband, which he loves. He gets to be
• 1:02
  a full time dad, which he also loves. For whatever reason, he really likes
• 1:05
  these kids, probably because they act just like him, which is like my
• 1:09
  nightmare. But it's fine. But he likes both of those things. I
• 1:12
  recognize and acknowledge that I am not a picnic at all.
• 1:17
  That I am a neurotic mess, like, 95% of
• 1:21
  the time. But there are trade offs in life and you're. You're
• 1:24
  super awesome setup where you get to be a full time
• 1:28
  house husband with a full time nanny might mean that
• 1:32
  you get to deal with your wife, who's not a picnic. And I think that's
• 1:35
  okay. He also is my I'm
• 1:38
  angry at the world receptacle. We've reached a point in our marriage, and I think
• 1:42
  this is probably just like the fact that our marriage is a high
• 1:46
  school sophomore. Now we've reached the point in the marriage that we have recognized
• 1:50
  that we can be yelling, but not yelling at each
• 1:53
  other. Like, he's Italian, he's loud, he
• 1:57
  doesn't have a volume. That is not yelling
• 2:01
  so much so that, like, he and his mother yell at each other
• 2:04
  constantly. And they have no idea. They think they're just having a
• 2:08
  conversation. And I'm like, you guys are screaming at each other. You're basically
• 2:12
  insulting each other's intelligence constantly, over and
• 2:16
  over, and you don't understand why everybody around you is like, are they
• 2:19
  okay? That is Just the way they communicate it is the way they talk to
• 2:23
  each other. I finally recognize that. To me, it's wild
• 2:27
  that they can have these conversations where they're going after
• 2:30
  each other for 30 straight minutes about really important things
• 2:34
  like mulch. And if you think that's an exaggeration, it's
• 2:38
  not. But they will go after each other. And it
• 2:42
  brings the whole energy up of the room up to frenetic. Especially if
• 2:45
  you're, like, trying to have a meal and you're like, why does my digestion feel
• 2:48
  all weird? And maybe it's because there are two people next to me yelling at
• 2:52
  each other. And then they get done with it, and they're like, all right, you
• 2:55
  want to go get pizza? And you're like, you just yelled at each other for
• 2:58
  45 straight minutes, and you just. You want to go
• 3:02
  snag dinner now? Cool. Anyway, it's taken me a long time to realize
• 3:06
  that's just how they communicate, and that's the only way they hear each other. I
• 3:09
  just don't get involved with it. But anyway, the point is that my husband and
• 3:13
  I have now kind of just like, reached a point in our relationship where
• 3:17
  we can yell and know we're not yelling at each other. And I'm
• 3:21
  not really a yeller for the most part. Like,
• 3:24
  you're in way bigger trouble if I'm quiet. Like, if I'm
• 3:28
  yelling or I'm being loud, which, again, doesn't happen that often, or I'm
• 3:32
  talking, even if I'm, like, edgy about it, you're fine.
• 3:35
  There's communication happening. We can come to an agreement. We're gonna find
• 3:39
  a compromise. If I'm quiet. You are so super,
• 3:43
  like, something nuclear is about to happen, and I am not even going to
• 3:46
  apologize for it. Years and years ago, when I
• 3:50
  was working at a company that built software, we had a really
• 3:54
  good development team who could very
• 3:58
  easily develop the end goal, big solution,
• 4:02
  but not the things that facilitate that thing actually happening.
• 4:06
  So they would build the platform that was amazing and super functional,
• 4:11
  and then you'd be like, okay, how do people actually access it? And they'd be
• 4:14
  like, that's a good question. And so one time,
• 4:18
  after many, many of these conversations, they sold the
• 4:22
  solution to someone. And as the person who was responsible for
• 4:25
  deploying it in this group's environment, I was trying to write
• 4:29
  the implementation plan, and I went, you know what? I'm realizing that
• 4:33
  I have absolutely no idea how this part talks
• 4:37
  to this part and what we need to do to actually Build that out.
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  Do we need developers involved? So I went over to our CTO and I was
• 4:43
  like, hey, can you explain to me how this piece works? Because we're supposed
• 4:47
  to launch this in 30 days. And I have no idea. Like, there's a whole
• 4:50
  bunch of pre work we have to do. I have no idea how to do
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  that. And there wasn't a lot that I didn't know how to do on the
• 4:55
  system. And he just looks at me and he's like, oh, we don't have a
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  way to do that. And I was like, okay, but we just sold $120,000
• 5:02
  contract to do that. And he was like, yeah, we probably have to build
• 5:06
  it. And I was like, you say that. Is that like a one week
• 5:09
  process or like a six month process? And he was like, I mean,
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  it's probably a several month process. And I was like,
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  you do know that we just sold a go live
• 5:20
  of six weeks from today with this solution. And
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  he was like, yeah, that sounds like a problem. I went
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  silent because nobody was gonna give them this information. It was on
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  me to tell them that our sales team sold something that we can't
• 5:35
  do. And our development team didn't know that we actually needed to do it.
• 5:39
  Even though they built the thing, they didn't know that anybody needed to use it.
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  And usually if I was in the office, because I wasn't in the office that
• 5:45
  often, somebody was at my desk, like every five minutes. It was constant.
• 5:48
  And so I almost got nothing done in the office because there was just constantly
• 5:52
  people at my desk. And so I noticed after like 45
• 5:56
  minutes or an hour that nobody had come by my desk. And I also had
• 5:59
  gotten very little done. I was just like, sitting there, like, deep breathing. The person
• 6:04
  who I am, L2, because she was L1, came over to
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  my desk eventually, and she's still one of my very best friends. And she was
• 6:10
  like, they're all in the conference room talking because they think you're gonna go nuclear.
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  And I was like, that is a safe assumption at this point because this
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  is a stupid decision that is now on me to fix. And she was like,
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  yeah, but it's fun to watch. And the conference room was like, glassed in. So
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  she was like, just come sit at my desk and watch. And I was like,
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  all right. So we just went and sat at her desk, and we didn't have
• 6:31
  popcorn, but we should have had popcorn. So
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  anyway, if I'm quiet, you're in trouble. And the people who
• 6:38
  know me know you're in trouble. So
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  if I'm yelling about something, it usually means
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  that I'm like, trying to get to the solution about it. And so
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  my very sweet husband, who is sweet in his own
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  way, yesterday got so many earfuls
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  and my 7 year old came up to me and was like,
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  mom, why are you mad at dad? And I was like, I'm not mad
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  at dad. I'm not. He literally has nothing to do with this at all. And
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  she was like, but you're yelling at it. I was like, no, I'm yelling in
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  his general direction. This is productive
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  yelling. I was like, it is almost no different than me yelling at the
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  wall. He is just there to receive and
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  occasionally jump in and say, what if we. Or could we try? And then it
• 7:26
  gives me something new to yell about. And then I get all my yells out
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  and I say, I can't do this anymore. I'm so angry about all this and
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  how could this happen? And all these people. And then I walk away and I
• 7:36
  go get my shit done because I've yelled at the
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  receptacle of all of my ire. And he doesn't take it
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  personally. And he has also learned not to help too much
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  because then it does become yelling at him then, even though he is very
• 7:51
  much trying to help and I so love that he so wants
• 7:55
  to help. Then it becomes, oh, you think in all of my
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  five years of stressing about this thing that I didn't consider that
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  then I just didn't think of that thing that is right in front of my
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  face, really. So he's just learned to just be like, I
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  don't need to help. I just need to cheerlead. I just need to be like,
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  y' all figure it out, babe. So my children are getting a lesson in
• 8:18
  marital communication, which maybe is not what
• 8:22
  is generally recommended, but it works for us. And it's the same thing that he
• 8:25
  does. Usually he comes in to yell about the contractor who's working on our house
• 8:29
  and be like, I told him. And then he said, and now it's
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  been. Whereas he usually just like
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  agrees with me and pats me on the head. I kind of do that
• 8:40
  when we're on the same page, but I'm also there with a lighter and matches
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  like, you wanna. You wanna burn it down? Do you wanna. Do you wanna. Do
• 8:47
  you want me to just light it on fire? Do you just want me jump?
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  Like, I won't actually use a lighter in matches, but I really, I can be
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  mean in writing. Do you want me to do that. Because I will do that.
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  Do you want me to handle them? I will handle them. But anyway, this poor
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  man yesterday got so many tongue lashings that
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  had nothing to do with him. And thankfully he fully understands that and just
• 9:08
  knows that it is the price of doing business with having a
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  nice car and dealing with me on the regular. Just, there are many,
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  many perks to it. That's like the worst part of it. And he just
• 9:19
  deals with it very well.
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  My nine year old's greatest claim to fame. My nine year old is she comes
• 9:27
  up to my chin. She's giant. I'm small, but she's a giant.
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  And she's also like 50 pounds. Like
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  she's probably four and a half feet
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  ish and she's 50 pounds. She is
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  a string bean. My youngest says that. My youngest is
• 9:45
  a potato and my oldest is a french fry. She definitely got
• 9:49
  my husband's genetics as far as her entire
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  setup is concerned. But my youngest is like 8
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  inches shorter than her sister and she's 2 pounds lighter. When
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  they were like probably 2 and 4,
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  I was like, what do you do when the universe gives you a child in
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  the 80th percentile for height and at the 20th percentile for height?
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  I dress them up like Mario and Luigi because what else do you do? So
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  they used to dress up like Mario and Luigi all the time. My oldest loves
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  Olive Garden and when she's going through a growth spurt, like she
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  will eat drywall, she just like shovels things into her
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  mouth. There is not an ounce of extra
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  body fat percentage on her at all whatsoever. And so we took
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  her to Olive Garden one day because during one of her Olive Garden kicks
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  and she got the adult lasagna, let them eat chicken nuggets because
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  otherwise they turn out to be hella expensive. These kids go and order like
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  $20 plates in restaurants and I'm like, why just get
• 10:48
  the chicken nuggets. Anyway, so she ordered this whole plate of lasagna, which is.
• 10:53
  I don't know if anybody's seen Olive Garden lasagna, but it literally is like
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  an 8 inch round bowl filled with
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  lasagna. It is more than three
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  adults should eat. She ate the whole thing herself.
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  The server came over and asked her if she needed a box and she was
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  like, no, I'm done. She. And she looks down and she's like,
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  did you eat that whole thing? She was like, yeah. She
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  was like, where did you put it? I don't know. But anyway,
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  she has the metabolism of
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  something with a very fast metabolism. She's the opposite of Garfield
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  in most ways, except for the lasagna. I actually don't really like
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  lasagna at all. It's something my husband's mother makes all the time, and her
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  lasagna is very good, but it's just not a food that I like. Don't be
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  offended. Lasagna. But a lasagna
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  saved me from what was only
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  a certain meltdown and
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  gave me the tools that I needed to figure out how to
• 11:57
  get through decision fatigue. And I had no
• 12:01
  idea that this was coming. My youngest was eight weeks early. My oldest was
• 12:04
  six weeks early. I undercooked them, which is why there is not a third child.
• 12:09
  They keep coming out al dente. So when my oldest was eight weeks early,
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  we were going back and forth to the nicu, like basically
• 12:16
  constantly. And the NICU is not close to where we live. It's
• 12:20
  30 minutes away at best, without
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  traffic. And we were going back and forth multiple times
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  a day. I had just had a C section. I couldn't drive, so I either
• 12:30
  had to take an Uber or I had to have my husband drive me. And
• 12:33
  we had a two year old at home. It was way more chaotic the second
• 12:37
  time. Like, you think if you've been through it the first time, you're like, the
• 12:40
  second time I know how to handle this. Well, the second time we had a
• 12:44
  kid who couldn't come with us to the NICU all the time. And so we're
• 12:47
  basically like dividing and conquering all the time because what else do you do? And
• 12:51
  so I was getting up there every day, going and spending most
• 12:54
  of the day with her coming back again. I
• 12:58
  just had major surgery. Anybody who tells you a C section, it's not major surgery
• 13:02
  is lying. Bite me. Major, major surgery. I was
• 13:05
  uncomfortable. I was in pain all the time. She was eight weeks early,
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  so that was a thing. And even at that age,
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  she was stubborn. Just the sheer amount of things
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  that were on our plate was insane. And we are very
• 13:21
  fortunate that we have family and friends and a whole bunch of people who
• 13:24
  are reaching out saying, what can we do? What can we do? Can we bring
• 13:27
  you something? What can we do? And we wouldn't take them up on any of
• 13:30
  it. And so we were figuring out food and we were
• 13:34
  doing our laundry and we were running back and forth between two
• 13:37
  kids and we were dealing with doctors and I
• 13:41
  was doing my follow ups and I was healing and recovering
• 13:45
  from surgery. And we have 7,000 different things going
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  on and lots of things that people could have helped us with,
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  and that we probably would have happily accepted help with. But
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  delegating is often as difficult as doing it yourself.
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  Or figuring out where you need to delegate is often as bad as doing
• 14:05
  it yourself when you're in that, like, overload. And so
• 14:08
  you just go without clean clothes, or
• 14:12
  you wear the musty clothes from the dryer that sat in the washer for
• 14:16
  too long because you have to have something to wear, the executive
• 14:19
  function to get it all done, like, it's gone. There's not enough bandwidth to
• 14:23
  do all of this. And it wasn't because we didn't have people
• 14:27
  to do the things. Like, we had people who would have shown up and done
• 14:30
  the laundry had we asked them to do the laundry. But making the list
• 14:34
  that emotional labor is still labor, it's still
• 14:38
  work. And this is not a criticism of anybody around us. It's just how I
• 14:42
  learned that, like, in those situations, that's not
• 14:45
  the question to ask. And so we were probably two
• 14:49
  weeks into this. I was on the verge of
• 14:53
  some sort of meltdown. My 2 year old had a
• 14:57
  virus, which not great when you have a
• 15:00
  newborn, and we're trying to get our newborn out of the nicu,
• 15:04
  and now we have a boogery feverish two year old in
• 15:08
  our house who is not great at keeping her
• 15:11
  hands and saliva to herself. And we had to figure out how to get
• 15:15
  our baby home. We had to figure out when they were gonna let her come
• 15:18
  home. We had to, like, basically quarantine the house in two places.
• 15:22
  There were so many things that needed to be done. I couldn't even tell you
• 15:26
  the first of them. It was absolute chaos. We had
• 15:29
  a particularly bad day. I don't remember what
• 15:33
  happened, but I just know it was a really bad day. The doorbell rings. We
• 15:36
  weren't expecting anybody, but also, like, we could have forgotten literally
• 15:40
  anything at that point. So I answer the call and it's this woman I
• 15:44
  sort of recognized. Not well enough to know
• 15:47
  her name. I just knew this was a person who was like,
• 15:51
  did she live in our neighborhood? Is she somebody my mom knew? I didn't know
• 15:55
  who this person was, but I kind of knew who she was. So I didn't
• 15:58
  think I was about to get stabbed or anything, but always a chance. And
• 16:02
  I open the door and she says, hey, Lauren. And I'm like,
• 16:06
  hello, strange person who knows my name. How can I assist?
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  And she literally, without prompting, without waiting, hands
• 16:13
  me a plate of lasagna, a loaf of bread,
• 16:17
  a bag of salad, and says, that's only half the
• 16:21
  Lasagna and half the bread. I figured you guys needed dinner. Let us know if
• 16:24
  you need anything. By this time I had put together, she was a friend of
• 16:27
  my mom's who also lived in our neighborhood. So I'm sure my mom had told
• 16:30
  her, but she was just like, these people just had a baby. I
• 16:33
  don't know if they like lasagna, but they probably need food, so I'm going to
• 16:37
  bring them food. And so she showed up and all of a
• 16:40
  sudden I went from I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to do
• 16:44
  next to keep everything in order or even get it in some semblance
• 16:47
  of order to oh my God, we have dinner. I don't have to think about
• 16:51
  dinner. Dinner's done. I don't even care if I like this food. This
• 16:55
  could be a big pile of anchovies. And I'd be like, get me a fork,
• 16:58
  get me a fork. So we went in, we sat down, we all had
• 17:02
  dinner. We didn't have to think about it. It didn't matter. I guess my
• 17:05
  mom gave her my number because she texted me later and she was like, did
• 17:08
  you guys have enough? Because I have more lasagna. And I'm like, we are so
• 17:11
  good on the lasagna. Thank you so much. You are a delight. Thank you. You
• 17:15
  have literally changed my day. It didn't matter that it wasn't
• 17:19
  food that we would have picked. It didn't matter that
• 17:23
  I didn't know if my 2 year old would eat lasagna. It didn't matter that
• 17:27
  she didn't ask. Something was done and it
• 17:30
  required literally no thought from me because I didn't even know
• 17:34
  it was happening. It was probably like 7 o' clock at night at that point.
• 17:37
  And it hadn't even occurred to me that somebody needed to be fed.
• 17:41
  That's how crazy and chaotic and out of control things were.
• 17:45
  She showed up, she didn't ask. She didn't expect
• 17:48
  us to do the emotional labor of making a choice. She
• 17:52
  didn't ask us what time she should be there. She didn't ask
• 17:56
  anything. She took a risk. Worst case scenario, she was gonna leave cooked food
• 18:00
  on the porch was a note. Worst case scenario, we weren't gonna eat it.
• 18:03
  That's not that bad a scenario for that night
• 18:07
  we were fed. That's was a big act in that she
• 18:11
  like literally cooked all this food for us. Like, amazing. So nice of her.
• 18:15
  But also it really showed me that people
• 18:19
  are so kind and compassionate when they ask you what they can do
• 18:22
  and nine times out of 10, they really mean it. And whatever the answer to
• 18:26
  that is, they will do. It's not like a platitude that they're
• 18:30
  throwing out. No. Usually when people are asking that they really want to help,
• 18:34
  but the emotional labor of decision making,
• 18:38
  of task building, of figuring out what
• 18:41
  needs to be done and making sure that it's done right
• 18:45
  when you're already overwhelmed. That's why there are a lot of people who are bad
• 18:49
  at asking for help. I happen to be one of them a lot of the
• 18:51
  time. But often it's not about not wanting help,
• 18:56
  it's about how asking is the same amount of work. So if you want to
• 18:59
  take something off somebody's plate, figure out what the thing is. Hey, I'm bringing
• 19:03
  you dinner tonight. Do you want tacos or a
• 19:07
  salad? Hey, do you have clean clothes? If not,
• 19:10
  put them all in a bag, I will come grab it. Do you have any
• 19:14
  detergent allergies? Hey, you've been running back and forth to
• 19:17
  the NICU and you've probably have had a kid strapped to you for the last
• 19:21
  three days. Do you want me to take your two year old for an hour
• 19:24
  and you can go rest? Tangible, very direct
• 19:28
  asks. And that was my situation. It's the same thing when you're caregiving,
• 19:32
  when you're caregiving an adult, when you have just
• 19:35
  had a medical procedure, if you got hurt, if you've been sick,
• 19:39
  if you're going through a traumatic loss, if somebody's saying
• 19:43
  no to you, when you genuinely want to help, make the ask
• 19:46
  specific and you might actually get a yes from it. If you
• 19:50
  come to me and say, this is actually like on a global scale, something that
• 19:54
  I struggle with a lot. And my husband will come down to my office a
• 19:57
  lot and say, hey, where do you want to go for dinner? And I'll be
• 20:01
  like, nowhere. If I have to pick because I got other
• 20:04
  stuff going on. I'm so busy and overwhelmed all the time
• 20:08
  and I care so little about what the outcome of that decision is. But you
• 20:12
  probably care a whole lot more than I do. So I'm not picking.
• 20:15
  That's the thing that I have given away. Responsibility to
• 20:19
  decisions are emotional labor, burns calories, burning
• 20:22
  calories is. I wish it was more effective at burning calories, but
• 20:26
  like, that's work. So if somebody's not asking you for help or
• 20:30
  you want to be helpful, don't leave it open ended.
• 20:33
  And if you're struggling with accepting help
• 20:37
  because you know you're drowning but you can't Figure out
• 20:41
  how to ask for help, or you can't figure out how to ask for it
• 20:44
  correctly. Ask the person, what kind of stuff could you do?
• 20:48
  Yes, I need help. I'm really struggling with figuring out what
• 20:51
  thing you should help with because there's so much. What kind of stuff can you
• 20:54
  do? They might be like, I'm great at laundry.
• 20:58
  Can I do your dishes? Cool. Go do it. It's often
• 21:02
  not about not wanting help. It's about the fact that the
• 21:06
  ask is actually labor in and of itself, and that's
• 21:09
  prohibitive. And now we'll go to
• 21:13
  Allison, who has this week's small talk. We have a
• 21:17
  small talk from Darnell from Atlanta, Georgia.
• 21:21
  My teenage daughter told me last week, completely
• 21:24
  deadpan, that I was the most predictable person she had ever
• 21:28
  met. I laughed it off at the time, but honestly, it's been
• 21:32
  sitting with me ever since. And here's the thing. I pride
• 21:35
  myself on routine. I wake up at the same time, I make the same
• 21:39
  breakfast. I take the same route to work. It keeps me calm,
• 21:43
  and it keeps me functional. But now I'm wondering if my need for sameness is
• 21:47
  embarrassing or limiting. Has anyone in your world ever
• 21:51
  had to figure out how to be a little more spontaneous without
• 21:54
  it completely derailing? You would love to hear how you'd
• 21:58
  handle a teenager's verdict. Okay, I have
• 22:02
  many thoughts. I'm processing through all of them all at the same
• 22:06
  time. If it hasn't occurred to you that it's embarrassing, then it's not embarrassing.
• 22:10
  Like, you're not embarrassed by it. Your teenager is embarrassed
• 22:13
  by it, which they're allowed to be embarrassed by their parents. In
• 22:17
  fact, they probably should be. Like, it puts some patina on them.
• 22:21
  Like, your parents are supposed to be embarrassing. But
• 22:25
  if you're saying that you do this thing because it's good for your mental health
• 22:28
  and you're more productive when you do things this way
• 22:32
  and you feel more in control of things when you do this way. And it's
• 22:35
  not something you want to change, but you are thinking about changing it
• 22:39
  for, like, acceptance from your teenager. Do
• 22:42
  they like having food on the table? Do they like getting spending
• 22:46
  money when you give it to them? Do they like
• 22:50
  your predictability, your reliability? They probably actually really like
• 22:54
  your predictability. Because kids, whether they fight against it or not, love
• 22:58
  routine and love boundaries. And as they get a little bit
• 23:01
  older, they rail against them because that's part of brain development. But kids love
• 23:05
  routine, and it's why they get so excited when routine
• 23:09
  gets broken, because it Feels new and novel and special. But
• 23:12
  they're usually begging for routine. Whether they actually say that or not, they're
• 23:16
  begging for somebody to put the limits on them. That's what their brains need.
• 23:20
  And so I would wear it as a badge of honor if my. I'm just
• 23:23
  getting to the point where my kids are embarrassed by me or annoyed by me.
• 23:27
  And I did not realize that is like fuel. Like,
• 23:31
  I might as well have just chugged rocket fuel when one of my
• 23:35
  kids tells me that something is annoying. Because, man, I'm gonna do it 10,000
• 23:38
  times now I'm gonna do it 11,000 times. I'm gonna
• 23:42
  say things that they think are not funny because it makes me laugh that
• 23:46
  they think they're not funny. And I don't really remember my parents being
• 23:50
  that way. Also, like, if my parents were a little embarrassing, but in typical teenage
• 23:53
  ways, like, I was never worried about bringing my parents places.
• 23:57
  Like, the only time I was worried about bringing my parents places was when
• 24:01
  I knew it was gonna be a place that my dad was gonna need a
• 24:03
  lot of accommodation because he couldn't see well. And I
• 24:07
  wasn't sure that I was going to be available to make sure that was
• 24:12
  done for him like, that we were able to do that for him. And so
• 24:14
  that was the only time that I cared if my parents came. Like, I didn't
• 24:17
  have that relationship with them, but. And not that my kids, who either. They're still
• 24:20
  too young for that. But embarrassing your kids is like a rite of passage. You
• 24:24
  worked for this. You, like, tried hard for this.
• 24:27
  And their embarrassment does not have to be yours.
• 24:32
  Now, if you would like to change your routine
• 24:35
  occasionally, not because of any outside influences, not because of somebody
• 24:39
  telling you you should. But nobody can tell you why you should. If somebody says
• 24:42
  you should and you ask why. And the answer is because that's what people do.
• 24:47
  Maybe some people don't. That's not a real answer. I haven't heard a real answer
• 24:50
  as to why you need to change up the way you do things, other than
• 24:54
  it embarrasses my teenager. Good. Embarrass your
• 24:57
  teenager. That's good parenting. Gently. Like
• 25:01
  embarrassing. Just embarrass them for humor, for
• 25:05
  mortification. Light mortification. You know what I'm trying to say? Take good care
• 25:09
  of them, but also make them roll their eyes
• 25:13
  when you come near. But, yeah, I just haven't heard a good reason why you
• 25:15
  need to. My dad was a successful person
• 25:19
  who had four kids and a whole career, and he
• 25:23
  ate an egg sandwich for lunch for 20 years, every day,
• 25:27
  every single day, it was just easier. He didn't care. He didn't need to change
• 25:30
  it. People would say, don't you want something other than an egg sandwich? And he'd
• 25:33
  say, no, I'm good with my egg sandwich. And he would eat an egg sandwich.
• 25:36
  And then he would go home and he would go to the gas station and
• 25:38
  he would buy bags of Funyuns and like slam
• 25:42
  Funyuns on the way home, which is not. Don't do that. You can have routine,
• 25:46
  but you don't need to. You don't need to eat bags of
• 25:49
  fried onions. That's just the worst. So that part of the routine
• 25:53
  was not good. But there's nothing that says that to be
• 25:57
  an interesting person you can't have routine. There's nothing that says
• 26:01
  there's anything wrong with it. If it's something you want to change, hey, there's a
• 26:05
  thing I'd like to go to on Saturday, but that's going to be at the
• 26:07
  same time as something that I want to do or something that I do every
• 26:10
  week. And that's not a thing I have to do every week. But that's just
• 26:14
  my routine. And it's going to be really dysregulating. If I
• 26:17
  don't do that thing at that time, then that's something to try out.
• 26:21
  I'm going to see how I can work, how I can manage my
• 26:25
  anxiety, how I can prepare myself to do something different on this day,
• 26:29
  at this time, because it's something I want to do because
• 26:33
  I'm incentivized to do it. And
• 26:36
  it will make me uncomfortable. But that's okay. Remember, we can do
• 26:40
  anything scared. We shouldn't have to do things unsafe.
• 26:44
  So what you're asking for is how is it? Is there a way
• 26:47
  to approach things that I am scared of without completely
• 26:51
  throwing off my whole existence? Absolutely. We can do anything
• 26:54
  scared. But if it's something really important, like
• 26:58
  an appointment that you have to make because it's for your health, you have
• 27:02
  to keep this very specific schedule because otherwise
• 27:05
  you're. You have tremendous anxiety and interferes with your ability to do your
• 27:09
  job. And so we have to do very small, incremental things to try to
• 27:13
  expose yourself to that. That's a very different beast than
• 27:17
  I really just like going for a walk at 9am every Saturday morning. And
• 27:20
  I think I would be upset if I did. So you can do
• 27:24
  anything scared. If you want to change your routine, if there's a thing
• 27:28
  in front of you that you prefer or you want to try, go for it.
• 27:32
  But if it is just a matter of seeming cool in front of your teenager,
• 27:36
  I assure you that as soon as you fix that, they will find
• 27:40
  a new way, that you are decidedly
• 27:43
  uncool and you will be on a constant hamster
• 27:47
  wheel of trying to impress your teenager that
• 27:50
  somehow ends with acid washed jeans. I don't know how, but
• 27:54
  that's where that ends. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you.
• 27:58
  Mina,
• 28:02
  Please don't fucking bring up mulch to me. Jesus Christ.