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Why Your Child Absorbs Your Emotions · It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People

• Megan Hunter Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, classes, and educational programs and methods all to do with high conflict. So welcome, listeners. We took a week off, but we're back. Thank you for joining us over your cup of tea today. So let's get to it, Bill. We had a little excursion, meeting up in London to do some training for the Bridging the Gap Conference of Family Mediators in the UK, which was really fun. And those who are familiar with our training and with this podcast are familiar with the brain that you carried for a lot of years, and then I finally got my own brain. So we ended up in London with two brain — two plastic brains and two real brains — and got to stand on stage together and do demonstrations of right brain to right brain communications. So that was fun, and we got to do really one of the most special or more special things I think we've done together, because I don't know if our listeners know this about us, but we rarely are on a stage together. You're usually off training somewhere, I'm off training somewhere. So it was really unique. And I don't know about you, but for me, on the Saturday night in London, we were at the Our Kids First Gathering, which is a group in London who they're helping the members of their community, a Jewish community. And we'd worked with them last year on our Conflict Influencer class, helping their parents in divorce. It was a really wonderful experience for me teaching that class. And then for the two of us to go and meet with those parents in London was just a wonderful experience. How about you? Bill Eddy Yeah, it was great. Well, what's great after all these years of working together, we didn't actually prepare. Megan Hunter Yeah. Bill Eddy And we just naturally went back and forth. Well, what do you think of that, Megan? And oh, here's a thought, Bill. And it just was just an easy back and forth. And it's true, we're often not even in the same country. Speaking, you speak a lot in Australia, I speak a lot in Canada, we've been all over the US. We've been between us in about 20 countries, I think. And one of the things that just keeps striking me is how similar family behavior, divorce behavior, high conflict behavior is — really worldwide — that people are dealing with the same issues. But we're also seeing and hearing from people saying, we tried your methods and they worked. They help us calm down and our kids are happier now and all of that, which is so rewarding. Megan Hunter Oh, very, very rewarding. Yeah. The conference, all the people that we met there, many of them already knew about BIFF, obviously. And then the Our Kids First parents, they really had a lot of questions about not just the skills, but just some really tricky situations that they're in. And that's something we're going to talk about today. But before we do, I just wanted to also give a big thank you to the organizers of the Bridging the Gap Conference, Katie and Tracy. And to also say we got to meet with Shehrina Rooney, the author of The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder, who lives in the UK. She came into London and met with us and introduced us to her husband and her new little one. So that was really fun. And just she's doing amazing. So that was a great time, and I know she enjoyed it too. So okay, let's go down into what we're here to talk about today. And it started with what you were saying, Bill, about you know, helping families and getting them skills that work. Now we're going to drill down a little bit deeper, because many parents and people from all walks of life use BIFF, they use EAR, they're starting to use SLIC, all of the techniques that we teach. And that manages a great deal, right? That can keep the conflict small and maybe make progress where they don't otherwise make progress. Then you go a layer deeper in cases of divorced families where one parent's not seeing the children or they're starting to sense children pulling away from them. So for example, I recently spoke to someone who has 50-50 time. The child is with mom 50%, with dad and stepmom 50%. Mom gets very lonely when the child's over with dad. Child's having a great time with dad and stepmom, very well adjusted, very healthy, but during time with mom, the very first day back with mom, there's that first phone call that night, because there's a phone call every night, right, between the other parent and that child. And the child's crying, sobbing uncontrollably, seven years old. And mom's saying, he wants to stay with me for two weeks. He's just so upset. And dad and stepmom say, you know, ask the child, why are you upset? Why are you crying? I don't know. When a child is with dad and stepmom and is crying about something, maybe she dropped her toy or skinned her knee or something, she knows what the reason is. I'm hurt. So it's different. Like, why are you crying? I don't know, but I'm just sobbing. So I thought it was just, you know, really a good time to talk about this, because you've written the article about the child's brain absorbing the parent's emotion. You've done some podcasts, some videos on this. So I thought it was really great timing. So let's talk about your kind of your premise of children absorbing their parents' emotions. Bill Eddy Well, what happens is our brains are made to absorb other brains' emotions. So most people have heard of the amygdala, and the amygdala is like a smoke alarm for fear and anger especially, but it picks up emotions and it remembers what's dangerous. And it's very much danger focused. And so if somebody's emotions are escalated, they're angry, they're sad, they're crying, they're afraid, all of that. Our brain's designed to pick that up so as a group we can deal with whatever the problem is. Well, the thing is, for most adults, we don't just automatically absorb each other's emotions. Our own brain is used to, okay, you know, Sister Mary gets upset all the time, so I don't have to get upset too. And Uncle Fred, oh he's angry again. I don't have to get angry too. But kids don't have that ability, that emotion regulation. So their amygdala hasn't been trained. Your prefrontal cortex apparently can send a message to the amygdala. Which, by the way, if you're curious, is down under here. There's your corpus callosum in the middle of the brain, shaped like an umbrella. For people just listening, it's right in the middle of the brain. The amygdala gets the message first. Somebody's face looks angry or looks afraid. And it's like the child starts feeling upset. And so they may catch the parents' anger. I was just looking at a situation with two boys, two young boys, I think five and three. And the parents yelling and screaming, and the five-year-old's angry back. It's like, stop, stop. And the three-year-old's bursting into tears. And so they have different reactions, but they're emotionally intense reactions. And so what we find, and I think you mentioned this, Megan, is right brain to right brain communication. The right brain seems to be more where we process our emotions. And the left brain's where we process language and all of that. And so one person's right brain communicates emotions. That's the language of the right brain, to another person's. But the other thing is it's unconscious. You don't realize you're absorbing somebody else's emotions and suddenly you're angry or sad or whatever, like the child you mentioned, Megan, who didn't know why they were upset. They just knew they were upset. So the theory here is that we do catch each other's emotions. The amygdala, mirror neurons, which tell us we should do the same behavior we're seeing. But we can screen out some of that. Adults can screen out a whole lot. But kids haven't learned — it's a learning, it's a brain networking issue that only comes from growing up. So emotions are contagious. High conflict emotions are highly contagious. And children don't have the mechanism to protect themselves from absorbing those. And either getting angry with a parent or getting angry at the parent and wanting to get away — so either way, it may build the child's resistance to one of the parents. Megan Hunter Yeah, that's kind of where I was going next. Well, let's start with in this particular situation, with the mom asking — saying, you know, this child wants to be here two weeks, not just four days with me. So asking for an exception to the parenting plan and the schedule. Why? So in this particular case it was reported by the dad and stepmom that mom is very lonely and really doesn't have any friends and relies very heavily on the relationship with the child to be, you know, kind of fulfill her happiness, so to speak. Now that's their point of view. I don't know the other point of view of that parent, but it's just reporting what's happened from their report. So this child has been healthy, has been happy, and goes back to — well, let's go back to dad's. At dad's house, it's reported there's a lot of structure and healthy discipline. Okay. In mom's house, there's a lack of structure, and it's more of a friendship in a way between parent and child, right? So you can imagine from the child's perspective, not only absorbing the emotions, but also getting over time perhaps not being too crazy about going to dad's house where there's going to be rules and structure. And at mom's house there's not so much. And you combine those two together and you start to see where the resistance to seeing dad down the road would come from. So what — let's walk through this child's life. Child goes back to mom's house and happy to see mom. I'm back in my, you know, happy zone. Happy zone in both houses, but within hours is sobbing uncontrollably. What's happened in that meantime? Bill Eddy I think a lot of what's most likely happening is the child's absorbing the mother's sadness. And the child fears, uh-oh, the mother's sad. So first of all, then the child feels sad and doesn't necessarily know where it's coming from. Because remember, pretty much the right brain's unconscious of what's going on. It's looking out for safety. It's looking out, am I in danger, picking up nonverbal cues. So picking up mom's distress. But what we often see is then the parent — and this could be dad — there's a lot of dads are kind of on the permissive side and mom's on the structured side. So this isn't a gender issue. It's really an emotions issue. Megan Hunter So you're saying it can be Disney dad or Disney mom. Bill Eddy Exactly, exactly. Megan Hunter How do we frequently refer to the parent that's being more permissive? Bill Eddy Right, right. And so but then what happens is the child feels sad, and mom may not be real self-aware and sees the child looking sad. Says, oh my goodness, why are you sad, Sally? Megan Hunter What happened to you? Bill Eddy Yeah, did something go wrong? Did something happen? Do you want to spend less time with your father? Do you want to spend more time with me? And the child's kind of like, whatever will calm the parent down. Because kids don't like intense emotions. It's very much a warning to them that there's danger and kids don't have the resources to save themselves from danger. So they really want to calm people's emotions down. So the child says, yeah, mommy, yeah, mommy. And so mommy says, oh, you know, my daughter doesn't like it at dad's house, without realizing it was their intense emotions that started the domino effect here. And that's what we see — people that don't have a lot of emotional boundaries also don't have a lot of emotional self-awareness. So they don't see how they're triggering other people's upsets and especially children's. So they get a child saying what actually they would prefer. But they don't own it because they don't realize that they're doing that. So part of our education is teaching people about this. Check yourself. Is it your emotions driving the conflict or is it coming from somewhere else? And especially for kids, they're like, they don't know where emotions come from. Megan Hunter Right, they just don't want to see a parent upset. Bill Eddy Yeah. Megan Hunter So then you kind of get that the roles reversed a bit and flipped in wrong directions where the child becomes responsible for the parent's feelings. And that's not a healthy place to be. Bill Eddy Exactly. And it's not. The majority of parents are pretty good at managing this. In other words, you know, your emotions aren't going to change the schedule, aren't going to change the plan. Most people know emotions aren't decisions. Emotions may be part of decisions, but you also need to run them through the logical brain, the left brain. So that if your right brain's upset, you gotta bring your left brain into the discussion and say, do we really need to change the schedule to two weeks? Is there something so terrible that's happening? And by the way, if they do change the schedule because of this seemingly upset emotions, there's going to be more and more instability. Because when emotions drive decisions, emotions change, which means then the decisions need to change, and that's a spiraling effect. Megan Hunter So what are dad's options in this scenario? Does dad give in and say, okay, fine, stay two weeks because he doesn't want his child to be upset, or do we stick with the parenting plan? What do we do? Bill Eddy Well, I think if mom's saying the child wants to change the schedule, then I would think dad needs to talk to the child and say, hey, what's happening here? You sound sad. You know, I'm looking forward to seeing you again in four days. And I think whatever it is that's happening can be talked through. And when everybody calms down, I think you'll probably feel fine. And it's better to be consistent. And I think the schedule works fine and your mother didn't know what to do, but I would think that just keeping consistency here would really be helpful for you. And so just kind of reassuring the child, not making the child make a decision, but saying, I think, as grown-ups, we need to do this. And telling mom, I'm not interested in changing the schedule just because there's some upset emotions this minute. And I think a reasonable parent can to some extent educate an emotional parent. And when I say emotional parent, I mean we all have emotions, but one that seems to have less emotional boundaries so that the child does see their emotions and absorb them — is let them know, you know, it's not a good idea for little Annie to have a schedule change whenever there's an upset. I think we should teach her that the decisions will be made by the adults and that we can manage this. Megan Hunter Now let's say that every night on the phone calls, when Annie's at dad's house, mom is saying to Annie on the phone or FaceTime, Zoom, whatever they're using, that it's only three days till you get to come back to mom's house. And then the next night it's only two days till you get to come back to mommy's house. It's only one day. Tomorrow you're coming. Is that healthy? Unhealthy? Neutral? Bill Eddy It depends on the effect on the child. Now if the child's like, yeah, can't wait to see you in three days, you know, have a good three days, then it may be fine. But I've had cases like this where the child bursts into tears and says, Dad, I want to go home now. Mom misses me too much. And the child wants to change. I had an example of a four-year-old boy who, you know, there was a lot of accusations and this and that that turned out not to be true. So he's now with regular weekend — starting regular weekend with dad — and at eight o'clock or whatever, phone call with mom. And mom says, I'm sitting in your bedroom. Your teddy bear misses you. Megan Hunter Oh dear. Bill Eddy I miss you. And the child bursts into tears. Daddy, can I go home to my teddy bear? He misses me. And it's like, dad gets on. What are you doing, mom? Megan Hunter Knock it off. Then there's conflict. Bill Eddy So it depends. If you have that lack of emotional boundaries and that's progressing, that's not a good thing. It's important to be supportive of the other parent, and you'll have a good time. And encouraging that. Megan Hunter With the child. Bill Eddy With the child, yeah. So that, of course, kids are going to feel — my experience is that kids prefer where they are right now. And going back and forth, whether it's mom's house — it's not about mom and dad. It's about uprooting yourself, putting everything in your backpack and heading out yet again. And I have a lot of empathy for that. But I think it's important that parents monitor their own emotions and ask themselves, are my emotions driving the child's emotions? Because when something comes up from kids, you've got to see where are they getting it. Emotions come from so many sources. And part of them are the parents and what they're saying and doing. Megan Hunter What should the dad in this case do? I guess it's a two-part question. Should dad talk to mom? If let's say mom really doesn't have a level of self-awareness here, isn't really a big conflict person, but just very unaware and typically would continue the same pattern, according to him, should he have a conversation with her? Bill Eddy That's the more important conversation because the grown-ups should be making the decisions. And I think the thing to say is, you know, we've got a decent schedule. We both have reasonable time. And let's stick with the schedule. And we can look at this in a few months, but I don't see any reason we need to change this now. And I think it's better to be stable for our child than to keep changing what the plan is. So let's stick with what we have. And of course, this is where you may end up getting lawyers and judges involved, if people are violating the schedule and it's detrimental to the child. But I don't think dad needs to threaten that yet. But if there continues to be a big problem, it may be we need someone to make this clear. We need to resolve this. Because it's not good for the child to not know what's happening. And by the way, there's no perfect schedule for kids. The best schedules are the ones that both parents agree to. Then the kids don't feel stressed and it becomes routine. Megan Hunter Yep. So would dad have a conversation with mom about her emotional boundary issue? Bill Eddy Well, it's tricky. Megan Hunter Like hash it out. Bill Eddy You could say, you know, watch out with your emotions. They think that maybe our daughter's picking up your emotions. Of course mom's going to be really angry about that. But I remember I was in a mediation. It's interesting. A couple that weren't seemingly angry. They'd separated a couple years earlier and they were changing some schedule things. And mom said, this is a 12-year-old girl saying, you know, she's 12 years old, starting to not want to go to your place. I don't know why it is, and I tell her to go, but she's starting to feel resistant to seeing you. So I'm not sure what's going on. This is where parents argue about it's all your fault. Should name a podcast after that someday. Megan Hunter We should think about that. Bill Eddy But then suddenly dad said, is she sleeping with you? Is she in your bed with you every night? And mom was like, how did you know? He remembered that before that had happened, that when the daughter would sleep with the mother regularly, the daughter would absorb the mother's emotions, especially sadness. So if mom like cries herself to sleep, and the 12-year-old sharing the bed, the 12-year-old's going to be not liking whoever made mom cry to sleep. And obviously it must be dad. And so it was the fact of sleeping with mom that made her resistance grow rather than something dad was doing. And that's people have to understand. You've got to consider more than one source when you see troublesome emotions. And parents really have to watch themselves. All parents — I mean, it's not just divorce situations. There are situations where you may need to talk on the phone in another room, and if you have to cry, you may want to cry outside of their hearing. So they don't feel responsible or worried that you can't handle life, whatever's going on right now. Megan Hunter Okay. So part two of that question is then what do we do with the child when the child's with dad? Dad and stepmom — when little Annie is with them, talking about is there a way to support Annie for the transitions that are upcoming. And is there anything they can say to her that will help her when she gets to mom's house, and there's probably going to be this, you know, sadness again and crying and upset. Is there anything they can do with the child? Bill Eddy Well, I think teaching the child the four big skills for life, which are managed emotions, moderate behavior, flexible thinking, and checking yourself. And making that a routine part of daily life. You know, we're learning to manage our emotions. That guy in the store, was he managing his emotions? No. No, he was yelling and did he get what he wanted? No, he was escorted out of the store. Just teaching the idea that managed emotions are good. Flexible thinking is good, moderate behavior is good, checking yourself is good. So when she goes and mom maybe is venting a lot, she can realize this isn't necessarily the way it should be. This isn't like the best way. Without dad saying, mom's too emotional — just say, we should learn to manage our emotions. And Annie and me, we're going to manage our emotions. So just kind of giving a framework to the child. And what's interesting about emotions is if you can name the emotion — like you're feeling an intense emotion, you can name it — its intensity reduces. And so you can say, I can see you're really angry, aren't you? I am really angry. Well, I'm not so angry now because you recognize I'm angry. Megan Hunter And so it's the acknowledgment of and recognition by — from another person — that resolves that, brings it down. Bill Eddy Yeah. It's like that's a part of life. Hey, you're angry. You're hungry. Everybody gets hungry. I'm hungry too. We're going to have to wait, but we're hungry. And it makes it more matter-of-fact. Megan Hunter I love the way you said that. We're hungry. Bill Eddy Yeah. Megan Hunter We're all hungry. Bill Eddy And it makes it normal to have emotions, but to also accept that they pass. You know, this too shall pass. Megan Hunter Okay. So I'm thinking, in this case it sounded like the mom isn't venting, but it's really a neediness that gets transferred. So would there be anything dad could do — maybe explaining the roles, you know, or maybe what the child's role is over at mom's house? I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there, Bill. Like, you're a kid and you don't have to — I don't know. Bill Eddy Well, no, I think that's a big part of it. You shouldn't have to worry about this. You know, you're a kid, you should be thinking about your friends and what you want to do next. And you shouldn't have to worry about my emotions, because I can take care of my emotions. That's my job. And you shouldn't have to worry about your mom's emotions. That's your mom's job. She's a grown-up. I'm a grown-up, but you're a kid. Megan Hunter So equalize it over both households. Bill Eddy Yeah, don't — Megan Hunter So it doesn't seem like you're attacking her. Bill Eddy Don't make it that she's the bad guy. Just make it, this is a normal thing for both of us. Making stuff normal really helps, I think, for kids, and letting them know what the solution is too. Like we're learning to manage our emotions and respecting that mom has different emotions and she's responsible for her emotions, but I have different emotions, I'm responsible for mine. So he can turn it into a lesson instead of a competition. Megan Hunter Oh, I like that. Yeah. Lesson instead of a competition. Good, good, good. And then role model that. Dad and stepmom can role model managing emotions, moderate behaviors, flexible thinking, and checking yourself. As long as you're doing that in front of the children and teaching them, you know, things that all of us need — like you said, the four big skills — then we're doing the best we can and making an impact. Bill Eddy Yeah, and making emotions manageable for the child. And especially if let's say dad and stepmom have a disagreement, then they should show making up for the disagreement in front of the child. It's like, you know, I just said some nasty things to Mary, and I didn't mean to say those things and I regret it, and I love Mary and I love you, Annie, too, and I just get upset every so often. You know? Megan Hunter Right. We can do a lot of repair work. Bill Eddy Right, repairing comments like that. So if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. It's what the big picture looks like. And to say, you know, marriage researchers — the Gottmans, John and Julie Gottman — say there's a five to one ratio of positive interactions to negative in all happy couples. And so if you've said something nasty, you gotta say five more things positive and you'll probably be okay. Megan Hunter Nice. I love it. Love it. Love it. Well, very good. This is such a big topic, but it can be simple. I mean, you can simplify it a bit, and I think we've done that today in this discussion. It doesn't have to be impossible, and there are things that parents can do within their own home in the time they have with the child. And I think that's — in my experience working with parents — that's something that many parents forget or don't even realize. There's kind of a mindset of, I gotta call a lawyer. I've got to go to court because they're going to fix it. And then the court — I was just asked on a podcast interview recently about the courts, all the judges — they're child trained in psychology. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. They went to law school. Bill Eddy Right. Megan Hunter And they — Bill Eddy They may be trained in utilities law or tax law. Megan Hunter Right, and — Bill Eddy They're there for the final worst biggest decisions if you can't make the decisions. But parents, you know your child, you love your child, you're the ones that should make these decisions, in all except exceptional cases. So judges really aren't there to raise kids in family court. Megan Hunter Right. It's a big ask if we really think about it. What we ask judges to do for families is a big, big ask in many families. So think about the things you can do within your own home. We will put some links to these articles and videos in the show notes. We thank you for listening. We'll also put a link to Bill's book, Don't Alienate the Kids. It's excellent for parents, for grandparents, for professionals, whether lawyer, therapists, judges — so many good tips in there. If you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, visit us at ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at trustory.fm or HighConflictInstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.