Kristen Carder 0:05
Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults. With ADHD, I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have ADHD, let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting, relationships, working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder, I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B.
Hey, what’s up? This is Kristin Carter, and you’ve tuned into the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, caffeinated, regulated and ready to roll. Hello, hello. Get in here. We’ve got stuff to talk about. How are you? Adhdr, I’m so glad that you press play on this podcast. It means the world to me. So glad that you’re here, so glad that you’re here, so glad that we’re hanging out. I love that people around the world tune in to hear about ADHD, the science behind ADHD, the research, but also like how to cope, how to live with ADHD, how to make our lives better, even when we have ADHD. I’m so honored that you would just be a part of this community here. Thank you to my listeners on Apple and Spotify, I appreciate you so much. I wanted to read a recent Apple review because your reviews make my heart so happy. Thank you so much. This is from herring Callie. She says, I’ve never reviewed a podcast before, let alone one on a culturally hot button topic. But wow, she hits it all Super vulnerable, but balance it with science and science backed research based on evidence, plus She’s hilarious, which Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Why does that mean more to me than anything else? I’m ridiculous. Okay, Kristen, so she’s talking to me. Ever since 2021 when I started my own journey, I have laughed and cried alongside of you, and I really appreciate and I’m super grateful for how you taught me to advocate for myself within my church, my friends and my marriage. Thank you, Callie from Seattle. Callie from Seattle, I love you. Thank you so much for reviewing this podcast. And if you are listening and you’re like, Oh yeah, I listen on Apple or I listen on Spotify, please give me a rating. Please, a five star rating.
That is, please write a review it. First of all, it means the world to me personally. I check them every day. I don’t know if that is unhinged. I don’t know if it’s unhinged, but it is like kind of the only feedback that I get from Apple and Spotify are the ratings and reviews. So the fact that you would take the time to do that means the world to me. And for those listening on YouTube, thank you for helping me, just like acquire the slow and steady growth we are getting there with YouTube. I’m so glad you’re here. I hope you love this set. I hope you love my sweater. I hope that you love that I’m like looking at your face right now, and I hope it feels connecting to you, because it certainly feels connecting to me to know that you are here. When you press that like and subscribe button, it means the world to me when you leave a comment, I always try to at least like your comment or heart it, and I love to respond to comments. So thank you so much for your engagement. I appreciate you. I really do this episode today is part two in our series on dysfunctional slash functional families and ADHD last week. Last episode. It was a heavy one episode, 372, if you haven’t listened to it, if you haven’t checked it out. I do think it’s a really, really important episode, and I also know that it was very heavy. We chatted about what a dysfunctional family looks like. And one thing that I wish I had said, Do you ever do this like after the fact you’re like, Oh, why didn’t I say that? I wish I had said this so I have an opportunity to say it now.
So I’m gonna say it now. I wish I had said if dysfunction is all you know because you were surrounded by it, because it was your family system, because everyone in your family acted this way, because everyone that your family was surrounded with like by also act this way. Acted that way. If dysfunction is all you know, you don’t identify it as dysfunction. That’s why the last episode was so important, so that we could name what dysfunction actually looks like. Because if it’s all you know, if it’s what you grew up in, if it was just like the culture of your family and your community. You don’t actually identify it as dysfunctional, which is why it was so important for us to name it. I am just going to very briefly review. I’m just going to name them, just so quickly. I’m just going to go through really quick the 10 signs of dysfunctional. Fan. Families that we talked about last week so poor communication, lack of empathy and emotional support, lack of boundaries, control and power imbalances, enabling and codependency, unresolved conflict and secrecy, parentification, conditional love, abuse and neglect, those are all Hallmark signs of dysfunctional families. And if you listen to that episode and you felt emotionally heavy or maybe like mad at me or a little disoriented, I want you to know that that makes sense whatever response you had to that episode makes sense, episode one, that episode last time, was all about naming reality, calling a spade a spade, calling the sky blue and the grass green, okay, and naming reality?
Why so much many of us like avoid it. And why our dysfunctional families avoid naming reality is because it stirs up so much emotion, and we struggle to regulate our emotions right so it can stir up grief and anger and shame and regret, and it might even stir up some relief to like have those things named and have me say, like, Hey, this is not healthy, that that actually might have felt relieving, but I’m going to also make the assumption that it felt unsettling, that it felt destabilizing, that it maybe felt like disorienting and like maybe you were just mad. Maybe you’re just like, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Kristen, and all of that is valid, okay, but I do hope it was really helpful, and that it provide, that it provided clarity. That’s what we’re going for. We’re we’re going for providing clarity, bringing the truth to light, naming the dysfunction again, if dysfunction is all you know, you don’t feel like it’s dysfunctional. It just feels normal. It just feels natural. And so I hope that it helped you to identify, oh, wait, I thought that that was normal. I thought that I deserved that, but I did it okay. And remember, we can’t change what we’re not willing to name. We can’t and this episode today is all about like, what are we aiming toward? What is a functional family look like? What What can I be working toward?
How can I do this? But again, the start of that is I need to be able to name what is unhealthy before I can move into a place of health. Okay? We got to see it for what it is. That’s the first step, living in the reality of our own story. That’s the first step. So that was last week’s episode. This week, we’re going to talk about what a healthy enough family looks like. Healthy enough Obviously, none of us has a completely healthy, functional, perfect, perfectionistic family. It’s not going to happen. I do not have one. Personally. It’s not possible. I mess up constantly. I rupture relationship with my kids constantly. I lose my cool constantly, but I know how to hold myself accountable. I know how to allow my partner to hold me accountable. I know how to allow my kids to hold me accountable, and I know how to repair Okay. Part of that is I have provided myself with a lot of support, and in this episode, I really want you to hear me say that if you are unsupported, it is very difficult to make these changes toward healthy, functional family. So if you’re not currently treating your ADHD, if you don’t have the support of your extended family, if you don’t have the support of a partner or really close friends, if you are not hearing from a therapist, if you don’t have a coach, a trauma informed coach, who is helping you make these daily changes. Right? So all of this that we’re talking about today is kind of the ideal, and I want you to know that it is possible, but it is not possible without support of some kind. We have to accept support of some kind. And if you have money to spend, spend it on supporting yourself to get the tools that you need in order to make these changes. If you don’t have money to spend, it’s gonna take more of your time and effort, but there are so many free resources on I almost said Facebook. I don’t know why. I guess because I’m a millennial and like, Facebook is the first social media platform. Yeah, but actually, that’s not true. I had MySpace before that.
Anyway, if you are willing to spend time on YouTube, on Instagram, on Tiktok, learning the wisdom of therapists that you trust that will change so much for you. There’s so much free content out there. So if you don’t have money to spend, if you don’t have access to care, that does not mean that you are doomed. You can do this for free. It might be a little bit harder, it might be a little bit more time consuming. It might take a little bit longer. That’s totally fine. It’s totally fine. There are resources available to you. I did mention Patrick Tien in our last episode, and I’m going to give you a bunch of resources at the end as well for free content that you can go and find and follow and learn from. Okay, we’re not looking for perfect families here. I really want to get that point across. We’re not looking for calm all the time families, but we are hoping, praying and working toward regulated enough repair, focused, emotionally safe enough families. Okay, so this episode is going to help you to understand what a healthy family system actually looks like, and to like notice your own wins, and see where you are doing some of this, and that’s great, and then also begin to make some small, realistic shifts toward a healthy, functional family. A healthy family is not a family that doesn’t have conflict. In fact, there’s a lot of conflict in a healthy family, but it it it means that conflicts are heard, accountability is taken, and repairs are made, and we’re going to talk about all of this. Okay, so just like I said last week, I encourage you to choose how you’re going to listen to this episode, whether you listen to it like in in terms of like your larger, broader, extended family system, or maybe you want to think it through in terms of like the current family, your immediate family, your partner, your kids. You can do that as well, right? And I really want to say, as we get started here, that it is never too late to make these changes.
If you have a pulse, you can make these changes and begin to change the patterns in your family. Okay, this is not like, oh, sorry, you, you missed it, you You’re too old, or your your kids are too old. That’s not how this is at all. You have time to make some changes, to make some repairs, to tweak the patterns in your family that can have a ripple effect for generations to come. All right, here we go. Here are 10 signs of a healthy, functional family. Number one, communication is direct and open and honest in healthy enough families, people speak directly to the source, instead of triangulating. Remember, last week we talked about like, how in dysfunctional families, there’s so much triangulation. So I, you know, instead of someone coming to me and saying, Hey, you hurt me, I get a call from my sister and she says, hey, you know, so and so is mad at you, and so I have to hear about it through someone else. That’s called triangulation. In healthy enough families, people are going to speak directly to the store, to the source, instead of triangulating. Okay, if I have a problem with you, I go to you and I talk to you about it. I don’t talk about I don’t, you know, go to someone else and ask them to handle it for me, passive, aggressive, aggressive comments are not tolerated. Okay? We say what we mean. We mean what we say. The end, hard conversations are allowed. They’re even encouraged. Hard conversations, they’re just part of the fabric of the family, and the truth is told even when it’s hard to hear. So there’s no like, shutting down, like, don’t say that that makes me feel bad, or you’re just trying to call me a bad parent. No, I get to tell the truth about my experience, even if it’s hard for the other person to hear.
Repair happens after conflict. After conflict, their repairs are made. Okay? And this doesn’t mean that everyone communicates perfectly all the time. It means that there’s a willingness to hear and make changes all right. There’s a willingness to like, allow people to speak, allow the truth to be told, and allow for changes to be made. Oh, you don’t like it when I yell, that must feel terrible. I’m going to do my best to change that behavior, because I care about your experience. Okay? Okay, so part of the way that we get there, and as with the other episode where I said emotional regulation is the key, that is everything here. So if emotional regulation is present, then I can hear the hard things without flipping out on you. I can hear the hard things without exploding, and I can say the hard things without completely melting down, right or going into some sort of like fight flight mode. Okay, so emotional regulation is going to be the foundation here. We’re going to slow things down. We’re going to regulate our emotions, even when someone is saying something that’s really hard for me to hear. All right, we’re going to speak directly to the source, and we’re going to name what is what we’re feeling instead of acting it out. So we’re not going to be passive aggressive. I’m not going to give you the silent treatment. I’m not going to just hope that you know what I’m experiencing. I’m going to communicate. I’m going to say, hey, you hurt my feelings. I didn’t like it when you did that. Okay? And we’re going to repair after the fact. We’re going to make sure that we’re not shutting people down when we’re hearing things. We’re actually going to have a conversation. It’s going to be a back and forth, it’s going to be open and honest, and we’re going to do our best to repair okay and make some changes. Number two, in a healthy enough family, emotional support is present through empathy and attunement. Now, I realized I used the word attunement a couple times in the last episode. I wonder if maybe you don’t know what it means, so I’m going to define it for you here. Attunement is the ability to notice, understand and respond appropriately to another person’s emotional state.
Imagine, I’m going to say it again. Attunement is the ability to notice, understand and respond appropriately to another person’s emotional state, especially before trying to fix, correct or control behavior. So I’m going to hear you, I’m going to understand your experience, and I’m going to have some like empathy and appropriate response to you. Wow, that sounds hard. It sounds like you’re struggling. I hear you. I can see that I hurt you like really validating someone’s experience before I try to fix, correct or control Okay, and in healthy enough families, emotions are taken seriously, especially the emotions of children in in a dysfunctional family that’s completely not present. We don’t take anyone’s emotions seriously, except for the most dysfunctional person, right? And children’s emotions are irrelevant. We don’t care about children’s emotions, but in a functional family, emotions are taken seriously, especially children’s emotions. Co regulation is the norm. Adults self regulate, and they co regulate with each other, and they help their children to regulate themselves. So adults are teaching children how to regulate, and they’re co regulating with them. Parents understand, in a healthy enough family that children need help regulating, and that it is a primary responsibility of a parent to co regulate with their children, to help their child become more regulated, instead of shutting them down, instead of sending them to their room, instead of punishing them for their emotions, we we validate emotions and we co regulate. That doesn’t mean that boundaries get crossed. It doesn’t mean that I don’t correct the thinking or behavior, but I do help them to regulate their emotions in a healthy enough family, emotions are not treated as inconveniences or attacks, and no one is punished for the way that they feel. All emotions are welcome. All behavior is not okay. Again. I just I always want to make sure that you are not hearing me say something that I’m not saying. All emotions are welcome, all behaviors are not welcome. Okay? We have our family culture, we have our limits, we have our boundaries, and the behaviors of the family members need to fit within those limits, but all emotions can be present. I’m not scared of your emotion. I’m not even scared when my kids are mad at me or when they are I mean, I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t punish them for it. Of course, they’re gonna be mad at me. They’re kids. They’re kids. Of course they’re gonna be mad at me. Okay, so nobody gets punished for the way that they feel. All emotions are welcome. All behaviors are not. So adults say things to each other and to their kids like, I see you. I understand you. That makes sense. I’m here with you. Okay, again, this is all about having a foundation of being able to regulate your emotions. If you need help with this, I have several episodes on the topic of emotional regulation. Completely free to you. If you need serious help with this, join focused, calm into focused, and take my course on emotional regulation. It is life changing. Okay? I There are resources available to you. We’re going to make sure to respond to the emotion. We’re going to see the emotion, we’re going to validate the emotion, but we’re not going to respond necessarily to the behavior. So I’m talking in terms of children.
So if a child is, quote, unquote, being bad. I’m gonna look at like, Okay, what’s going on with them? They seem to be having a hard time. Let me help them with their self regulation before I’m gonna correct the behavior. Okay? And for the listening audience, I put being bad in air quotes, okay? We’re gonna validate feelings even when we’re holding limits, and we’re going to remember that big feelings are not a problem. They’re normal, they’re natural. All emotions are welcome. Bring it. I’m here for it Okay, in a healthy enough family, boundaries are clear, consistent and encouraged. Each person is seen as an individual. Okay, this is big. This is the opposite of how you are seen in a dysfunctional family. Autonomy and individuality is honored, and it’s not seen as a threat to the system, to the family. How dare you differentiate from us? How dare you do something that we you know that we as the family system, don’t approve of no autonomy and individuality is something to be celebrated. We see you as the person that God created, and we celebrate who you are that’s so awesome. I don’t need to control you. I don’t need to tell you who to become. I don’t see you as an extension of me. I see your own individuality, and I celebrate it. Privacy is respected in healthy enough families, you’re allowed to keep some things to yourself. You’re allowed to have your own space, and you’re allowed to have your own inner world. Intimacy is not forced, okay and in terms of boundaries, like when dealing with adults, no, the word no, someone saying no is allowed. It’s allowed without guilt or punishment or retaliation, the word no is allowed. Now that doesn’t mean that you might not be disappointed by someone’s no it doesn’t mean that it might not be an inconvenience to you that someone said no, but it’s still honored, okay? It’s accepted. Adults get to say no. Adults get to set limits. Now, when dealing with children, no is still honored as often as is safely possible within the family’s limits. Okay. Now, every family is going to have different boundaries, different limits, but children should be allowed to say no as often as is safely possible. And there are times, obviously, when a child cannot say no, or like you’ve set a limit or a rule or you have an expectation, like you’re going to clear the table, and it’s not appropriate for a child to just say no, right? And so that’s when we like, Okay, well, let’s go on on here.
We need to have a conversation, but with the little things, with the things that we’re able to we’re going to honor our child to know, especially in terms of their own bodies, okay, especially in terms of their own body. Bodies. Boundaries are understood as a personal limit, not a personal rejection of you. Let me say it again. Let me say it again. This one is hard. This one is hard because when you grow up in a dysfunctional family and everyone around you in the system views boundaries as a personal rejection of them, and so you were never really able to have boundaries. And now you’re maybe parenting your own kids, or you’re in your own family system, and you’re trying to do it differently, but someone tells you no and it does feel like a personal rejection. This is where emotional regulation needs to come in. Okay? Because people are allowed to have limits. People are allowed to say no. People are allowed to say that feels uncomfortable. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to talk to you right now. I don’t want to talk to you right now. People are allowed to say that, and you don’t have to take it as a personal rejection. How do we get there? We learn how to regulate our emotions. Is that the answer to everything? It might be okay. It might be. We learn how to regulate our emotions. We tolerate the discomfort of our own disappointment. When someone says no, we tolerate the discomfort. Comfort of someone else’s disappointment when we say no, okay, we’re going to stop over explaining. We’re just going to like, Hold limits. We’re going to stop making our kids over explain themselves when they have limits. And we practice saying and receiving no kindly. We practice saying and receiving no kindly. We practice the mindset of this is not a personal rejection of me. This is my child or my partner or my sister or my parent expressing a personal limit, and that is, Oh, okay. They’re allowed to do that all right, in a healthy enough family, power is shared. Power is shared. Ah, I just I love it so much. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a hierarchy. That doesn’t mean that the parents are not in charge. That doesn’t mean that the elders are not respected. That’s not what it means, okay? But no one person controls the emotional climate. We’re not revolving everything around the most dysfunctional person to make sure that they’re comfortable, to make sure that we don’t disrupt anything, to make sure that there’s no explosions or that we’re not stepping on a minefield, right? No one person controls the emotional climate authority in the family, from grandparents and aunts and uncles and elders and parents, authority is used to guide and protect. Hear me say it again, authority is used to guide and protect, not dominate and control in a healthy enough family system, authority from the elders. And you know, if you’re thinking about your own immediate family, that’s you as the parent. Authority is used to guide and protect, not to dominate and control. This one is so massive, like I want to just highlight it and circle it and put glitter all around it and bedazzle it and make sure that you’re really hearing this authority is used to guide and protect, not to dominate and control.
Everyone with ADHD knows what to do to improve their lives. You go to bed at a reasonable time, you wake up early, you make a list, you cross things off the list in order, blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, we know what to do, but ADHD is not a disorder of not knowing what to do. It’s a disorder of knowing exactly what to do but not being able to get yourself to do it. That’s why I created focused. It’s an ADHD coaching membership for adults with ADHD. I’m a life coach with multiple certifications, and since 2019 I’ve coached over 4000 adults with ADHD from all over the world. I know what it takes to help an adult with ADHD go from Hot Mess express to grounded and thriving. I’ll teach you how to understand your ADHD brain, regulate your emotions and your behavior and accept yourself flaws and all. And with this foundation, we’ll build the skills to improve your life with ADHD. And not only do you get skills and tools and focus, but you’re surrounded by a huge community of adults with ADHD who are also doing the work of self development right alongside of you. Dr Ned Hallowell says healing happens in community, and I have absolutely found this to be true. So if you’re an adult with ADHD who wants to figure out how to be motivated from the inside out and make real, lasting changes in your life, join hundreds of others from around the world and focused go to I have adhd.com/focused to learn more. That’s I have adhd.com/focused to check it out. In this family, we’re going to trust the healthiest and most regulated people to lead. Again, we’re not revolving around the most dysregulated person. We’re instead turning our gaze to who is the healthiest here, who’s the most regulated person here, who has the most wisdom here? Okay?
And wisdom is shown by their actions of regulation and protection and guidance and personal health, okay, those are the people that we’re trusting to lead. We’re not revolving ourselves around the most dysregulated person, okay? So the way that we get there again emotional regulation. We’ve got to regulate ourselves so that we can stop managing other people’s reactions. We’ve got to stop giving power to people who consistently misuse it. We have got to stop giving power to people who consistently misuse it. If you notice that an elder in your family system is consistently misusing power, why are we? Why. Are we just like constantly turning to them to set the temperature of the family. Why are we doing that? Why are we doing that? Okay? We are going to model accountability instead of demanding compliance, and we’re going to choose leadership and guidance over control, right? Okay, in a healthy enough, functional family, accountability is key, and it is ever present, okay? Harmful behavior is addressed quickly. I’m snapping my fingers here, like quickly and directly. We’re not going to cover things up for years. We’re not going to pretend that things didn’t hurt when they did hurt. We’re not going to sweep things under the rug. We’re going to name harm immediately, and we’re going to find a solution together to the problem. Okay, so we’re not going to let things fester. I’m not going to stuff this down because, like, oh, it’s not worth talking about. It’s not worth talking about, and then it’s going to explode out later. No, all right, harmful behavior or hurt is addressed quickly and directly in a healthy enough family. When someone comes to us and they say, Hey, you hurt me, we don’t say, No, I didn’t we don’t say that didn’t happen. We don’t say you’re making a big deal of that. What like? What is your problem? You’re too sensitive. We say, Tell me more. I hate hearing that I hurt you. That’s horrible. Tell me more. What’s your experience like? I’m really sorry, even if I didn’t mean to do it, I’m still sorry that I hurt you. It may have been inadvertent. That doesn’t really matter, because I hurt you, and I’m sorry about that. Okay? So we are willing to take accountability for our own actions in a healthy enough family, and we’re also willing to hold our loved ones accountable for their actions. It’s a both and situation. Okay? So we let go of sweeping things under the rug.
We let go of pretending that things don’t hurt us when they do. We let go of keeping family secrets okay or like protecting someone’s comfort. We instead tolerate our own discomfort, and we tolerate the discomfort of other people so that we can have these hard conversations and bring the truth to life, because we want to bring the truth to light, because that is what functional looks like again. I just maybe we need to pause here and I say, I don’t necessarily mean text everyone in your family that hurts you immediately put your phone down. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is you might want to start telling the truth moving forward. You might want to let people know in the moment when they’re hurting you, you might have something in mind that you’ve kind of been carrying, that you’re like, is it worth it to talk about? I don’t know. I don’t know. You might want to say, Hey, I’ve been thinking about this. I need to let you know this really hurt my feelings. Okay, this is not about bringing a laundry list of all of your past hurts to all of the people in your family. That is not what I’m suggesting. That will not go well for you, I promise. But what it is is is a mindset shift. It is a it is a shift of okay, if I want to be someone who walks in accountability. What might that look like for me moving forward, and if you’re talking about like your own children and your partner, your own immediate family, that might look like going to your kids and saying, Hey, I realize that when you maybe it’s just even last week, or maybe you’re going to say, like when you were little, but I just I didn’t treat you the way that you deserve to be treated. And I want to let you know that if there’s anything that comes up for you that you remember that is hurtful, it is okay for you to come talk to me about it, I’d actually really appreciate you coming and talking to me about it, because I’d like to apologize for that. I’d like to take accountability for the ways that I hurt you, and I want you to know that like it will cause me pain, because I love you and I never want to think of myself hurting you, but I’m strong enough to take care of that pain so you don’t have to worry about taking care of me. I’m okay. I can do that on my own. What matters most is you and your experience, and I want to hear about that from you. Okay, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about creating a long list and then going to someone with your long list. It will go much better for you if you actually approach other people and say, Hey, is there anything that that you want to talk to me about? Because I realized that, like this relationship has been a little bit rocky, and I want to let you know that I’m doing some work. I’m doing some personal work, and I’m willing to hear from you if there are. Ways that I hurt you, and I want to take accountability for that, and I want to apologize for you. I want to apologize to you for that.
See how powerful that might be. Okay.
We could do a whole episode on that. We’re not going to. Let’s move on. Number six, in a healthy enough family conflict leads to repair, not rejection or silence. Conflict leads to repair, not rejection, okay? In healthy enough families, conflict is acknowledged, it’s not buried. This this goes hand in hand with our conversation that we just had on accountability, okay? Conflict is acknowledged, it’s not buried, it’s not swept under the rug. It’s not forgotten. It’s not the past was in the past. It’s not let bygones be bygones. Like we actually get to have a conversation, okay? We actually get to have a conversation about hurt and about pain and the truth matters more than image. So you know, you’re allowed to tell me things, even if they kind of make me look bad, okay? Because it’s not all pretty over here. I know that, so tell me the things that that were painful, even if it tarnishes my image, I still want to hear it, because I want to make sure that I am repairing with you. Okay, loyalty doesn’t mean tolerating harm, and repairs are made appropriately. So a repair looks like I’m sorry. I see that I hurt you. I acknowledge what I did. I wish I hadn’t done that. I apologize. How can I make it right? What do you need from me to make this right? What do you need to hear from me? Okay, that’s a repair. A repair isn’t. Get over it. A repair isn’t. Well, I said I was sorry. What more do you want from me? A repair isn’t. Do we really have to talk about this again? Oh my gosh. What is wrong with you?
Those are not repairs. Repairs are I’m sorry. I’m genuinely remorseful that either for what I did, if you did something harmful, or for the pain that I caused you, like it was inadvertent, it was it was like, not something I was trying to do, but I’m still sorry that it caused you pain. What can I do to make this better? That’s a repair, okay, so in a healthy enough family, people are allowed to say that hurt me, and they’re heard. Okay, so we’re going to practice this repair language of, I’m sorry. I see that I hurt you. I apologize. How can I make it better? All right, we’re going to practice that repair language. We’re going to name the impact without attacking character. So when you go to someone and you say, Hey, you hurt me. What you said hurt my feelings. We don’t say you’re an idiot. You’re so mean. I hate you, you know, how could you we don’t attack character. We just name the impact of what happened, right? And we stop confusing like sweeping it under the rug and ignoring it with like actual forgiveness. That’s not the same forgetting about it or pretending it didn’t happen is not the same as repair and forgiveness.
You see my raised eyebrows here? You know? I mean business. That’s the mom look right there. Okay. In a healthy enough family, there are age appropriate roles, so children get to be children and adults handle adult emotions and responsibilities. Kids are not used as emotional support, as mediators, as caretakers, as best friends or as therapists. Kids get to be kids, all right, adults regulate their own emotions. So of course, adults are going to feel overwhelmed. They’re going to feel sad, depressed, scared, angry, whatever, but they’re not going to rely on their children to calm them down or to cheer them up or to stabilize them. That is not the job of a child. All right, they’re going to lean on other adults for that. Adults are going to manage adult problems with other adults. So finances, marital issues, health, stress, work, conflict, all of those are going to be discussed with partners, friends, therapists, coaches or other support systems, not children. Children are doing the work of being children. They do not also need to do work for adults. Adults are going to provide reassurance to children during distress. Okay, so when a child is upset, the adult is going. To move toward the child. The adult is going to move toward the child with calm presence and leadership, instead of expecting the child to just be fine and figure it out, for the adult’s sake, right? That’s really like an adult centered environment, when it’s like, just go to your room and figure it out. I don’t have time for this. That’s an adult centered environment. Okay, so the adult is going to move toward the child to help them, to regulate and to help to stabilize them and to provide reassurance, so that the child can then borrow from their nervous system, borrow their calm, borrow their regulation. That’s co regulation at its core. Okay, adults are going to set limits without needing emotional care taking so they can tolerate a child’s disappointment without collapsing. So I can tell you no, and then I can handle your temper tantrum when I tell you no, I can set a limit, or I can issue a consequence for something that you did or didn’t do, and then I can tolerate my child’s emotional experience of that so many parents kind of collapse under their child’s emotional response to A limit or a consequence, or just like, you know, a boundary, right? And then it’s like, you’re making me feel like a bad mom. And then the kid is having to say, No, you’re not a bad mom. I love you. You’re a good mom. And all of the sudden, the child is taking care of the parent. Okay, in these circumstances, adults are going to take responsibility for repair, so if an adult messes up, they’re going to own it, they’re going to repair that. They’re going to move toward the child and offer an apology without expecting forgiveness or comfort or reassurance from the child.
And when the child messes up, the adult is still going to move toward the child and try to to repair that relationship, to repair that conflict, even though they weren’t the ones that caused harm. Okay, so in this healthy enough family system, adults are adults. Adults deal with adult things, and children get to be children, and Safety always comes before responsibility, so kids are responsible for only age appropriate things. Okay, so it’s really important, in terms of this section, that we begin to notice when we’re leaning on our kids emotionally. It’s very easy to do it’s very easy to treat our child like our emotional support animal. So just be really, really cautious not to do that. We are there to provide them emotional support. They are not there to provide us emotional support. Okay? So we need to build adult support outside of our children, with our partner, with our friends, with our therapist, with our coach, with our religious community, whatever it may be, all right, and we’re always going to take responsibility to repair all right. Three more. You still with me, let’s go fast in a healthy enough family, love is unconditional. No conditions. Love and acceptance are unconditional. This means that love doesn’t have to be earned. Acceptance doesn’t have to be earned. Worth is not performance based. No one has to hustle for their worthiness. Mistakes are not threats to belonging. Okay, you make a mistake, you do something wrong, you cause harm. It obviously it needs to be addressed and it needs to be repaired, but it’s not a threat to your belonging within the family system, okay? And we never say I love you, but I don’t like you right now. We never say that. We’re not going to say that. We reject that. We say I love you and I like you and we need to make a change here. Or I love you and I like you and I want to help you make a better choice, or I love you and I like you, but we need to have a hard conversation.
Okay, we’re never going to withhold our affection, our love, our acceptance of our child when they mess up or make a mistake. All right, so children are going to know I am loved because I exist, not because I perform, not because I’m always good, not because I can make my parents laugh or I’m my mom’s therapist, but I’m loved because I exist. So this our work here is to really, really work towards separating behavior from worth, and this took me a while in my own life to really separate. Can I like my child even when they are being really difficult? Can I accept my child as he is, even when he is so difficult? Old, Can I acknowledge that my kid is not giving me a hard time, he’s having a hard time. He’s not giving me a hard time, he’s having a hard time, and I need to be really careful not to be the reason for my child’s hard time. I need to be really careful not to be the cause of my child’s hard time. Okay, so we’re always going to make sure that we are loving and accepting our child even when it’s difficult, even when they are not complying, even when their performance like they need a performance review, even then we’re gonna love them. We’re gonna like them, and if we don’t, which, by the way, no shame, no blame, we’re gonna start. We’re gonna try. We’re gonna work toward that. We’re gonna try to figure that out. We’re gonna read books, we’re gonna listen to podcasts, we’re gonna watch free YouTube videos. We’re going to engage with therapy content on Tiktok and Instagram. We’re going to join focused to get, like, specific coaching. We’re going to find a therapist. We’re going to find we’re going to do the work to figure out, how can I love and like my child even when they are really, really testing my limits.
Okay, two more I talked about, in dysfunctional families, there’s a lot of abuse, even covert abuse, and so the opposite of that, in a functional, healthy enough family, there’s going to be safety and protection. Safety and protection in healthy enough families, emotional, physical, verbal and sexual safety non negotiable. We are all very concerned about it. We are all on the lookout to make sure that everyone is being safe, that everyone is protected, especially if we’re talking about a family system like the broader family system, the elders are very concerned with emotional, physical, verbal and sexual safety of the younger generations. Okay, this is what a healthy enough family looks like. In a healthy enough family, fear, coercion, dominance. They’re not used as parenting tools. They have no place in parenting. They’re not they do not exist in the parenting toolkit. Okay, boundaries around bodies, privacy and consent are respected, full stop, full stop and again, this is just the most important thing that I can say. Adults protect the children, even when it’s uncomfortable for them, even when it means that they might have to confront someone like a neighbor or a teacher, even when it means that it may cost them social or familial currency. Adults protect children even when it may cost them their position or their peace or whatever it might be, adults are going to prioritize protecting children, even if it might make them look bad in their social circle, even if their friends might question them, even if the teachers at school think they’re being ridiculous, adults are going to protect children. And in this type of environment, children feel safe. They feel safe. They don’t feel managed. They feel safe.
So how do we get there, we need to examine what was normalized for us, and if, if we are perpetuating some covertly abusive dynamics we do. We need to examine that. We need to really hone in on what was I brought up in and what was normalized culturally, socially and like, you know, family wise in my upbringing and and what unhealthy dynamics, what may be covert or overt abuse? Am I perpetuating in my own family because we can’t, if we can’t name it, we can’t change it. Okay? We’re going to interrupt fear based discipline. It works, but it’s not healthy. It doesn’t lead to long, lasting, connected relationships. Okay? So we got to figure out a different way to shepherd our children. We’ve got to figure it out. So, so that’s our work. That’s our job. That’s our job to figure out okay, and we’re always going to choose emotional regulation over anything else, over explosion, over intimidation, over, you know, using our bodies in ways to harm people. We’re going to. Choose to regulate. And this, of course, bears like the burden of Do you know how to regulate? Is that available to you? Can you calm your body down so that you don’t harm people? That’s a really important question to answer. And if not, it is on you to figure that out. And of course, there’s a ton of resources for you.
We’ll talk about those at the end, number 10, number 10 and number 10 last week. In a dysfunctional family, there’s a lot of neglect, different types of neglect, physical, emotional, medical and educational neglect in healthy enough families, physical, medical, educational and emotional needs are met reliably. Kids don’t have to guess whether or not support will show up. Kids are not left alone to meet their own needs. Adults advocate for their kids’ needs. They either meet their kids needs themselves, if they can, or they advocate for their kids needs being met, okay? Instead of dismissing, denying, ignoring, we’re going to see in a healthy enough, functional family that care is consistent. It’s not conditional, okay? So children who are not neglected, experience meals happening regularly. Hunger is taken seriously. Clean clothes and hygiene are taught, supported and monitored, monitored. Sleep is protected, bedtimes, routines and environments support, rest safety is actively managed, okay and medical care is present. Children who are not medically neglected experience adults taking illnesses and pain seriously. Preventative care happens consistently. Mental health is treated as real, and it is actually treated and supported adults advocate in medical settings.
So parents are asking questions, parents are pushing back when necessary, parents are following through on filling prescriptions and doing the things that need to be done, and then educationally children who have educational care, who are not educationally neglected, adults are going to notice when school is hard and struggles are seen as signals, not laziness or defiance. Learning differences are addressed like ADHD, dyslexia, processing issues or emotional challenges. They’re going to be assessed. They’re going to be supported. Okay. Adults are going to communicate with teachers in schools, parents are going to attend meetings, ask questions, advocate for accommodations, and kids are not left alone to manage their own educational experience. All right, support is predictable, and children begin to learn like, Oh, my parents are here to take care of me. I’m just a kid. I don’t have to worry because my parent is here to care for me. Because care, consistent, care, does not depend on the mood of the parent or the performance of the child, all right, and support doesn’t disappear when a child is difficult or emotional or struggling, support is consistent, okay? We’re not withholding support when our kids are annoying. All right, we’re not going to do that. So kids begin to learn. I can count on the adults in my life. I know they’re going to take care of me.
All right. So those were our 10 signs of a functional, healthy enough family. And I hope that it gives you something to work towards, something to emulate, something to say, like, oh, wow, I’m already doing, like, this one, this one and this one. And maybe I need to do a little work over here on this one and this one. But like, overall, we’re doing okay, okay? And if you listen to this and you’re like crap, I wasn’t raised with any of this, and I’m certainly not doing it well right now. I want you to understand, like I get it. I had that realization, it’s really not fun to wake up to that. I have so much compassion for you. I understand what that is like to be like. Wait, what? Wait, what? I just I can feel it in my body right now. It’s not fun. And I just wanted you to know that it’s never too late. It’s never too late to make a change. Okay, it’s never too late to learn something that was never modeled for you. It’s not about becoming a perfect parent or a perfect partner. It’s about becoming someone who knows how to repair, take accountability and make changes moving forward. Mm. Right? So change will happen. It’s not going to be dramatic, it’s not going to be all at once. It’s not going to be as fast as we want it to meet to be, but change will happen. Meaningful change is how the generational cycle of dysfunction ends, and it will end. It can end with you. I know that it can I’m looking, I’m just like, I hope you feel my eyes as a laser beam coming through the screen if you’re watching on YouTube. And I hope that you hear the intensity in my voice if you are listening, if you are part of the listening audience, because I do mean it can stop with you. I know that it stopped with me.
I also know that my family isn’t perfect, and that my kids have still been harmed by me and by the the things that I wasn’t able to learn early enough, the things that I wasn’t able to repair, and just the ways that I show up as a human and obnoxious, annoying mom, right? So it doesn’t mean that my children are going to come out unscathed. They’re not. I’m still gonna have to pay for them to go to therapy, and I have and that is fine, but I do know the difference between dysfunctional and functional. I do know how to name harm when I see it. I do know what abuse and neglect looks like. I do know what’s appropriate and inappropriate for children. I do know how to protect my kids, right? So these are things that I have learned over the last five years, and have been able to make incredible changes on and I know that you can, too, even with ADHD, especially with ADHD, I know that you can, all right, I want to give you a couple resources. First, if you want coaching, I want you to come and join focused. In focused. We are very, very concentrated on relationships and healthy family dynamics. And so if that’s something that’s interesting to you, go to I have adhd.com/focused, to learn more, and you will find a home with us. There are so many parents and grandparents in focus trying to do better, trying to figure out how to make changes and move forward without effing everything up. It is a beautiful place to be. A couple resources that you can find on Tiktok or Instagram at codependency Kate, I’m going to put all of these in the show notes, so don’t worry. But codependency Kate, she’s one of my most favorite recent follows. She talks about healthy relationships, healthy parenting.
At Tim Fletcher co talks about dysfunctional families and narcissistic families. At sit with wit talks about healthy families and family estrangement. She’s wonderful as well. And if you’re a person of faith, and you feel really confused by these conversations, because you’ve been told your whole life to honor your father and mother and forgive as Jesus forgave you, and to turn the other cheek, and you’re kind of like, how do I reconcile that with what you’re saying about, like, accountability and repair and like, how do I reconcile that? First of all, I am you. I know you. I’ve been you. I get it. I really like, for any of you who are kind of in that position at Ben V Bennett, he is a great person to follow if you’re kind of in that boat of like, what does this look like in terms of my faith and religion? So like I said, I’m going to tag all of these in the show notes. They’ll be on YouTube, they’ll be on Spotify, they’ll be on Apple, or wherever it is that you find your podcast, you can find these resources. I hope you find them to be really helpful to you. I really do and listen. I know that we can work together to have healthier, more connected, more functional family relationships. I know that we can I am in the trenches with you. I will see you next week. Bye, bye. A few years ago, I went looking for help. I wanted to find someone to teach me how to feel better about myself and to help me improve my organization, productivity, time management, emotional regulation, you know, all the things that we adults with ADHD struggle with, I couldn’t find anything. So I researched and I studied and I hired coaches and I figured it out, and then I created focused for you. Focused is my monthly coaching membership where I teach educated professional adults how to accept their ADHD brain and hijack their ability to get stuff done. Hundreds of people from all over the world are already benefiting from this program, and I’m confident that you will too go to Ihaveadhd.com/focused for all details.
