Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe some of life’s big and small problems.

Natalie
We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability together and with our guests because we like deep dives. So come with us — let’s reframe something.

Rebecca
Today we’re reframing our commitment to language. Does changing a self-care statement mean failure to follow through?

Natalie
Or is that attuning to ourselves and finding new words to say what we really mean?

Rebecca
If you’re someone who gets down on yourself for not following through on self-care commitments, this episode is for you. We do one of our Nat and Bec deep dives, and then bring in a ringer for support as we continue with our Women in Transition series. Julia Swaigen is a child and family therapist who has recently moved from practicing social work in the public education system to going full-time with her own private practice.

Natalie
And what started as a conversation around her career transition became a real time mini-session for two moms who attune well to the needs of others, but have to check in when it comes to attuning to themselves in their own words.

Rebecca
Nat.

Natalie
I’m ready.

Rebecca
Do you want to do a little check-in about our… what did we do? It was a...

Natalie
We had a 30-day challenge.

Rebecca
Right — that’s what it was.

Natalie
I’m just going to take a sip of my wine as you get yourself together there, Bec.

Rebecca
I forgot it was a 30-day challenge because it was such a dismal failure. But we made a 30-day challenge. Mine was I wasn’t going to complain.

Natalie
I wasn’t going to say sorry — that was my goal.

Rebecca
Ok. So for me, it didn’t go well. And we’ve said it — like, I came on and we had this talk already, right. We checked in about it, and now we’re examining it a little bit further — like, why didn’t it go well?

Natalie
Why didn’t it go well, Bec? Like, what was it for you that this came to a halt pretty quickly?

Rebecca
Well, I don’t know. I realize it’s not — I mean, Tamara was so funny. Remember when we were talking about it with her? She was like, “Oh yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.” She saw into my life faster than I saw in. Just that it wasn’t, like… I guess, one, maybe I don’t have the will to stop complaining because there’s something actually cathartic for me about complaining, which is maybe adjacent to venting.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
And that’s actually something that is useful for me. So I don’t know. But on the other hand, I’m a little bit confused about it, because it is like a weight on other people in my family when I complain. Right?

Natalie
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca
So you’d think that I would work a little harder at this.

Natalie
I’m saying ‘mm-hmm’ as if I’m feeling a weight — I don’t actually feel a weight. So just to say that’s interesting that that’s how you framed it for yourself — that it’s like a weight on other people, your complaint.

Rebecca
Well, it’s interesting that you don’t feel it as a weight, but yet we’ve both talked about how when mom is negative or complaining, we do experience that.

Natalie
You know, I think that can be because for me, when someone is complaining about something that is quite (is this even a word?) doably fixed, then that is not as energizing for me as working through a problem. And generally, when you present something frustrating for you, I don’t feel like it’s quickly fixed.

Rebecca
But sometimes I do complain about the same things, right? I had a drink with a friend last night, and she was talking about how she had a certain therapist in her life for a period of time who would get pretty frustrated and was just like, “If you don’t change this,” or, “You just need to stop saying this and make a change.” And sometimes I wonder if that’s true about me. But you don’t experience that?

Natalie
Well, I do think that probably that therapist is onto something. I’m not sure that therapists are supposed to get grumpy with you. That seems a bit odd, but I do think it’s true — there are some things that we could probably all just change and then we wouldn’t have to feel the negative effects of something that’s constantly getting in our way. But do I think that that is like, I don’t know, an overall problem, like, in terms of you? That’s not really how I hear it. I think of the idea of circular discussions as just being very human. We had a friend many, many years ago who talked about having gone to her counsellor who described… it’s a little bit like a cyclone, or whatever it is. What’s the one that kind of spins, like out of Wizard of Oz?

Rebecca
Tornado.

Natalie
The tornado, yeah. So you get spun around and you hit the same thing again and again and again. But hopefully when you hit it that time around, you respond a little bit differently if you’re being introspective enough to work your way through it. And I would say that’s you. I don’t hear the same words coming out of your mouth every time. I hear you navigating something that hasn’t gone away, but you’re trying to grow.

Rebecca
No — no growth.

Natalie
I think there’s growth.

Rebecca
I’m not trying to grow. Well, ok — the other thing I was thinking is that another reason maybe I don’t have the will to stop complaining, or when I just say, “30-day challenge, stop complaining,” is that I see sometimes complaining is like… it’s part of critical examination.

Natalie
Yes, I totally agree.

Rebecca
Maybe for me. So it’s like: how can I stop critically examining things in my own life? So just to shut that off doesn’t make sense. But then I do, I think — Simon might experience me as sort of devolving into negativity. So I think those two are… it’s a delicate balance to just be critically examining, versus, “Everything is bad in my life.” All to say, so maybe it was too simplistic to just say, “No complaining.” It needed different language, which is sort of what we’re coming here to talk about, right? Nat; Right.

Rebecca
I think it’s a thing in my life, complaining — or seeing the negative (or I like to say ‘realistic’) side of things. But I do really admire people who are really positive, or… like the friend I was with last night, she doesn’t feel the need. I wouldn’t say she’s a complainer, but you don’t necessarily see me as a complainer, do you? Or do you? You can be honest, Nat.

Natalie
Do I see you — like, is that the word I would use to describe you? It wouldn’t be top of mind. No, I wouldn’t say ‘complainer.’ Complaining, to me, I just actually think it’s the wrong term right now, because complaining sounds like someone who’s just like, “Oh, it’s too cold.” Well, go fucking turn up the heat. Like, that’s not you. You would turn up the heat. We’re looking for another word here, which is maybe why it didn’t work out. Because, as you say, it wasn’t the right language.

Rebecca
Ok. Ok, we’ll come back to this. Because I also don’t want to just, you know, just don’t want to change because I’m being lazy about this pattern that I’m in in my life — that just feels comfy to bitch.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
You know what I mean? We all have patterns, and they feel good. We get some reward, some feedback loop from them. So I also want to self-examine — like, do I just not want to do the hard work of changing?

Natalie
Yeah, and that’s a really good point. And I would say that there are two thinkers that kind of butt up against each other for me, and one is a guy that I don’t even remember his name — which highlights something about my kind of shrug at him. But basically on TikTok, he was a psychologist that I saw that somebody had taken a screenshot of. But his point was complaining is the worst thing you can do because it gets in your way, and if you would just stop complaining, then your life would be better. That was his schtick. And I was just kind of like, “Wah?” But then you have Sara Ahmed over on the other side of the spectrum, who I have also talked about on this show, and she’s an academic. Her most recent book is called A Pedagogy of Complaint, and she’s looking at it through a feminist lens where she’s very specifically saying complaint is necessary for change. But she’s also determining who gets to complain and what that complaint looks like and what it means. Like, it’s not just about the personal, but about the social.

So I wonder, in terms of just living a day-to-day, if there’s got to be something in the middle. You asked me what’s a word that I would use to describe you. And I guess I would say… not ‘complaint,’ but I would say, like, if there’s sort of a spectrum of experience, you would lean into more quickly the negative of a thing as opposed to skewing towards the upside. And I think it does, you know, show up in a realistic kind of worldview of having been an artist and knowing how tough things are in terms of how to quote-unquote ‘make it.’ So I think it comes to you honestly, but ‘negative’ is a different term to me than ‘complaint.’ So what do we do with that? I don’t know. I think there is room for change, as you say.

Rebecca
It’s kind of funny though, because I’d be like, “No, no, I don’t complain. I’m negative.”

Natalie
Well, you asked for honesty, I gave you honesty.

Rebecca
No, I like it, Nat. I’m going to look at myself rigorously. Ok, but just for you — tell me about how your sorry, no sorrys went.

Natalie
Oh, it was a gong show — like, nothing worked at all. And in fact, not only do I still find myself saying sorry for like, the most ridiculous things, but I’ve now heard Frankie start to do it. And I’m finding that is making me need to interrupt myself all the more. But I’m also then recognizing how hard that is, because if at eight my son is now apologizing — but like, with big apologies, like, “Mommy, are you sorry I was born?” And he wasn’t being flippant. Like he really meant it, because we’ve been having trouble sleeping as a family, as is our way. He’s been having nightmares, which I’ve learned, I’ve done some reading on. It seems that at eight is a real big shift in terms of children in their developmental processes. And so I don’t know if regression is the right word, but definitely it can interrupt. It’s a big time of shift between childhood and preteen. So there’s this big move, and so it’s not unusual that he would then be experiencing this, but it’s exhausting. You know, our bed is only a queen, and so when I fall asleep in his bed to help him go to sleep, because that’s what he’s asked for and I’m trying to honour what he needs — and last night, he actually was like, “Mommy, you go. I’ll just hang out with Daddy.” Like it was supposed to be this relief for me, and it was.

And so when he has said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry about this,” even though every time he says, “I’m sorry,” I’m like, “You don’t need to be sorry,” he also sees that I’m tired. But when it got to like, the next step of him saying, “Are you sorry I was born?” — like, he’s not even trying to guilt trip me. I think this is where his mind goes. So no, no, no, you’re the best thing ever, all those really positive statements, but it’s making me realize that my sorrys (and I’m not putting this all on me, I already said it’s a developmentally appropriate phase he’s navigating), but I don’t think that my proclivity to sorry is a help. So it’s a language change I need to make, and for whatever reason… and maybe it’s what you said, about kind of just what’s comfortable. Like, if it’s comfortable for me to sort of fill a silence with a sorry, then that obviously is like a go-to. So, my God, I obviously need to make a shift. If not for myself, for Frankie. But it’s certainly going to take more work than one 30-day challenge.

Rebecca
Can I help you? Is there any way we could help each other?

Natalie
Well, I would hope so. Do you actually think that maybe there is sort of a quick substitute of a word I could just kind of grab hold of, instead of ‘sorry’?

Rebecca
I don’t know. Ok, give me an example. When would you say it? Like, when did you say it today? Do you know if you did?

Natalie
Well, right before we started taping this episode, I ran upstairs because the Internet was being a bit wonky, and so I ran up and instead of just saying, “Guys, can you tell me what you’ve got on your computers, my internet’s going wonky,” I said, “Sorry team, can you tell me this?” So it was like my intro term.

Rebecca
Like, “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

Natalie
Mm-hmm. That’s at the heart of it.

Rebecca
Yeah. I mean, I can certainly see the value of interrupting that, because why do you have to feel bad for doing something that you need to do? You might need to do something different so I can do what I need to do.

Natalie
But I don’t think anybody has done that to me. Do you know what I mean? I really think that this is like a habitual thing, so I’m just trying to think of what would be maybe a word or a phrase that I could substitute in there. Because the white out thing — you know, just taping over the word ‘sorry’ obviously didn’t quite work for the initial 30-day challenge. So is it because I need something, an alternative?

Rebecca
Right, ok. So if I was your therapist, what do you think an alternative could be?

Natalie
Mm-hmm…

Rebecca
“Yo yo yo.”

Natalie
I was going to say, “Hey.” It could be something. But I mean, actually, I think about it — if it is just filling silence to get to the thing of saying my need, like if that’s what it is, it’s like a padded word to sort of help me say the thing I need, then maybe I just need another word. Like maybe it is just ‘hey.’

Rebecca
But also I just want to ask you, because I don’t see you as having a problem in other circumstances asking for what you need. Are you more deferential because you’re trying to create a peaceful environment at home? Because I would see you in other contexts — like if we were in a restaurant and you weren’t getting what you needed, I don’t know that you would start with ‘sorry,’ but you tell me.

Natalie
Yeah. No, that’s a good question. I definitely would use the word ‘sorry’ a lot in my classroom, as a bridge to things, especially when they were maybe what a student might determine to be a harder emotional ask. So you’re right, it could be like an assumed peacekeeping strategy.

Rebecca
“That I’m assuming that there is the potential for me to be inflaming this, so I’m going to start by…”

Natalie
By interrupting that. Yeah yeah yeah. So if that is in fact what it is, then maybe the ‘yo yo yo’ or ‘hey’ does the same thing.

Rebecca
“Hey, folks.” Folks. If you could just… a perky lilt of the voice.

Natalie
Yeah — “Team.” Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca
“Team. My team.” Remember I said that I was in that writing class and there was a guy in the class, every time he wanted to participate, he would say, “Good people.” “Hey, good people.” Or, “Good people, this is what I’m thinking about.” And I really liked it. I felt it wouldn’t sound right coming out of my voice. It might sound forced, but I really appreciated that. It felt like he had an expression, or he had a way that established a collegiality between us, and it was very much his own.

Natalie
Well, and I remember that Supernova Momma, when she was on here, Tash, she would start most of her conversations with, if it was sort of like the beginning of a big thread or whatever it was, it was always, “You handsome and gorgeous lot.” So obviously there’s something about creating an online persona that, you know, you’re trying to set a scene for your readers. But I wonder if I could also borrow from that, as you say.

Rebecca
Yeah. “Hey, you awesome and gorgeous family members. What’s happening on the internet right now?” But that’s really nice, because I sometimes just go right for the… I don’t know if I say sorry as much.

Natalie
No, I don’t hear you say it. Yeah.

Rebecca
But I’m not making a huge effort to create a peaceful environment, necessarily. So I like that, that that’s a goal of yours and I think a nice, different phrase of greeting people or your family, but without using the ‘sorry.’ Because the ‘sorry,’ I think it feedbacks into ourselves as, “I need to take care of everybody,” or, “I’m responsible.” Or what — like, what do you think the ‘sorry’ does to you?

Natalie
Yeah, I think it’s that. I think you’ve hit on something for me that I didn’t expect tonight. And I wasn’t really… I mean, maybe when I even came up with this as my potential challenge for those 30 days, it was sort of like an instinctive awareness of this use of this language that wasn’t great, but now we’re unpacking a bit more, like, why I’m using it — which is perhaps then how to make a change. If it’s not just about make the change, but it’s about here’s a reason why making that change means something. I mean, in teaching, I would have called it metacognition, right? Like the ‘why we do what we do’ stuff. So I guess I’m applying that to myself. But it’s hard. Like, it feels hard.

Rebecca
It is hard. It is hard. And I was thinking just in general about… I had a therapy session this week and felt it was good. And then afterward, I think I was irritable for a whole week after the session because I’d really dug into some stuff again that in some ways I don’t even know if I needed to. Just I had the session booked, whatever. So we went down the road of certain issues, and it just struck me how hard change and healing really is. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to change and then do well and be better, whatever, and then to love ourselves through when it’s not working. Because I think probably if I went back to her and said, “Wow, it actually was a really frustrating week,” after the session, she probably would be like, or continue to say, “Love yourself through all that frustration,” — which I was more annoyed at myself for not processing well or positively.

Natalie
Yeah, or quick enough, or whatever sort of words could be used that become value-laden.

Rebecca
Quick enough, yeah.

Natalie
She might even have said to herself, “Wow, well done, me,” of her own work as a therapist.

Rebecca
You mean to really unearth?

Natalie
Yeah. Like, it’s interesting. I wonder how they would sort of sit with somebody’s response after the fact. Because if somebody walked away and was just like an iceberg, then that must make the therapist feel like this is going to be a long thaw, whereas you obviously went right in. That sounds like a gift — both to her and to you.

Rebecca
And my body was very responsive afterwards. It’s all muddled and messed up. That’s true, actually, I did have an acupuncture… my guy, Jeremy, he was like, “Your body is really responding and very attuned.” Yeah.

Natalie
Well, see? Here people can thank you. There’s no ‘sorry’ there.

Rebecca
I know, but what do I need? I don’t know. I feel like sometimes I end up giving the therapists and the practitioners… like I sometimes end up coming and trying to serve them, as opposed to serving myself in the process. Ok, so I think the point for me: do you have a suggestion for language? I guess, really, the complaining, it’s too simplistic to just say, “Don’t complain,” but I also really want to examine this thing in me, and I do want to be a little bit more positive.

Natalie
I think that I would suggest, for real, taking a breath often. And I feel like I’ve even heard you say that you’ve heard somebody use this as like a suggestion in terms of just general life practices. Like before you say something, take a breath to really help you to determine what it is that you’re going to say. Because if you are in tune with the breath (and you are a much better meditator than I’ve ever been) but that idea of being in tune with the breath, which means being in tune with the body, means you’ve also paused before you let your mind go solely to negativity — which you know you’re going to make your way back towards positivity with the people around you, because you’ve got someone like me who’s going to talk you through to that. That is sort of my way, right? But you can flex the other muscles all on your own. And so I wonder if taking that breath before saying (if we’re just going to use the too easy term of) complaint, I wonder if that would alter how it comes out. Not so that it becomes like some sort of toxic positive nothing. But could it reshape, could it reframe the thing you’re about to say just slightly differently? So is there some sort of, like, breath work — which, you know, is language that’s used in meditation? Does breath work have the potential to modify language? I wonder at that.

Rebecca
Yeah. As opposed to just because I’m really quick, sometimes I’m quick to dive in — could I just breathe first?

Natalie
And I wonder if I could apply that same strategy to myself. Like instead of even needing a word to bridge something, could I not just take a breath before saying the thing I need to have happen? So the breath could negate the ‘sorry,’ but the breath could also help to alter a potential complaint into something that’s just more of a statement.

Rebecca
I like that. And I also want to say, it’s not natural for me, but it is for my therapist: is could we also infuse, in that moment of pause, love for ourselves?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
I don’t know how to do that, but I just would plant that thought in both of us that we don’t come to those pauses with judgement and frustration at ourselves that we’re taking a pause, that we have to take a pause, or I forgot to take the pause. Or, I mean, all of that is just coming with the love that we’re trying to bring to our families, or each other. That we’d bring it to ourselves. Yeah.

Natalie
Yeah. To our friends, to each other. Yup yup yup.

Rebecca
I like your suggestion. I didn’t expect that from you, Nat — the breath idea.

Natalie
Good. I like to keep you on your toes. And now we can all go learn from Julia.

Rebecca
Yeah. Ok, now for our conversation with child and family therapist Julia Swaigen.

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Natalie
Hi, Julia.

Julia
Hi.

Natalie
This is kind of funny, getting to be in a conversation with you all these years later when we first met in a pool — like, in our bathing suits as teenagers.

Julia
Yes — yes, we did. All three of us.

Natalie
This is our interview with Julia Swaigen as a part of our Women in Transition series. And the transition here is not from lifeguard to professional.

Julia
I mean, I did that too, but…

Natalie
Exactly. So tell us a little bit about what this big transition has been for you.

Julia
Yeah, so this big transition was moving from a school social worker in a large school board to going off on my own and starting a child and family therapy practice. So in my job before, I was working in schools with children and some with parents and teachers and staff, and I did it full-time for a while. I did it part-time for a while. I did both part-time for a while and then I transitioned into going all in with running a child and family therapy practice here in The Junction in Toronto.

Rebecca
And why — why did you do that, and why was it the right decision for you?

Julia
So many reasons, both personal and professional. So on a professional level, I wasn’t able to do the kind of deep and meaningful work that I wanted to do. There are a lot of things that got in the way of that in the system I was working in, but it connects so closely to my personal reasons because I also had kids and had some of my own struggles in parenting and became deeply passionate about the type of work that we’re doing at Attuned Families. And so it was sort of a combination of, like, really realizing on a personal level the importance of this type of work, and also on a professional level, and not being able to deliver the level of service that I wanted to be able to deliver in the job that I was in — and just wanting to get more of this type of support out to more families. And then of course, the other side of it was the hours. I have much more flexible hours now, which allows me to be with my kids more.

Natalie
So what does that service mean? And you chose the name Attuned Families, so what are you attuning to?

Julia
So that service — I mean, working in the public system (and I honestly admire anyone who’s doing it), you’re up against so much. And so when I was first working in the public system, I was actually able to spend quality time with my clients and do clinical work. The job actually changed partly because I got moved to a different area, and so I would be trying to support in a part time role over 50 families or children, not to mention many, many hours a week of meetings that took me away from direct support to those kids. And so I couldn’t do any meaningful clinical work. I was more sort of putting out fires and trying to connect families with other supports. And so at Attuned Families, I can spend a clinical hour per week if needed — you know, different families need different frequencies of work. I have time to do training and professional development, professional consultation. It’s just like the infrastructure is there for me to provide a high quality service, and the type of service that really resonates for me and the families that I’ve worked with so far.

Rebecca
Can you connect it again back to your own family and your parenting struggles? Because that’s interesting to me, and there was obviously some tuning in, or is that what you mean by the name?

Julia
Yeah. So before I had kids, I had actually been trained mostly in a behaviourist approach, in a cognitive behaviourist approach — like CBT, behaviour therapy, which really looks at, essentially to simplify it, rewards and consequences is how behaviourist therapy works. And CBT is a very sort of scripted… I do still use pieces of CBT, but using a purist model of CBT, it’s a very scripted or prescriptive approach to working with kids. And not all kids jive with that. I find that with kids you really need to go at their pace and start where they’re at, and be really flexible and creative in how you approach therapy with them — basically so that you don’t do harm, frankly. So when I had my children, I knew a lot about attachment in the early years or early months, actually, in infancy. I think we do a pretty good job as a society of talking about early attachment. And so things actually went quite well for us in the baby stages, sleep deprivation notwithstanding.

But when my daughter got a little bit older, I lacked the knowledge around how attachment works with older children. And our family has some circumstances that, you know, a lot of families might not face. We had a loss, we had some trauma, my daughter had some medical issues, so there were some complications. And long story short, my daughter started acting out. And so I pulled out my little tips and tricks from my behaviour therapy, and we’re going to do rewards and consequences, and not only did it not work, it made things worse and it felt wrong to me. It didn’t sit well in my body, if you will. It was a bit of a crisis for me personally because of what I had done. You know, I was really underprepared and overconfident around parenting because I worked with kids for so long, right? So I thought, you know, “I know what I’m doing.” And I was really lost and I didn’t know what to do. What I did know is that from my work in schools, having been able to look back and do assessments with families and see their school records, getting a child in grade seven, for example, I could often see if you had had intervention back in kindergarten, this would be a very different story. There would have been a very different trajectory for this child. So for me, there was a real urgency to figuring out how to support my daughter because I knew where we were headed.

So I actually ended up retraining and learning a lot more about child development, attachment theory, and it changed so many things for us as a family that I really felt the need to get the information out there. Because this information isn’t new, it’s just not been out there enough. And so I decided to work with a few families just to see if it worked for other families, first of all, and also just to pursue this passion. And that ended up turning into the organization that we have today, which is much bigger than me working with a few families. We have quite a number of therapists. I’m very lucky that I was able to, over time, find therapists who are also really interested in this approach. And there aren’t a lot of spaces where they can use this approach, so they were equally as happy to find us. And so it’s been great.

Rebecca
So, just because I’m interested in the approach, so you discovered you needed to attach differently and almost use less words — can you describe that a little more? Because that might even be interesting for people.

Julia
Yeah, it is so complex. Essentially, if you have a secure attachment, if your child has a secure attachment relationship, that is pretty much the most important factor in setting them up for success in life. And what happens is, while my family had some, you know, uncommon or not-so-typical challenges that really sort of threw us into a bit of a tailspin, the average family actually isn’t set up for success in developing healthy attachment relationships. We’re too busy. We don’t have the knowledge that we need. We don’t have enough support. We don’t support families well at all, in my opinion. And so the reason Attuned Families is called Attuned Families is because attunement is the process that is really sort of at the heart of developing a healthy attachment relationship.

So… do you remember Dr. Sears? Do you remember all of the seven B’s, like, “Wear your baby, sleep with your baby, extended nursing.” Those behaviours were thought to encourage healthy attachment. And it’s not that they don’t. It’s just that you can have all of those, you can be doing all of those behaviours, but if you’re not attuned on a psychological level, you’re still not going to have a healthy attachment relationship. And so many families are dealing with intergenerational trauma. Many of us are trying to parent in a way that we weren’t parented. So to be attuned to your child’s needs can actually be really challenging for a lot of parents. And a lot of parents need support around… yes, understanding the process, but it’s almost like we need to provide some nurture and reparenting for parents so that they can create this space and open up that psychological process for them. Does that make sense?

Rebecca
Yeah, it does. It’s interesting because Nat, it sounds a bit like your doctoral work with teachers. Is that partly why you and Julia connected again — like, it’s kind of about caring for the carers?

Natalie
Yes, that’s what I’m hearing — absolutely. And it’s really fascinating because caring for the carers, there’s such a direct link that I feel gets missed in… we’re not just talking kind of education in a big sense, but even in therapy. I mean, I can always come across as the naysayer around therapy, and I’m not — that’s not at all what it is. But I think that sometimes when things happen in isolation, it’s really great if that work is happening between, say, the therapist and her client. But there’s this sort of crew that surrounds that one human. There’s no human operating completely in isolation — I mean, not very many, anyways. And so if there isn’t an awareness around how to do the meaningful care work in the larger sphere, then how can the work really play out? Yeah, it really makes a lot of sense for me. And did we connect that way? I think we did, yeah.

Julia
I don’t know. I don’t remember exactly how. We’ve actually connected in so many different ways over the years, which is so funny. But I 100% agree with you. And part of our work is around, you know, cultivating your village of support. Like, I run a parenting group for people who want to be working on parenting, but also who want to develop a better support network around them. And the parenting curriculum that we’re developing, we were just working on it yesterday and saying, you know, we want to encourage people to consume this material with as many people who are in their circle of support as possible. And I still actually do work with schools. So we do emotion focused skills training, for example, for teachers, so that kids are receiving that nurturing and that attunement at school and hopefully at home. So it’s really like wherever we can work holistically it’s really important to do so, for sure.

Rebecca
It’s always kind of listening to the need beneath the need. Is it that kind of thing? Like, if a kid says, “I want this,” are you trying to listen to what’s below it? Is that part of it? I’m just going to come for a session, Julia.

Julia
So it’s not that 100% of the time every day you need to be deeply listening to what message might be underlying, like, “I want juice.” Right? Because then your kid’s going to be pretty confused, and you’re going to be exhausted. But it’s about… I’ll tell you a little story. My daughter, I guess the cherry on top of the cake of things that went wrong in my poor older daughter’s early upbringing was welcoming a new sibling. So she had already been through some medical stuff. She’s been through a not good childcare situation. We’d had a loss in the family. It had been a hard time. And she behaved so poorly one day soon after her sister was born that I did something like, “Oh, well, I guess we just need to go upstairs for bath and bed right now.” And I took her upstairs and she just started crying. And as I was taking her up the stairs — and this was probably while I was in the process, or near the process of retraining, and so, you know, rewards and consequences. Consequence for that behaviour is off we go to bath and bed. But it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t so much the consequence. It was really the disapproval that she felt from me, right? And so she just melted into tears. And as I was carrying her up the stairs, I started to melt too. And I put her down, I remember so clearly, beside the bathtub. And I got on the floor with her and I said, “It’s not easy being the big sister, is it?” And she said, “No,” and then she just came to tears and she just got really soft and she just fell into my arms. And I just held her and I was like, “Oh my gosh.”

I was really missing the mark. I was seeing the behaviour and I wasn’t seeing where that behaviour was coming from. And we see a lot of behaviours in kids, and what’s underneath those behaviours are needs and emotions. And they don’t know how to say, “I’m having a hard time.” So they show you. And as parents, the behaviours either inconvenience us at best or make us jump 30 years to where our child ends up a psychopath in a ditch. Sorry for using the term ‘psychopath,’ I’m trying to use common language, but I hear from parents and they’re worries of, like, “My kids are not going to be ok because look at how they’re acting.” So there’s a lot of fear there, and we need to fix and quash this behaviour.

So Attunement is really about tuning into, like, your child’s inner experience and what’s going on for them. We ask a lot of kids, we ask them to go to school all day. We ask them to go to school on the first day of school into the care of someone they’ve never met before. Right? Like, on a neurobiological level for our kids, that doesn’t jive for them. And then if our kid is crying and doesn’t want to separate from us and go to school, you know, we’re that parent or they’re that child. But they’re programmed, children are programmed to need connection with us and to seek out that connection however they need to do that. And so it’s really about meeting those deep connection-based needs, so that our kids can be freed up for learning, so that we don’t see so many problematic behaviours. No child is going to be perfectly behaved, but it certainly reduces problematic behaviours. It’s huge for learning. Like, I’ve talked to a lot of parents who are spending a lot of time on tutoring and trying to get their kids caught up, but the foundation on which all learning rests is the part of the brain that develops through connection and healthy attachment.

Rebecca
Yeah. So that really when we see behaviours, it’s about: are they feeling safe and connected?

Julia
Yeah. And are their needs being met? And it’s not always about us. It can be about them and not having enough of us, right? Or it can be about school being really stressful for them, or something going on with peers that can be really stressful for them. You know, when you come home after a really stressful day and you start venting, whoever your support person or partner is, how do you want them to respond to you? Do you want them to say, like, “Could you not talk like that? Could you please be more polite?” No. You want them to say, “Oh my gosh, it sounds like you’ve had a rough day,” at the risk of oversimplifying. And the other thing is, there’s just a lot that we need to learn collectively about child development that’s certainly out there. But there’s also a lot of frustration in parenting that comes from having expectations that are not developmentally appropriate for our kids. And so that’s the other piece, is I find having some knowledge of child development really helps you to attune to your child because you understand how much of a brain they’re actually working with.

Rebecca
So that we stop having these too large expectations of what they should be doing, when they should be reading, all these kinds of things?

Natalie
But even how they might be emotionally responding.

Julia
Even, like, listening. Like, you know, until a certain age (and it’s different for different kids) but until they develop certain brain structures, they can’t listen to more than one thing at a time. They can’t attend to more than one thing at a time. So if your child’s off doing something and you’re saying, “It’s time to get ready for school,” like you’re yelling over from the kitchen, then they’re not listening to you, that’s frustrating. And a lot of times, the way we make sense of that is you’re being disrespectful, you’re not listening. When in reality, oftentimes they’re actually not registering what you’re saying because they’re paying attention to something else. Their brain actually just can’t take in any more information in that moment. And so you can remove a lot of frustration in parenting when you understand sort of where your child is at in those pieces of development.

Rebecca
I find it all fascinating, because I do feel like, as a new mother, when Elsie was born in 2008, I feel like I didn’t know anything. I really didn’t know anything. I’m coming from a family that is pretty emotionally attuned, you know, at some level. So we had a lot of resources, but I still didn’t know anything. That’s amazing to me that we haven’t trained parents, even though this is the most important job, is the children we’re sending out into the world. That’s the next group of people that will run the world. Why are we so poor at this?

Julia
Well, I mean, it’s really, really important, what we’re doing in raising kids. And the thing is, if you grew up in an emotionally attuned family, a lot of this might come naturally to you, and you might not actually need to be trained or to learn it explicitly. In our culture we’ve gotten divorced from our instincts in many cases, and so things have happened in history that have made us see emotions as toxic or dangerous or inconvenient. After the war, no one was taught how to handle their emotions when they came back from war. So they would just try and compartmentalize and turn to self-medication. Because when you’re in a war, you can’t feel your feelings. You need to fight. If you’re attending to your feelings, you could die. And so when they came back, they had been trained to shove emotions away, and then they taught that to their kids. And so those of us who don’t feel safe with our own emotions won’t be able to raise kids who feel safe with theirs. And these patterns get passed down through generations. So what I find right now is so many of the parents working with us are trying to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. I’m very hopeful for this future generation, because in my corner, I see so many parents doing this important work. You just have to learn it and be conscious of it when it’s not something that you necessarily had as a child, or for whatever reason, you have circumstances and you’re struggling to provide it.

Natalie
We could probably pepper you with questions about all of this because I’m like, “Ooh, I could go down this road,” but technically we’re supposed to be talking about transition… which, I mean, you’re doing that daily then, in your work with families. But what does it look like in terms of advice you might give from having transitioned yourself in your career from one type of work to another? In that we just spoke with somebody who talked about transitioning out of education, and she tried to move into something that she called ‘education-adjacent.’ And that language has been used in career counselling — I’ve heard it, anyways. But yours is, like, closer than adjacent. I mean, it’s the same, but it’s a different location. So what would you give in terms of advice around this sort of transition?

Julia
Yeah, that’s tough, because I think everyone has their own unique set of circumstances. You know, it was hard to leave a big organization that offers security and safety and being attached to this big, big structure. I don’t regret it one bit, and I have a real passion and drive for what I’m doing. It’s certainly not the same work, but I’m still a social worker, and I am still having the opportunity to work with a lot of schools, but it’s in a very different capacity. So my advice would be to follow your passion, but to be practical about it. I didn’t just suddenly have a passion and say, “Ok, I quit,” right? I set a goal in the future. I did both for a significant amount of time to make sure this was a viable plan. I think it’s important for people to be following their passions, especially if they feel like they have something to give beyond the constraints of the place that they’re working. But I’m an advocate of practicality also, and planning, so I don’t know. Is that good advice?

Natalie
Yeah. The pragmatist in me really resonates. And I think I did the same, yeah.

Julia
Yeah, you need to trust yourself. But I just think it would be a bit tone-deaf to say, like, “Go for it,” because some people know that that’s not practical for their family, right? People have obligations. People have needs that they need to make sure they’re meeting. I just found that the constraints of where I was working didn’t allow me. Like, my work is honestly my playground. I’m very passionate. I get to be creative about what I do, and there wasn’t space for that in the setting that I was working in, and that’s really a shame, you know, and I felt really badly about that for the kids who aren’t necessarily getting what I wanted to offer. And at the same time, there is a space for me to do that. I just had to create it.

Natalie
We sent you our Science of Reframing toolbox — like, our list. And in terms of your own process of making this big transition, were there any of those… like, you know, walks in nature, or journalling, or time with your own therapist, or a listening ear with no words coming back to you — like, just that ear? Were there any that you really gravitated towards in your own reframing practice as you moved through this big transition?

Julia
Yeah, you know what? This is a really lovely list, and what stood out to me is things that I should really be doing more of, like taking a pause or… wow, journaling and painting and art-making. I really need to get back to a really good routine around self-care. I tend to fall out of it and then get back into it, which I think is probably pretty typical. But definitely I see my own therapist and I find that very helpful. And I do rely on friends and colleagues. I’m really lucky to have friends who do what I do, so I, you know, have the privilege of being able to call them up and get sort of a friend / professional view on things. I love walks in nature, and I love spending time with a family dog who’s also part of the practice. He’s trained to be a therapy dog. Yeah, but I want to add some of these to my list.

Rebecca
Nice tool, Nat. You’re spreading the word.

Natalie
I love that. And I really like picturing that the dog who is good for you is also part of the practice. That’s a really beautiful picture.

Julia
Yeah. Yeah.

Natalie
Thank you for taking this time with us. Because in your transition, I mean, the reality is that now you don’t have the constraints of that big sort of bureaucratic structure to work within, but now you run the show. And in running the show, that comes with different kinds of pressures, which we recognize. So do you have some sort of nugget of wisdom to kind of add around… and it doesn’t have to be wisdom. Just, you know, a takeaway around what it means to now be your own boss.

Julia
One thing that I noticed, and I was expecting this, was that my other job not working for me was part the job and it was part me, right. And so now that I’m on my own, I don’t have these external forces — like, it’s very clear what I need to change to work better. I’m a very intrinsically driven person who doesn’t always take enough time to pause and look after myself. I just work, work, work. And so, you know, I was in a setting where there were external factors that drove that. Now I can see that I was also equally driving that. And what I’m doing now in a lot of ways is actually much harder than what I was doing before. But it aligns so well with where I feel I need to be, and what I feel I’m meant to do and my purpose and my passion, that it doesn’t feel that way, if that makes sense. And there’s a lot of personal growth in running your own thing. There are a lot of uncomfortable moments that stretch you. And for me, that’s been a good thing. And I’ve learned that that discomfort is actually growth. And so it’s been great, but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy always.

Rebecca
There’s your nugget, Nat.

Natalie
I know. I was going to say, that’s our last line: discomfort means growth.

Rebecca
Discomfort is growth.