Kristen

Welcome to the close the chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories we will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore and open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode so be sure to subscribe

Kristen

Welcome to this week's Close the Chapter Podcast you will want to tune into today's episode. It is key to understanding how to set boundaries or exploring family imprints and how they impact you and how you feel about yourself in your current relationships. It is so important and I loved my conversation with a guest before I jump into that in order to help you on your healing journey. Be sure to grab the free journal that's available right now to go to kristendboice/free resources and it will be emailed to you. You can also follow along on social act Kristen D Boice, on Instagram and Facebook and just Kristen Boice on Tik Tok and Pinterest, all the places and I try to post helpful content and information. So I would love to have you chime in, make comments share whatever you feel led to do, I would be so grateful for that. So let me introduce you to today's amazing guest. Joe AnnaLynne has 20 years experience and resolving inherited family patterns, and is the founder of the family imprint Institute with an international private practice. Joanne is a highly trained systemic therapist that offers resolutions from long standing issues with the focus on dismantling family patterns, restoring relationships, and cultivating resilient boundaries. Please listen to the very end, because it captured such an important point about our family history and emotions that don't get felt by our primary caregivers or our parents and how that gets transmitted on to our children generationally. So it's such a good episode on family systems, how it impacts you why it's important. If you're dating someone, this is a great episode for you. If you're in a marriage, if you just started a family, this is so significant. Or maybe you're on a growth journey, you're in therapy, take your notepad out, write down what resonates with you make comments on social media, let me know what you think I really would love to know what landed for you What was hard, maybe was a new thought or an aha, because that's why I do this podcast to help you be more of yourself, heal your wounds and release things that aren't yours that you just inherently took on in your family system. So without further ado, here is this week's episode with Joanna Lynn. Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. Thank you so much for joining us for this important episode. I am so excited about my guest today. Joanna Lynn, welcome to the closer chapter podcast.

Johanna Lynn

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here with you.

Kristen

I love having a fellow therapist on the podcast, because it feels like we have a common connection and language and a lot of my listeners are in therapy or want to start going to therapy or doing growth work in some form or fashion. So the fact that you're here with us today to talk about boundaries, self help, how to find healing is so important. So and I love that you're talking about generational traumas and patterns. So if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about yourself so the audience can start learning more about who you are.

Johanna Lynn

Yes, absolutely. And so I joke with my clients that none of us get to be the way we are by accident. And so that's a big part of coming to completion or I love the name of your show, closing the chapter. A lot of it is looking back at Gosh, how did I show up in love? Or what did I maybe tolerate that felt too familiar? From my family of origin style of love? They kind of tangled things up in my current relationship. And a lot of closing that chapter is learning to trust ourselves again, learning that discernment. Why am I attracted to certain people or patterns and really choosing with a conscious awareness as we step back into loving again. So that's really a part of what I guess inspires me about my work this sort of fresh new opportunity to begin again. At this time, well educated, well grounded, well resourced, and we can start with a much stronger footing.

Kristen

A lot of people say, I don't want to go back, why are we having to go back in order to do healing work, say about that.

Johanna Lynn

I want my cooking to be something off of this beautiful cooking show. But I don't want to read the recipe. And so really, we all have a love blueprint. And that's why I call my institute the family imprint. And so this idea that we are literally imprinted at the level of the DNA, with experiences, yes, of course, traumas, but even unresolved emotions that our parents had even our grandparents had. So these heartbreaks, or losses, or Greece that were never resolved, they don't simply go away, they find a way to live out again in the younger generations. So if we're just looking at ourselves, maybe our past relationship or our even our own childhood, we're only getting a very tiny part of the story. And I like to explain that my clients are like one square of a quilt. And we're wanting to look at the whole quilt, we're wanting to bring in all the components. So your whole family history shines light, that, I guess we just didn't look at it that way before. And it gives us a way to move forward with so much more confidence and insight.

Kristen

It's one of the most important pieces, I think, to freeing ourselves to figure out that family imprint piece. So when some people come into therapy, they say I had a great childhood. It was great. I had a great family, and everything was so good. How do you respond to that?

Johanna Lynn

Well, I love this approach, in that I really only have to work with facts of the family. And so I want to honour that's the truth for the client in that moment. And I want to look at the information I'm gathering to fill out what I call the three generation genogram. So I want to understand things like what was going on from mom when she was pregnant with you? Oh, well, I was a surprise mom and dad weren't even married yet. Or, Oh, my closest sibling to me is we're 10 years apart, I was definitely unexpected. This changes that early symbiotic relationship we have between ourselves and mom, not to say there's any judgement or anything wrong with it, it's just any of us who are mothers, we can know, oh, I'm not quite ready to be pregnant, it doesn't mean we're not going to be loving and caring to that child. It just means it may take us a few months to get on board with it to get ready for it. Other circumstances can be more practical and financial, like mom having to go right back to work. And we're off in a daycare, we're six week old infant. And so this breaks that attachment that need for any little baby to feel I'm love Mom's got me, my needs are met that familiar smell that that connection with mom, when that gets broken, it changes the way we relate to love, it changes our even our expectation of the other. And so for your listeners, I'm certainly a working mom, there will be always separations between us and our children. But it's how those separations are repaired, that has the long standing impact around how we then show up in our intimate loving relationships as an adult, or even the patience and connection of care we have with our own children. That comes from how we were loved.

Kristen

Yes. Okay. So let's unpack separations. And what imprints separations if you're separating from mom, primary caregiver dad. Yeah, a little bit more about separations?

Johanna Lynn

Well, there are so many times this can happen, let's say even in the first seven years of our life before the child really hits that individuation stage. So as I say, it can happen in utero. And there are all kinds of beautiful studies done. Actually, there's an incredible documentary titled in utero, that has many of my famous researchers and scientists that talk about this shaping time, before we've even taken our first breath, and how much it is mapping out our brains and this anticipation of the family that we're going to be born into. And then of course, we have our birth experience, and there's 1001 reasons why things can kind of get off track there. Was it a difficult birth? Did mum have a medical emergency? Is it just typical sort of hospital policy where we take the baby down to the nursery and we've got that initial separation, mom having to go right back to work or maybe mom and dad hitting a rough patch in the marriage and heading off for a vacation and babies just a year old and thinking all they'll be have a great week with grandma and grandpa and that very well may be true, cared and loved for and all those lovely things, but attachment patterning is this deep connection with moms gaze into baby that familiar smells that rhythm and comfort. And so there's this sort of feeling in the body that can look a little bit like defence or keeping people at an arm's length. It's almost as if the baby is mulling together, I'm not so sure I can trust this connection business. And so of course, it's not a thought so much as a body memory. And then Mom and Dad come back from vacation, and we've got this independent little child we've come home to. And so I think in our culture, we celebrate early independence and children. But to be honest with you, it's actually our first red flag, because they've stopped trusting, you're gonna really be there. So there's this almost protection strategy around, I'm not gonna get that rug pulled out from under me again, I'll just do it.

Kristen

To make this in practical terms for folks, I was looking at my separation, a genogram is looking at a family history of relationships, patterns, cut offs, addictions, we're looking at generations back of patterns. Is there another way you would frame that?

Johanna Lynn

Yeah, it's almost like we want to look at filling out the family tree. And instead of finding my second removed uncle's name is Harry, we actually want to find out what relational experiences went on there. I like how you said that, where did love get cut off? Where Did someone get compromised, or who went off to jail who maybe spend time in a mental institution and was then excluded from the family, we want to look almost for that family tree that brands broke off, because it has huge impacts on the generations that come after.

Kristen

And I think if you're doing this with a therapist, one of the things I think when we look at separations, so I did this, and I looked at my mom, in her, she was the only child, my grandfather, he was a chemist, and helped invent fluoride for crest, the toothpaste, you travelled all over the world speaking, wow, there was many separations. And so my mom really, of course, had abandonment wounds for Dad travelling, and the reentry. And then the separations, again. And then she had separation anxiety from me. So he was separated from me. So it can transfer in many different ways. And then I had separation anxiety, when she would drop me off the church nursery for whatever she was off doing. I remember feeling panicked, that she would drop me off in this weird place. And I didn't know where I was. And so if we look at our family history was separations. Yes, one of the most important explorations,

Johanna Lynn

I think, it really, really is, it gives us a context and understanding. And sort of as you're sharing that I'm remembering back learning my mom's history, because she's always been very worried. Be careful, call me when you get home. And it used to just think, oh, my gosh, I know how to drive my goodness, I'm a grown woman. But instead understanding Oh, my gosh, there was so much loss, so much unexpected, this feeling that anyone could go at any time. And so I started to hear when she would say, Call me when you get home to let me know. That's her way of saying, I love you, I want you to be safe. I'm thinking of you. And so I started to hear it from that way, instead of how it used to feel like nails on a chalkboard. So it can really change how we can receive the language of care that comes through our family as well.

Kristen

Okay, let's take this example. I love to dig into this because it's so applicable. I mean, how many moms worry about their kids, because they're afraid of something bad happening? loss, grief, pain, they feel like that's unbearable, especially if they have a history of loss, grief, and it's unprocessed. See, I have like, my mom didn't really process her separations is even though my mom was a therapist, which is plot twist, oh, she didn't really process it. I think if we don't process it, then it can get displaced and transferred.

Johanna Lynn

That's exactly right. I have read so much research around, it's actually less about what happens to us the specifics. And it's more about how we make sense of it, how we come to completion with it. And so even those capital T traumas, they don't have to be our reference point. They don't have to be off. This is my sort of self made prison because these things happen to me. But it's more about what we do with what's happened to us.

Kristen

Yeah, so how do I tolerate the separation, especially using our example with our kids because I can feel that way too. Pollyanna set up my nervous system and just the worry that concern, but it's really my unprocessed because it's healthy for them. I don't say trauma, but my unprocessed emotion around some fear. Yeah. think bad happening and how do I self soothe? Right? How do I tend to that, so I don't have my child try to soothe me yet so they can separate and individuate, which is an important, healthy part of human development. And I don't disrupt that. Exactly.

Johanna Lynn

Well, and I love what you just said, because often times we can turn into our child for care, to make us feel better to reassure. And oh, gosh, that can do, it's so intense when we turn to our children, to help us to feel better to bolster us up, because our kids will do it, their love is so deep, and so in a way blind love. And so we've got to stay in that place of the parent, the adult, I'm here to take care of you. And so there are moments, of course, that our kids will catch us worrying or even crying or slamming a door. Because we're angry, we're human, we share the same home environment. But it's so important to be able to address in that moment, to say, Here I am having my emotions, I just got upsetting news, but I've got this, I'm going to talk to your dad later, I'm going to talk to Auntie or I'm going to talk to my friend, I don't need for you to take care of this. For me. That's a very important boundary between parent and child.

Kristen

I think it's one of the most significant so we can go back into the genogram, our family tree or family history and look at where did I take on someone else's emotions that they didn't get to process, but I took it on my responsibility to make them feel better loved, happy, so they didn't have to worry about me. We've switched roles somehow along the way. Do you typically see that generationally?

Johanna Lynn

Oh, gosh, I see it every day in my clients, there's 40 5060 year old people who have never considered Oh, my gosh, I took care of a sad mom or an addicted dad, or a worried parent. And I've kind of developmentally learned to go over there with the other person. So I'm much more aware as a grown adult, what's going on with them. But I've got no idea what's going on inside here. So then if that person says, Oh, hey, can you help me move again? Or can you listen to me complain endlessly about my marriage? We don't know that line in the sand. Because we're so taught to be over there making the other person feel okay. And then this is where sort of unspoken resentments just sort of goes under that proverbial rug, we don't address it. But it often ends up collapsing the relationship, we just move away from it. Rather than say, here's a healthy boundary, or here's a way I want to protect our relationship. You keep talking about this problem. And you're not even applying the suggestions I'm saying, so let's just leave it there. Whatever you're going to do is right for you, then please don't come and just complain every time we go out for coffee.

Kristen

Yes, I think this is so powerful teach clients to say that's between you and dad, or you and mom, Bakley. And I'm not the appropriate person to be commenting or getting in the middle of that. But

Johanna Lynn

I can have a later way to say that up so often say so like mom's unloading, typically as she does about Dad. And you just simply say, Hey, Mom, that's my Dad, you're talking about, I don't even know what to say. And I just feel so uncomfortable. Because now I only look at dads who through the way he hurts you. I kind of lose out on having my dad. And so if we can say it that way. I think it stops it from repeatedly happening again. Because many of my clients will say, Oh, I've tried to tell her not to talk to me about dad, but she'll forget. Yeah, that's a great, actually,

Kristen

let's talk about when somebody doesn't respect your boundary in the family systems, because we look at the generations and we're mapping it out. We're looking at the imprints and we look at lack of boundaries. Yeah, they're real diffuse boundaries. Are we have a measurement, a measurement means we don't have you're almost kind of joining in with another person. That's where you were talking about going to the other side. Yes, exactly. Adjoining that you see how their emotions but not your own? Yes, that's gone. Their emotions as your own, don't really have the opportunity to explore. So talk about the importance of looking at history of boundaries.

Johanna Lynn

Well, I think the primary thing to remember about that is the boundary is not about the other person. So a boundary is about keeping me in. So this idea. Let's imagine we've got hula hoop around us. We've got a little bit of space around her body, and that's this sort of image of the boundary. And so it's not about keeping mom's comment out or keeping dad's criticism over there. It's about keeping me in, because let's face it, mom and dad probably aren't going to change too much. So when that comment comes in your direction, it's about you having that self regulation, that boundary, that sense of, okay, I'm losing myself a little bit here sort of hurt or that I want to get back and kind of defend myself. And so that we're not sort of going down what I call the same neural highway that just sinks us every time. It we have sort of this dance in a way that we play out again and again. And this boundary kind of keeps you in, so that when that typical thing happens, you can respond from one of those very factual nonreactive sort of places, similar to Hey, that's my mom, you're talking about Dad, I feel so uncomfortable. And so notice it's about I feel statements, and instead of blaming out their statements, because there will be people in your family that will not respect your boundary will continue to go over that line. And you think God, I tried to set that boundary with them? What's going on? It's because you're again, you're out there thinking about them and their acceptance of your boundary, instead of staying in the inside of yourself, and what that feels to, okay, I'm really gonna say, No, I'm gonna let this person down. I know who I am. And how do I stay with myself, even as I do that? Because I know this request will put our friendship or relationship out of balance.

Kristen

And to tolerate that see, I feel like people are that's a big piece, because they're like, I want them to be mad at me. I don't want to lose relationship with them. I don't want to hurt them. Totally. And

Johanna Lynn

so it's easier to say yes. Until it isn't,

Kristen

becomes easier just to continue with the fawning response that people pleasing response because the discomfort and the unknown of setting the boundary folks, they don't have a tolerance for that. So how do you help people tolerate that they may be upset that they like it, that they may not respect your boundary,

Johanna Lynn

I guess it's a bit of a process with some practice. And I think everything about this work is always about looking at the big picture. So the big picture is, if you keep saying yes, when you really mean no, what do you think's going to happen to this friendship over time, maybe in a handful of months or a handful of years, but it will meet that brick wall, there's 70 orders of love that go into the work that I do. And I tell you, I don't know why this stuff isn't taught in school. But we come across it when we get into therapy, and when we kind of are trying to sort our stuff out. But one of the primary orders of love is the balance of give and take in relationship. And this is so essential to keep the relationship healthy. So a lot of what I share is if we're over giving, we're often putting too much, I guess, impact on the relationship. And it's usually the over giver that ends up collapsing the relationship over time, the other side feels emotionally indebted, there's this place or this guilt maybe around, I can never balance things. And an imbalanced relationship doesn't last doesn't thrive. There's always these unspoken hurts, and it tends to just sort of either fall away and distance or there's something spark or some big fight. And it's because of the imbalance that's not being honestly spoken about.

Kristen

And here's another piece, I think people say often, at least this is what I hear. Well, they're not going to change anyways. So what's the point,

Johanna Lynn

the point is getting your body to trust you again, when we keep going over our own boundaries, that our body keeps score, that it's such a famous sort of trauma book, but our body holds the weight of it. And another beautiful book is called when the body says no. So I have had countless cases where the woman will say Well finally, I don't have to host my husband's you know, stupid business parties and have to do all the cooking and all the shopping and now I have fibromyalgia and he doesn't ask. And so if I can't say no, or honey, this is too much I'll you know help a caterer or let's just some distance some your ability to verbally say that doesn't work for me, our body will start to say that for us. A lot of my work with chronic illness is that's the core of it. That's it right there.

Kristen

So when you help people with boundaries, because there's so much out there are boundaries and clear on articulating boundaries. How important is the imprints of family systems in breaking free for yourself to honour yourself? Because it's not about the other person. Like you said boundaries are not about the other person. They're about you. Even if the person doesn't change it, you're stepping into more health. That's right, you're stepping into more health yourself. So how important is the imprint of family systems and exploring that to be able to get to work

Johanna Lynn

everything to be honest because If we just read a boundaries book, but we've been taught to be the good girl to be the helpful one, in order to be loved, you have to jump through these hoops will read these words. And it's like, it's just another language. Well, what am I supposed to do with this? Or just feel so darn wrong? There's no way we can actually implemented. And so we've got a look at that imprint who was I taught to be? What does it mean to feel guilty about maybe letting my mom or my grandma down, but to be able to move forward in my own life in a way that's right for me. And so I love how you phrase that that boundaries is about moving towards our own health, even if the other person doesn't change, or maybe keeps over asking for things that are too big, it's really never about the other person. And so I wish it was as simple as reading a book and just having the one statement that you say, but it's so much more nuanced than that.

Kristen

This deep work really is especially when you believe to your point, this is kind of bad, if I say how I feel if I speak my truth or to have a with love and grace and say my opinion or set a boundary, whatever that looks like for somebody that is in the bad category. So we almost as a child split off from that shadow side, yeah, became this is what is acceptable, lovable, that I will stay in connection, I will not be abandoned, I will not be rejected. If I do these things, which is accommodate peacemaking, yeah, we're giving over functioning, I mean, we can go through a whole list. So people are afraid. And I'm like, it's not an all or nothing like we're dancing in the grey, we're dancing in the and and both, but they're afraid to be bad or be disconnected from their primary caregivers

Johanna Lynn

that said, well, and even to be judged as selfish, so there's this outer pleat myself, we are going to burn out all five off this whole part of my body just to be not deemed as selfish, with end up sort of like on the very bottom rung of our own, who were caring for were last on our own list, to avoid all of the things you're talking about. And so we do have to sort of holistically come in, to look at all those parts of ourselves, how we got to be the way we are, why being good means giving yourself away for connection or helping others to the point of complete exhaustion. We're just kind of trying to find that balance. Not that we don't want people to be kind and generous. We, of course, we want to keep that going. But how do we keep that within the parameters of kindness, kindness to self, as well as kindness to those we're sharing our life with?

Kristen

Yes. So what are the three biggest keys in your life doing this familial in print work? What are some of the three keys, and you don't even have to have three, but that you really apply it in your life that have been life changing?

Johanna Lynn

What a deep question, I think, looking at the big picture, always, let's first say an example, I have a conflict with my spouse. So the immediately we could take it personally, we could build a story that, well, he never listens when we get into conflict, something like this. And instead of doing that, if I can understand the full context of how conflict went in his house growing up as a young boy, and that there was a need to process the emotion think things through before responding, I'm less likely to take it personally, more likely to give space, more likely to come back in an hour and a day to have a true conversation about what the issue is really about. Then kind of nitpick and bicker at each other in the moment. So when we hold the larger picture, we're always able to sort of respond from a larger context with understanding and compassion. And I think that right there can help our relationships in huge amounts when we're not as reactive. The second pillar, I'm sure would be this healthy boundary and recognising it comes from inside of me that I'm not trying to convince somebody of the value of my boundary that I hold it deep inside of me. And the third, I guess, over time, as I've sort of gotten older, is the recognition that self care is not essential oils and bubble bath, although that might be a component of it. But it's about honouring sort of my energetic capacity. And I think that's extra evident when we're self employed around how am I structuring my schedule? What parts of myself am I giving out? And what do I need to do to replenish and how can that be consistent when everyone who's been an entrepreneur for a couple years knows there's all these ups and downs and different times, but how to really put yours Self Care first before what the business needs what everybody else requires?

Kristen

Yes. And I'm wondering to this whole idea that you alluded to at the very beginning of our conversation, we touched on it. I wondering how big this is, is you mentioned something like what our parents didn't process emotionally, you kind of alluded or didn't really connect to or didn't feel that we ended up carrying that.

Johanna Lynn

Yes. So another way to say that is what our children express is what is unexpressed in us? Or unresolved in between mom and dad for them? And so have many couples, or parents just call and say, Oh, my gosh, my team is doing this. My seven year old is doing that. When can you see them? And I say, oh, when can you or your spouse join for the session? Not to place any blame? Not at all, but to build the three generation genogram? To understand what is this behaviour referencing? Where does it point to? Because that's where the resolution is, it's not in the seven year old or the teenager, it's in the larger family system. And so being able to guide the parents with how to speak to the child redirect the behaviour, looking at it from a larger context changes everything.

Kristen

Can you give a practical example of where the child's behaviour is? What is it being kind of processed in maybe between the marital dynamic or maybe a parent's own, just so folks can kind of really grasp this concept in a practical way.

Johanna Lynn

The cases that are coming to me are rather intense, like self harm and stuff like that. So I'm trying to choose one that's a little more every day.

Kristen

Well, self harm is an epidemic right now. So I think that'd be practical. I'm seeing a lot of self harm and teens,

Johanna Lynn

it is an epidemic. Okay, we'll

Kristen

give too much info. Yeah, given that would be a good example.

Johanna Lynn

So the 16 year old, very, unfortunately, lots of self harm and trying to work with school counsellors, social workers, traditional talk therapy, just that feeling any parent would have, we've got to get our daughter some help. And looking at the family system, I was lucky enough to be able to work with both parents, sometimes it's just one. And often that can give us enough information about the system. But it turns out that around the same age, sort of mid teens, dad had a very big trauma and shut down all of his emotions. So really was sort of low level depressive, non communicative, would really work and provide and that's kind of all that he could do for the family because that was his way of managing the trauma that happened. And so when we look at this systemically it's almost dad saying it's this unconscious, of course, but dad saying, what I cannot feel what I cannot process you feel at all. And so now his teen has her own life is difficult. Life is crazy for teens these days post pandemic, but also the unprocessed emotions that dad has put in Pandora's box and put all the locks on there. So when I can't process because it was too big, because I've shut down is now for my kids to work through. So that's sort of the way that it moves through the generation these things don't just go away. They don't just disappear even when we pass away. They are shared with our descendants.

Kristen

I think Richard Rohr had a great quote, what isn't kind of faced I'm paraphrasing here, it's what isn't dealt with is transmuted.

Johanna Lynn

Yes, transmitted. Yes, that's exactly something along those

Kristen

lines, because it will transmute unconsciously it's not a guarantee actually doing this.

Johanna Lynn

Well, it's imprinted in the DNA. That's not just did I model this? And I think that's what many parents say to me. Oh, well, we argue after the kids go to bed, or they don't know, they know,

Kristen

I think that's a big takeaway from our conversation today. And really believe that it says, a significant takeaway, and you gave a really helpful example of what this really looks like that can be okay, that makes sense. I need to see it in real time. Yeah, sometimes we just kind of need to visualise it or hear it to go that Oh, and then we can start processing our own part in that have I shut myself off from a certain emotion even has my parent anger wasn't acceptable. So I shut that off. And I've got a really angry teen. Yes, exactly. And because we didn't do that in our house, we obeyed and we respect it. So that's another example of even an emotional cut off that we weren't allowed to feel because it wasn't safe. It wasn't acceptable yet and can get played out the next generation down, or even generations down.

Johanna Lynn

Well, then let's face it, then we as the parent has no idea what to do with this because we didn't walk through that in our own parenting relationship. And so the other consideration when you're doing generational work is how we were parented is very different from how we're parenting today, cutting our parents a bit of slack that there wasn't Psychology Today on every waiting room table of the magazines or therapy was still very stigmatised even when my parents were my own age. And so thankfully, we're seeing some of that mental health stigma drop away. And there's a very proactive element about, hey, if you're troubled with this, go into any bookstore, those shelves and shelves of options, or reach out and get the support that you need,

Kristen

and podcasts. And now we have the 988, where you can text or call 911. If you've got a medical emergency or something along those lines, now we have kind of a mental health emergency number, here in the States, I'm so glad to hear that. It's called 988. And you can call and text and mental health clinicians are on the other side managing the calls or the text messages. So we're now really elevating that conversation. And they did 988. Because here in the States, 911 is the emergency number. So they made it for mental health. 988. So I think we're making some traction. This has been a wonderful conversation, my hearts lit on fire and having these talks. So thank you so much. Where can people find you and I know you have a boundaries programme coming up to you and sharing that?

Johanna Lynn

Absolutely. So I have a free class coming up on Thursday, March 2, it's at noon Eastern time. And so we'll put a link to the bottom there. They can register if if you're interested. And I do a 10 week class that dives into restoring relationships, cultivating boundaries, that really goes into this topic in depth. And so you could really dive deep into that one. And you're welcome to just visit my site to read some blog posts and listen to some previous podcasts at triple W dot Joanna linn.ca.

Kristen

Wonderful and your voice is very soothing. You've probably been told that multiple times. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm sure everyone listening in your nervous systems are like ah, so feel free to listen to it again, share the episode, start a dialogue and a conversation. I did a genogram. Obviously, in grad school when we were getting our masters, I'm guessing you might have done that. Did you do that as well?

Johanna Lynn

Yes, I've done many genogram for myself and my family members. Yeah.

Kristen

And I recommend if you're in a partnership with anyone, also, that person doing one in a mental health therapist trained specifically a marriage and family therapy. And there's other practitioners out there that know how to do that. That's a great way to start. Is there any other resources if someone wants to do that on their own? Or do you recommend working with a therapist?

Johanna Lynn

Well, I think it's great to start to map it out. Just build your own sort of family tree. And then it starts our questioning about hey, what can I ask auntie, when I see her for tea, or if our parents are still here or our grandparents, we can start to ask some of those relational questions. What was your childhood? Like? How did things go? We want to hire to kind of understand our own history, the better we

Kristen

know ourselves. That's key. And before you get married, please do this family imprint work? Oh, yeah. Couldn't that enough? Two months into my dating relationships? I'm married to my husband now. 21 years, and I said, let's go and do family history, get it all on the table. And it was the best investment we ever made two months into dating, because let's get it out. Yes. When you understand that your family history, it doesn't define you. It helps you understand how you're relating relationally and the patterns you might have unconsciously developed in your relationship. So I highly recommend anybody out there that is, in early relationship, do premarital therapy now someone that's trained in this so you can understand to your point, your number one point that you were saying earlier, that you can understand the context and the bigger picture of what's really going on in a disagreement and your family systems. So if you want to change the family system, this is how awareness definitely this to explore and do your own work. So thank you so much, Joanna, for being on the show. It was such a pleasure to chat with you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Kristen

Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week, and share with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected visit Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice BO ice.com. Thanks and have a great day.