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 so glad you are here for this week's episode. If you are a step parent coming from a divorced system, maybe you're in a blended family, raising foster children or helping to raise or influence other people's children. What I mean by influence is you're having an impact in other children's lives. I highly recommend this episode. I want to emphasise my guest is not a trauma therapist. She is not coming from a trauma therapist lens. And her experience may not translate to your experience. There are parts of this that are very important and helpful. She wrote a book just recently called Raising other people's children. And I want to give you a little bit more about my guest Debbie s burn is a social worker turned lawyer who has worked with youth serving organisations. For more than 40 years, she has served as a camp counsellor, juvenile court probation officer, group home parent, criminal prosecutor of crimes against children, and litigation attorney advisor youth serving organisations throughout the United States. Her most important challenges, however, have been parenting foster children and stepchildren. She has never had biological children, but she has collected seven children and 10 grandchildren. She has put the lessons that her children taught her in her recent book, raising other people's children what foster parenting taught me about bringing together a blended family. And some of the important points that I want to emphasise is no comparison of traumas we don't want to get into well, my trauma is more significant than yours. So I want to make sure that's an important point. Once again, not a trauma therapist, she says that in our talk together, the other pieces, she's coming from a divorce situation, married into a marriage, she became a step parent. And that's an important delineation. So if you're a single parent, just know that these pieces and points can still apply to you, if you're not coming from a blended family either. So I want to make sure there's different delineations here. And these are some of her opinions based on her own research. And so what I love to say about every podcast, you listen to take in what resonates discard the rest. That's what I share with clients when they're taking in a podcast or a book, maybe they're going to a conference, maybe they're attending some event of some kind, whether it's going to a training, or perhaps just growing in a certain area. If it doesn't resonate in your soul. That's okay, just discard it. If it does resonate, apply it to your life and take action. So that's my recommendation for this episode. Because my whole training is in family systems and trauma. And I'm coming from that lens. She's coming from her own experience, and also her experience in the courts as well. So just know there's different perspectives, and that's okay. And she has some really important points to say about co parenting, blended families and things of that nature. And here's the other piece that I think is important to emphasise, there is no needing to choose one over another, you'll know what we're talking about when we get into the episode. And due to time, we couldn't unpack some more of these things that I would love to have unpacked. And just know that how you're building your foundation for yourself, which is your self worth doing inner child work, or healing past traumas or changing generational patterns that have been passed down and unprocessed emotions that people inherit. And that wasn't the emphasis of this episode. She's sharing how did she step into a co parenting role? How did she work with foster children that are coming into a system that they didn't choose? And that's an important piece to emphasise. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Debbie Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. I am so excited to have my guest on today. And I love that she's an attorney, but also as a new author of her new book, raising other people's children. Very exciting. Congratulations, Debbie. And welcome to the podcast.

Debbie

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Kristen

I'm so glad you're here with us. So tell the audience a little bit about you, and how you got to writing the book raising other people's children.

Debbie

I started out my career after college as a probation officer slash social worker with a juvenile court. And frankly, I burned out, I got tired of dipping out the ocean with teaspoon. So I retreated to law school and thoroughly loved the academic challenge and the part of law that lets me analyse and look at things, but I kept my passion for working with kids. And so during my various jobs as a lawyer, I joke I have career add, so I tend to move one job to another. But until recently, this last job, I seem to have found my niche finally, but I kept my passion for kids. So I signed up to be a foster parent, and I was the single foster parent and then married a man with five kids, only two of them were still at home. The other three were adults outside the home. And then we inherited one of our grandchild, a child of one of my foster children for a few years. And there were a lot of things that I had learned through being a foster parent. And through being a step parent, that I should have sat down with my husband and explain to them more before we decided on foster parenting together. And I realised that I had just assumed that this wonderful, loving, reasonable, kind, considerate man, I just assumed he would agree with me, but understand where I was coming from. So in the midst of the pandemic, I had a friend who was nagging me to write a book about my experiences. And I really wrote it for the things that I wish I had told my husband before we started fostering together, and the things that I have many friends who are going into step parenting roles. And thanks, I wanted them to understand the mistakes that I had made, and the lessons my kids have taught me over the years.

Kristen

Beautiful. I was reading through your blog, and one of them was responsibility and chores and the research behind that. So tell me a little bit about what are some of the keys pieces that you felt like you wish you had said to him? At the very beginning, or key learnings that you've taken away from your journey as a stepmom and a foster mom?

Debbie

Well, I think the first thing that we have to understand as either foster or step parenting is that we are not the person who's supposed to be in these kids lives from their perspective. They do not want us there, they might like us. But we're not the person who's supposed to be there. It's a very big disconnect. And the best example I have of this is a few years after I got married, my husband's ex wife asked for custody. And so we were talking to the younger son about what he wanted. And of course, his kids do. He was didn't want to take sides. And we weren't asking him to take sides. We just didn't want to spend a lot of our resources on something that he was posted. So my husband finally said, let me ask it this way, if you had a magic wand, what would your world look like? And this 13 year old did not hesitate. You said, Well, I had a magic wand, you and mom would be back together. And then there was this pause and he looked over at me really concerned. He's a very sweet kid. And he said no insult that you and the dogs would be living right next door. And of course by that I wasn't upset. He and I were very close, we are still very close. But it wasn't about me. It was simply he did Adore Me. He still does. But if he had his wife, I would be a school teacher or a coach or the very nice lady next door who baked cookies, I would still be in his life. I just would not be married to his dad. We just can't take that personal thing. It is just a bone deep, primal need for kids to have an intact biological family and it is very hard for them to get used to anything else. Then the other thing that I think we forget is that our kids been through a lot of trauma. for kids who have experienced trauma beyond the normal buffeting of life, it just sets up triggers and coping skills that we have to learn to live with. For some of my foster kids running away was a coping skill. For many others. Lying is a coping skill. It's not a character flaw. It's a skill that the how they navigated their world. And we have to understand that and have some patience with it and be not set up the same situation. So if as step parents, for example, I've seen my parents, my friends, trying to quiz their kids about what happens at the other parents house, and that just puts them in an impossible situation, it makes them responsible number one, for too many things. And B, it encourages them to just lie to get out of the situation. So we're setting them up. And there's just a lot of different kinds of things like that I think we need to learn and understand. And then finally, I would say the other thing that I have is, yes, our kids who've been through trauma, but we cannot let their trauma define their lives. Our current society puts a value on victimhood. And it's how many people being a victim as a currency. And so people try to hoard that and collect that. And it is absolutely devastating to our kids, because it makes their trauma, the centre of their life. And it does not show them how to move past it.

Kristen

These are really important points. So I want to kind of deconstruct those. So we had the first one where they didn't get to choose, right, they didn't make a choice. And there's a neurobiological wiring for the biological parent in some ways, right? And not taking it personally that they don't love him or like you. And how did you get to the point because I've many people I've worked with over the years, that's a struggle to not take it personally, either as a foster parent or a step parent. So let's start with the first one you talked about?

Debbie

Well, we just have to understand that it's something deeper in the kid's brain than logic. And we want to come from the perspective that we are better parents than their biological parents, in the care of foster care, obviously, were better parents, or they wouldn't have been taken away from their parents, or step parents, obviously, if I want to think that I make my husband happier than his first wife did. But that's really not the question. The question is not how do I stack up? The question is, what do kids need? And what do they expect, and what they expect is biological family. And the way I often phrase it is, I'm not the person who's supposed to be there. I'm a biological parent, I never will be, and that's okay, we can build a good relationship anyway. And so we have to understand, it's not about me, it's not a contest. If it is a contest, I lose, because I am not the biological parent. And there is no fixing that. And there is no changing that. And I have to let go of my ego and recognise reality,

Kristen

which is a lot of self work, to do your own self work to get centred enough to feel secure enough to be able to get to that point. I feel like that's where we have a lot of disconnect for folks with it get to that place, in a country and secure place and not to judge it just to notice it,

Debbie

explore it. Well, when you're stepping into another person's history, it is by definition, a not secure place. And it takes a lot of work to become secure in that place. That from the kids perspective, you don't belong there. And it's not a rejection. The kids has do their own work about accepting someone doesn't belong there. And it took me a lot of work and a lot of time and it took a lot of incidences of kids yelling at me, you are not my mom, and working my way through the hurt and the anger of hearing that. And to some extent my legal training helped because me know, the left part of my brain was saying, well, she's right. You're not her mom. So you can't get mad at her for saying the truth. I'm very sympathetic to having to work through that. It took me a lot of years, a lot of conversations to be able to say, Yes, I'm not your mom. I still love you. I still care about you. And I'm still here, raised it to my step sons. No, I'm not your mother, but you are my sons.

Kristen

And how did you get to that point? So people can kind of start wrapping their head around like you sound really secure now and how you're handling everything. Well Did you do specifically to get to the point where you had that clarity, understanding and acceptance? Well, a

Debbie

good part of it was spending time looking at myself and saying, Am I taking care of the things that I'm responsible for, I cannot control someone's reaction to me. But I can control whether I'm impatient, whether I'm conned, whether I'm the kind of person that I'd like to believe I am, then the second thing I did was to concentrate on my marriage, because you have to be secure in your marriage, and is my husband often say, Our lives have a lot of chaos, but the centre is holding, and we have to believe that the centre is holding, and we have to be able to come back to that. And that takes a lot of work. I love my kids, my husband loves our kids. But they are our second priority, our first priority is each other. Now, again, I'm talking within constant finds of safety, if it's an unsafe or toxic relationship, you have to let the relationship go. But 85 90% of the relationships that we're talking about are perfectly fine relationships, you just have to work on them. And they have to be the first priority.

Kristen

So that's a big piece of doing the work as yourself work, the relational work, and then how that transcends into being a step parent, a foster parent. That kind of is the way you found a way to more of security,

Debbie

have to have a foundation for the relationship. And the foundation is valuing of myself. And then the foundation of the marriage, which is the foundation of the family. This must last foster placement, we had really challenged that and the child was used to father figures who came and went, I guess, would be the best way to say it was not used to one who stayed around. And we had a lot of conversations where I said, I love you I care about you do not make me choose, because I will not prioritise my relationship with you over my marriage, I just can't. And part of it is because a lot of these kids, I'm the only chance they're ever going to have to see a functioning relationship from the inside. And then secondly, there's a certain element of just flat out left brain return on my investment. Because if I do my job, right, these kids are not going to be living with me forever. They're going to be out on their own, they're going to be adults. And I would like to have a marriage left. So on both levels, both what they need and what I need, you have to take care of your marriage.

Kristen

Yeah, and that's true, I think in foster homes, and that they haven't seen a healthy relationship. They haven't experienced that. And there's a lot of underneath it, as you said trauma that creates the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection. So let's talk a little bit about before we get to the second point you made in terms of FASD. Have you heard of FASD?

Debbie

I have, I have not experienced it. But I have friends who are experts in it.

Kristen

There's many times someone will have a foster child in their home that has FASD. And that's a whole nother level of discord in the home trauma. So I didn't know if you had much experience with kids that have FASD I have had kids

Debbie

who have attachment issues, not with FASD, but insecure attachments from childhood. And there's not a quick and simple and easy solution. A lot of it is just being there continually no matter what. And all of my kids do have this fear of rejection. And my youngest steps on the first few years I was married, he kept worrying that I was not going to come back from all my business trips. And all of my sons would sort of Becca tell they get very tense when their dad and I would disagree or even have joking disagreements with each other. And it took them a number of years to relax. And I finally said to one of my sons one time I said what I asked him why it was he said, I'll just sure you and dad were going to break up like mom and dad did. And I said, What made you quit worrying about that? And he thought for a minute. And he looked at me said well, you're still here. So with kids who have attachment issues, there's not much you can say to them. All you can do is just still be there, which is simplistic and complicated. Very difficult all at the same time.

Kristen

Yes, because you can't heal the attachment limb. Sometimes there's some therapeutic output that comes into play when someone is consistently emotionally available. They offer empathy, you listen, you're present, you're attuned, that can be very healing in many ways, but you can't heal that potential fracture. With the biological parent, tell me about the second point you made in one thing that stood out to me. And what you said is when a child, let's say, you're coming from a divorce situation, because we're kind of talking about two different we're talking about fostering, we're talking about divorce. And I grew up in a divorced home, and my mother would just interrogate me on what did you do with them? What did they say? What did you say? What did you do, and there was a big threat to her to have a relationship with my step parent, that was a key piece you said, because that then becomes the child ends up carrying this, well, I can't really have a relationship with them, because then I'm in violation or betrayal, or disconnection from my biological parents. So share more about that. Tell me about how you landed on that.

Debbie

Again, I learned this through foster care with kids parents that and let's face it never had the luxury of having my kids have parents that I liked. I've read stories about people who get along with their husbands new wife, their ex husbands new wife, or foster parents who set up a co parenting relationship with their child's parents, I never had either the respect for those parents or the grace to be able to do that. So I had to go back to my fallback position, which was, my opinions don't matter. This child wants a relationship with that parent, my job is to make that happen. My job is to encourage that. And I started, frankly, from just a utilitarian point of view, this is my job, and I need to do a good job. And I talked about rejection with kids. When I was younger, I used to sweat the attitude of well, it's just time to work it through. As I got older, I realised I needed to do it more emotional, give myself time to grieve, and deal with my emotions, and then step up and just work it. Because that's what adults do. We just figure out how to do it. And so it took a lot of work, again, a lot of different kids to just put my opinions about the parents on the show and accept my kids reality, that may be the best way to phrase it. I just listened to them, and accepted what they said as operating reality. Now, again, we're talking about within parameters of safety, and those court orders sort of things. And even as experienced as I was there were times my marriage with stepkids that I caught myself competing without really intending. So I had to learn. Like, for example, when the kids came back from stepkids came back visiting their mom or my foster kids came back from visiting their biological parents, I learned to just say everything go, Okay, anything I can help with. And those were the only two questions beyond that. I just left it, it was sort of like their rooms, their room, their life with their other parent, and I'm not a part of it, unless they invite me

Kristen

eautiful because that creates safety, a felt sense of safe space for them to know, I can come back, I'm not going to be interrogated, it's okay, whatever I feel is okay, in its welcome. And it's not threatening to you.

Debbie

Sometimes with my stepkids, they would come to me before they would go to their dad, because to a large extent, I wasn't party to the buttons that my husband and his ex wife had stalled in each other. There weren't the same minefields there with me, my kids didn't feel the same minefields that they felt with their mom and their dad. But because I was just willing to let them be whatever they wanted to be, and have that relationship, and my only job was to help them have whatever relationship they could. And once you think of it that way, then I was able to build a relationship by helping them get where they wanted to be,

Kristen

which is beautiful. I mean, that takes a lot of self work. And I love how you said I had to grieve, and I had to feel my emotions. And I believe that is 100% true. And if you listen to this podcast at all, I am a big advocate of processing your own emotions, because you're a human being, you have feelings. It's an important part of what you're also teaching or modelling even for these children, that it's, I am tending to my own emotions, I'm processing. They're not responsible for your emotions. But the beautiful part that you said is that you had to learn to grieve, I think Black important part of the journey.

Debbie

It is and I had to learn to do that somewhere other than my conversations with them. I tend to be a person who processes things both by thinking and by talking, and I had to find safe outlets to talk. And sometimes my husband was safe out when sometimes it was dependent on whether or not I was stumbling into one of those mind feels, but I think all of us need a network that is outside the family. Every so often, in my law practice, I will handle some family matters. I'm saying the other day, I just need to send my brother and my sister a dozen roses and say, Thank you for not being crazy. They are a wonderful sounding board for me. And I have a couple of very close friends that I can go to and say, Help me think this through. And I'm just venting and they understand it. And it goes no further and they don't get worried and upset. And we just kind of think it through and then I can go back to taking care of my kids and my marriage. So it's very, very important to have those resources.

Kristen

I think it's extremely whether it's a therapist, whether it's a support system, there's lots of foster Yes, parenting groups.

Debbie

I'm a big fan of therapy and divorce parenting groups, foster parenting groups. So anywhere that you can get an objective, informed opinion, my husband and I, with our foster kids gone through a lot of therapy because it was a safe place to discuss things. And so whether it's therapist or just at this point in my life journey, I can do it with just my informal friend and family network.

Kristen

Yes, it's a beautiful way to also show them that it's okay to talk to somebody safe. Yes, okay. You don't have to keep this hidden. The shame or if there's been a lot of sexual or physical or mental or emotional abuse, that it's, here's a safe place with a trusted person to process it. And then you have in your own place, like you said to process and now you have your trusted friends and support system. A support system, to me is one of the most important part of the healing journey. And whatever that looks like it can be multiple resources that I often encourage people to have.

Debbie

We as human beings are hard wired to be social animals. There is a reason that the Geneva Convention outlaws solitary confinement, it is not good for us. It's not healthy for us to be solitary and on our own.

Kristen

Yes, it's the truth. I see people that feel so alone. And right, I mean, that support is essential. So that leads us to number three, that really intrigued me. Because this victim mindset, yes, children are true victims and a lot of ways, right. I mean, they come from these abusive systems that they are powerless over. And tell me about victimhood. And as armour or as a narrative that keeps you stuck. Tell me a little bit more. Let's dive into that.

Debbie

I've done some work on my blog about a few studies that have looked at victimhood, one of the places that I have run across it is because of my law practice, I defend and advise youth serving organisations, including schools. So I have run across the whole issue of trigger warnings. And the research that I've been able to find shows fairly definitively that trigger warnings they're well met. But they are counterproductive. Because what they do is they keep reinforcing the trauma as being central to the experience of these people. And so people who get trigger warnings, have heightened alerts, it doesn't do what we intend trigger warnings to do. It doesn't help them, it doesn't protect them, it actually increases their anxiety and increases their sensitivity. So I started doing some more work in that. And that's sort of fit with my experience of my kids. Because when they go to school, and they get the label of oh, this is an abused child, then you get not only all have the accommodations that they sometimes need in order to have a successful school experience. But they get these labels, and everyone approaches them. They are not Suzy with the brown herring biases, who likes to be involved in athletics. They are Suzy the poor, dear abused child. And it's a very one dimensional view of them, and it doesn't help them get past their trauma, it just becomes their identity. And now in our society, we have not only Suzie the abuse child, but Susie, the abused child who's a member of a disadvantaged ethnic minority, or Suzie, the abused child who is the victim of misogynistic patriarchy or whatever terms you want to throw around. It's just piling victimhood on top of victimhood. And I don't want to dismiss the fact that abused kids face trauma, that ethnic minority sometimes many times, maybe most times have a harder time in our society than they should that Lord knows women have a harder time than we should doing very many different things. So we have to recognise that. But too much of our society just stops there, once we've identified them, and once we feel sorry for them, then our job is done, we get to go on, we have labelled them, we have recognised it, we feel bad for them. And that's as far as it goes, we don't take up the tools to actually help them get past their trauma. And so I've become very fascinated with resilience studies. And there's a lot of work in resilience studies with traumatised kids. There's not so much resilience studies with other levels of disadvantage. And Solace is our society's not as interested in resilience in some areas as it is in others. But with our kids, if all they do is just pile up labels. I'll give you an example a child who did this is one of my foster kids. And I was saying to her, you really need to work harder on your grades. You say you want to go to college. I'm not unequally happy with my kids, by the way for college or career technical education. So you say you want to go to college that sure go. So why don't kind of have to work harder if you want that to be your goal. And she just talked him, she said, Oh, no, no, no, I can write a killer essay that's going to outdo any of my great. And I said, Oh, she said, Yeah, I'm a minority. My dad was abusive, and abandoned us, my mom became a drug addict. And then I ended up here with you old white people who just don't understand me. So I've gotten more than enough victim points to make up for any grades that I have. While I was thinking, I'm not sure that works that way. I really am not sure that's how the world works. But she was convinced that she had and the way she phrased it, I have enough victim points to get what I want. And I've never forgotten that phrasing. We have kids who believe that every core of their being, that's how they get ahead is at a victim points.

Kristen

And so how do you handle that, then?

Debbie

Well, I work with my kids. And what I've worked with her was well, okay, that's fine. But don't you think you still need to learn a few things, you still need to be able to write that essay, you still need to be able to use the words that you want to use. So let's work on the skills that you need. Again, sometimes you have to accept their reality, sometimes you can talk around it, we first have to say to them, yes, I'm sorry, I understand that this is really terrible. I do feel for you, I see you and I see your pain, and I'm not discounting it. And here's what the world expects. So it's kind of like a dialectical Behaviour Therapy, where you can take to believe two antithetical things at the same time,

Kristen

you did not use the word but I was like,

Debbie

I have had to train myself out of that. But I had a six year old one time who every time I'd wake her up in the mornings to go to school. And this is a very simple way of explaining it gets more complicated, of course, with more trauma, but every time I'd wake her up and say, Okay, it's time to go to school, she would just sob and say, I don't want to be here, I want to go back to my blue house. I don't like it here. And I learned to start waking her up early to give myself time to hold her, let her cry on my shoulder, say I understand, I'm sorry, I really am sorry, I can't just take you back to your blue house. And it would kind of work through it. And then some point, I would say, and you know, the bus is on its way. And it's time now to get ready and go meet the bus. And eventually, it worked to give her the time to process she needed less than less time to process the fact that she was with me instead of at the Blue House. But reminding her that the world is the way it is the bus is on its way. There's nothing I can do about that. There's nothing you can do about that. You have to go to school, and you have to get on the bus and sort of saying it very gently, but firmly and inexorably, the bus is on its way. My teenagers. It's much harder when I'd say that. I love you. I understand. I'm really sorry. You will be 18 in two years. I'd like for you to be prepared to be a team. Again, it wasn't a discounting it. It was just saying what do we need to work on for you to feel ready to be a team. And sometimes I just ask it that way, because they need some input into it. Because there's always the risk of triggering anxiety. When you say you're going to be 18 in three years. That's a whole different ballgame. But you have to give them structure. The world is going to come at them no matter how much we love them. I don't care about that. They have to develop resilience in order to succeed. And they have to think of themselves as able to meet the challenge.

Kristen

So let's just summarise because I don't want people to misconstrue what you're saying. So you're not saying to bypass the emotions, the trauma, the feelings, because I'm hearing you say you need to process it, I acknowledge it, be an empathic witness to it, and hold space for possibility at the same time have, we have to still kind of keep going, while at the same time hold space for the processing. So it's an and and both to your point, you're not saying that there's not traumatic things that have happened to somebody, yes, you make an imprint, that do cause somebody to feel a certain way, we have to address it, we have to attend to it, we have to process it. And then that allows the space to open up to possibility to get through it and get to the other side. And it may come in waves right for the rest of their lives. But you want to equip them at the same time as you process. So don't want people to misconstrue what you're saying, as if you're bypassing that, which I don't know, our, but I want to help you. We're making that point.

Debbie

Right. And this is what I think a lot of the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps people, that they jumped too far, they jump past the saying to them, I'm sorry, I really am sorry, you're in foster care, I'm sorry that your mom is not here. I'm sorry that you're having to go through this. I'm here. I care about you. I will continue to love you no matter what you think about me? And how can we get you from here to where you say you want to be? You have to go through every step of that process. And you have to understand with kids, it is usually two steps forward, one step back, but that's the way we are.

Kristen

That's how change goes. Every time with any step, especially with transitions, you're gonna see major people will go where they regressed, or I feel like I was supposed to be over this issue. And it's back up. And I'm like, Yeah, because there's another layer they're inviting you in to process and tend to so you can move through that next layer that,

Debbie

well, it would be nice if change work the way that again, my left brain wants it to I get the information, I read the book, I study the information, I get it in my head, I pass the test, and then I'm on to my next book, it would be really great if life worked that way. But emotions and habits, bad judgement and Wisdom does not work that way. It's really more of a Okay, take another lap.

Kristen

Yes. And I think the point with a victimhood is, at least in my practice, what I see is you were a victim, as a child too many things. I mean, especially if there was abusive parents, there was neglect, there was going to really hard things that happened. And part of the healing journey is acknowledging that really tending to that, and then we can get past the victimhood because if we stay in the victimhood as adults usually stay stuck. I don't see a lot of progress, because it's the shield that we unconsciously perhaps or even stuck in, there's more to process back there.

Debbie

I was victimised, and this is the best that I can ever do. There is a ceiling for me because of my past trauma. And once we accept that there is a ceiling for us, then it becomes an all purpose excuse. We don't have to do the hard work, we can say well, there's no point

Kristen

even trying. And sometimes that's a cemented belief as a result of the trauma that has to be assessed. So it's even though it's like an unconscious, see mental belief that I am not worth it. I'm defective, there's something wrong with me. So that's why I love EMDR. It's a form of therapy, you process that belief that there's a ceiling for me. And once we can get past that, then the possibilities are there. And so that's the beauty of facing the pain, and getting past some of those cemented beliefs that got imprinted as a result of the trauma. So that's why I love this deeper work that I get to do.

Debbie

One of the things that I think that therapy also does is it helps give my kids a vocabulary for things. I wrote a blog post once in which we have a rescue dog who is just completely anxiety ridden. When she gets hyper she'll just circle circle circle. And my youngest son who has a way with words came in one time and saw her as she was I don't remember what triggered this, but she was just running in circles around the room. And he looked over and he said well, she feels ways about things doesn't shake. I love that phrase because I realised my kids. They don't have a vocabulary. All they know is they feel ways about things. And it's all one big blob and they just feel it and they don't know what to do. do about it other than to react. And so therapy can give that can put a name on things and can tease out the scent can help them develop the vocabulary for processing and moving forward. Yes, I was abused, and it was not my fault. It's not my responsibility. And all of those very important things that our kids need to learn,

Kristen

that leads to empowerment, especially if they're in impressive environments, situations, place employment, I mean, the list goes on. And they feel like they're right back into that same place that they were raised in or same place that trauma happened, that is so key and working to get to empowerment to have a voice

Debbie

can change it, I grew up in a functional family not have a lot of abuse at my one of my parents had anger issues, nothing is perfect, but nothing that I personally experienced. And then after my work as a social worker, I was in law school. And I ended up with a law firm, where I just get up Monday morning, and there was just this pressure that I was headed in. And I couldn't figure out why I hated this job and why I was having so much trouble with it. And finally, one day I had an epiphany. I looked around, I realised the boss that I was working with, because I had never experienced it, it took me a long time to intellectually recognise the pattern of oh, wait, this is an abusive relationship. This is what these things feel like. And it was empowering to be able to put the name and title of that and to realise, Okay, it's time for me to look for

Kristen

another job. Yeah, and get the courage to do that. So that's the beauty of doing all this work with, I'd say, kids, teens, adults, this has been such a good conversation and the time went so fast. Where can people find you? How can they find your book, tell us more about all the details?

Debbie

Well, you can find me at Debbie osbourne.com. I spell my name funny. So it may be easier to find me at raising other people's children.com. That's my book. And it leads back to my blog and to my website.

Kristen

And there's lots of good articles. And you do a lot of research based information, which I really appreciate in your blogs. So thank you for that. So I encourage you to go to the blog. Check it out. You put a lot of good content on there. And thank you for your time, and I loved our conversation.

Debbie

Thank you so much. I had a great time. It's always good to talk to someone who actually knows what they're talking about and keep in the straight and narrow. Thanks, Debbie. Thank you so

Kristen

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. And 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai