The Mel Robbins Podcast
Harvard Psychologist Shares 6 Words That Will Change Your Family
Mon, 16 Dec 2024
This episode will change the way you think about every relationship in your life. Today, Harvard’s Dr. Stuart Ablon is distilling 30 years of behavior change research into one hour. Dr. Ablon is the Founder and Director of Think: Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital, which focuses on Collaborative Problem Solving. An award-winning psychologist, Dr. Ablon is also a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.After listening, you will have a completely new approach to dealing with difficult people, challenging kids, and family members.In this candid and relatable conversation, Mel and Dr. Ablon bust through the most common parenting myths and offers a simple 3 step approach for transforming even the most frustrating dynamics. This episode isn’t just about solving conflicts; it’s about creating a deeper understanding of others and fostering lasting change. Whether you're a parent, partner, or simply navigating life’s challenges, this conversation is for you.For more resources, including links to the studies mentioned in the episode, click here for the podcast episode page.If you liked this episode, and want to create a peaceful connection with family, listen to to this episode next: The Simple Tool That Will Transform Your Family DynamicConnect with Mel: Get Mel’s new book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes Disclaimer
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm just sitting here trying to find the words to explain the conversation that I just had that you're about to listen to. I'm blown away. You're about to meet somebody who just changed my life, and there is no doubt in my mind that everything that you're about to learn will forever change you as a person.
It will change how you think about relationships, how you think about yourself. It'll change how you parent, how you show up at work. I mean, this is one of those conversations that sticks with you for a lifetime. Dr. Stuart Ablon, who has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years practicing at Mass General Hospital here in Boston,
just came in here and taught me some of the most important things that I have ever learned in my life. I cannot wait for you to hear this. I cannot wait for you to share this with the people that you love. And it is my absolute honor to share it with you. If you're kind of in one of those modes where you're just like tired of your day-to-day life, it's like the same old, same old.
What if I told you that's a good thing? Because it means you're ready to make a change. And in a special bonus segment at the very end of the episode, I'm going to show you some research-backed ways to break out of a rut. And I want to thank our sponsor, Celebrity Cruises, for bringing me the opportunity to be able to talk to you about this.
You can learn more about Celebrity Cruises at celebritycruises.com. Visit celebrity.com for details, ships registry, Malta, and Ecuador. Thank you so much for having me. if you're a brand new listener. And I suspect there's gonna be a lot of brand new listeners around the world that come in through this particular episode because I know you're gonna share this.
That's how incredible what you're about to learn is going to be. And so welcome, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. You have picked a winner to jump into the Mel Robbins Podcast. And you know what it tells me? It tells me that you're the type of person who values your time. and that you're also interested in learning about ways that you can improve your life and your relationships.
And today, you're gonna leave a changed person. I know I am. I have been following the work of the extraordinary Dr. Stuart Ablon for years, and I am so thrilled that we finally have him here today so that you and I can learn from him, we can grow, we can become better people, and we can use his research-backed approach to help us deal with the challenging people in our life.
Now, Dr. Stuart Ablon is an award-winning psychologist. He has over 30 years of experience, and he is an expert on challenging behavior. He's also the founder and director of Think Kids, which is a program in the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Hospital. He's a professor at Harvard Medical School, and he started all of his work and research
with children, but has found that everything that he's learned about dealing with somebody who's exhibiting challenging behavior, you know, they're frustrating you or you're deeply worried about them, that everything that you're about to learn applies to any relationship. It applies to adults. It applies to coworkers. It applies to your marriage. You're going to love this.
And I love the title of his new bestselling book, Changeable, The Surprising Science Behind Helping Anyone Change. And that's what the conversation is all about today. How you can use science to help anyone in your life, no matter how challenging or scary the situation might be. Yes, you can help them change. Dr. Ablon, it is such an honor to meet you. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
It is an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Where I want to start is, could you just tell the person listening what they could experience in their life that would be different if they really take to heart everything that you're about to share with us and teach us today?
Well, I think in essence, people could find that conflict in their life could decrease substantially. People could find that they're able to repair relationships with people they care about, love, work with, raise. And people could build skills, skills in areas like flexibility and frustration tolerance and problem solving and empathy. So those are some of the things.
I'm in. This may seem like a hard question, but in the 30 years of clinical psychology experience and being the founder of the Think Kids program at Mass General Hospital, what are some of the biggest takeaways that you have from your career truly working with parents and kids specifically?
I would say a couple of them. One is that still today, despite all the things that we've learned, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, challenging behavior or concerning behavior is still tragically misunderstood and mistreated. And if we can just shift our thinking to better understand what causes it, there's so much opportunity to be helpful in a variety of different ways.
So I think that's one of the things.
And when you say challenging behavior.
Yes.
What do you put in that bucket?
You know, it depends on the age of the person you're talking about and the setting. But we're talking about everything from tantrums to with younger children to the kind of concerning behavior with teens that keeps adults up at night to the challenges that people have with their spouse's behavior, their in-laws behavior, their colleagues behavior.
And what would you tell the person who's listening right now who's either overwhelmed or burnt out or just tired of dealing with a person or a particular issue in their life? And they're just like, is this ever going to end? Is this ever going to get better?
Well, the good news is we've seen it get better in the So it's proven, but that's not to really diminish the fact that wherever you're experiencing concerning behavior from folks, you know, it's incredibly frustrating. Like, it's really hard to deal with and it pisses us off. And, you know, so it's really hard to sort of keep our calm and be able to respond in ways that are effective.
But I think we've got some ways to sort of reframe understanding the challenging behavior that can position people in a totally different place.
Well, that's cool. So it sounds like what we're going to learn from you today is an entirely different way to look at and approach a situation where someone's pissing you off.
You got it. And your question before of sort of what have I learned over 30 years? The other thing I've learned is that, and this is probably one of the most, I think, important findings in social science research about helping people. And we're talking about any kind of person, kid, adult.
If you're trying to help somebody with anything related to their behavior, what we've learned over the years is there's only really one reliable predictor of helping somebody to change their behavior. And the good news is it's also the most powerful one. What is it? It's the degree of helping relationship between helper and and help-y, the degree of helping relationship.
And when I say helping relationship, what I mean by that is a collaboration born of empathy, of understanding, of nonjudgmental acceptance. So it's sort of working together on hard things, but coming from that nonjudgmental perspective. And that's what we find, whether it's in therapy or in schools or all kinds of places, that's the biggest predictor of helping somebody to change their behavior.
Well, what I immediately think about, and I'm sure we're going to unpack this in great detail, is I think about situations in my life, whether it's dealing with our son Oakley when he was in the fourth grade and we were just figuring out that he had dyslexia and ADHD and he was super lonely and felt like an outsider and we were trying to help. but everything was a standoff and a fight.
Or when another situation, my husband, was going through a really bad bout of depression and I wanted to help, but I just couldn't find a way in. And I can think about challenging people in my extended family where I'm like, I'd like to help you be a better person because you piss me off and annoy me, but where it almost feels like a deadlock in terms of the dynamic.
Yes.
And it's as if they don't want help and you don't know what to do. And so are you saying it's possible for us to change our approach and that changes what happens?
Absolutely. And also, you know what? I've got a philosophy that all of our work flows from. It's a pretty simple one. When we apply it to kids, it goes like this. Kids do well if they can. Oh. Not kids do well if they want to, but kids do well if they can. And what that means is if a kid could do well, they would do well.
And the reality is, you know, in all the years I've done this, I've never met a kid who prefers doing poorly to doing well. And now substitute that word kid with adult, with spouse, with partner, with coworker, with mother-in-law, you name it. Yep. People do well if they can. It's true. Everybody wants to do well and wants to have healthy, happy relationships with others.
There's just things getting in the way sometimes. And when you're saying like, all these people that might piss you off, but how do I get them to change their behavior? I hate to say it, but they may be saying the same about you because they're surely saying the same about me at times as well.
And so it's really about how do we come to some mutual understanding and how do we collaborate with one another? And what we found is we've sort of developed a bit of a formula for how to do that. And we'll see that not only does it sort of have proven results, but it maps on to how our brains work, how our brains process information.
And to boil it down a little bit, when somebody's pissing you off with their behavior, you want to sort of tell them what to do. And the reality is they're never going to listen to you unless you start by listening to them. And we'll talk about exactly what a formula of that looks like.
I love this. And what I really want to make sure that I highlight as you're listening is that sentence, kids do well if they can. And adults do well if they can. And I am so... I guess, hopeful. And I feel better knowing that we're starting from a position based on 30 years of research where you've seen over and over and over again, everybody wants to do better.
You got it.
And if you provide the right conditions, they can get better.
Yes. And here's why, though. Okay. Tell me why. Well, because if you believe kids do well if they can. Yes. Or people do well if they can. Yes. What you're doing is you're embracing a mindset shift because that's not the most common way of thinking about people and their behavior, especially when they're behaving in ways that piss you off. Right. Or are very concerning. Right.
The more common way of thinking about it is kids do well if they want to.
Yes.
And if you believe kids do well if they want to, and a kid's not doing well, you're going to assume the reason they're not doing well is because they don't want to. Yes. So then what are you going to do about it? You're going to try to- Pressure them. Make them want to. Correct. And we start this very early on with kids, with rewards and consequences and things like that.
But in essence, as long as we sort of have more power over somebody, we never quit trying to do that, motivating people to behave better, which is all fine and well if what is standing in somebody's way, is a lack of motivation.
But that's not what's normally standing in someone's way, is it? I think that's where it's going.
And if you're trying to motivate somebody when motivation isn't the issue, not only is it not going to be effective, but it might make matters much worse. And we can talk about what I mean by that. So when you shift your focus and you say, kids do well if they can, people do well if they can, what you're saying is, if that person could do well, they would do well. And if they're not,
Something else is getting in their way. And I personally don't buy that it's just a lack of motivation. And now here's where the research comes in. Because we have about 50 years of research in the neurosciences that has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that people who struggle to manage their behavior, they actually don't lack the will to behave well.
What they lack are the skills to behave well. Skills in areas like problem solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance. And I can give you fancier names for those things, clinical names.
Please don't. If you're watching this podcast on YouTube, you're seeing my mouth slowly open wider and wider as my jaw is hitting the ground because this is the simplest explanation for and the most empowering and encouraging explanation I have ever heard.
for how to change the way you look at other people in your life, whether like me, you're a boss and you're trying to motivate your team or you're a parent like we both are and you're trying to motivate your kids or you're dating somebody and you're like, boy, I wish you'd take better care of yourself and you're trying to motivate them. And you jump so quickly into
To the judgment and the frustration or the, and I'm focusing on frustration and people's behavior that pisses you off because it feels accessible and lighter because it can quickly go to the serious stuff where somebody's really struggling. and you feel like super hopeless, like that becomes very like scary to think about, but it's going to be the exact same model.
You got it.
Because we're starting in the exact same place with either kids or adults, which is kids do well if they can. And if you start there, instead of judging a lack of willpower or discipline or motivation, you go, okay, well, what are the conditions for doing well?
And it sets you up to sort of collaborate, to help, to be a helper. Because when you sort of define this as a lack of motivation, then what it sets you up to do is to try to sort of use power or control to try to motivate somebody.
What, have you been in the car rides with me and my kids or at the kitchen? Dr. Avalon, come on now.
And I want to point out something because you said something really important a moment ago. You know, there's a difference between just being aggravated by somebody's behavior. Yes. And being aggravated, but also really concerned and hopeless and worried. Yes. And as a parent, there is no worse feeling.
Now, I see you brought something.
Yes.
What is that letter that you have there?
This is a girl I worked with in the Boston public schools who was having a really hard time both at home and at school managing her behavior. And she both was a sort of what I call an exploder and an imploder.
Which, what does that mean?
So exploder means like she would, scream. She turned over her desk. She would throw things. She'd hit other people. An imploder means she would quietly put her head down and cry. She would sneak out of the room and ask to go to the bathroom and not come back. She would shut down.
And to me, by the way, all these are, these are different flavors of saying, I'm having a hard time handling something with the skills I have. Yeah. Why would a kid choose to do any of those things if they could handle the situation better? You know, kids do well if they can. Why does this get you so emotional? Because just kids being misunderstood. Yeah. and mistreated.
And it doesn't have to be that way. We know better. You know, we know better. We have to do better. We have to do better. And I don't blame us because like, this is how it works in history. We learn. Conventional wisdom gets overturned and we learn better. And it takes a while until we change our practices.
And we're in that period now, which is why I'm thankful for you helping spread the word here because we can shift our thinking and do better here. We don't have to lose kids. And I just looked at this girl's letter and I've seen this a million times and it still makes me emotional every time because this girl was struggling so much.
And they used a sort of classic sticker chart to try to motivate her to behave better. Right. You know, like get stuff if you behave well. Yeah. And it wasn't working great. And I asked her, you know, when I was meeting with her, I asked her what's happening with it. She's not great at letting people know what's bothering her and things. Yeah. But she would write for me. Yes.
She could do it in written form. And she could draw things. Yeah. And so I asked her, you know, how the thing was going, the sticker chart. And she wrote this for me. And it says, my brain is idiotic. I make stupid mistakes. I mess everything up. I always make a mess and get hurt and ruin everything. And that's a kid we're trying to motivate to behave better. You got to be kidding me.
I mean, how we missed the mark. This kid, more motivated than anybody in the face of the earth to behave well. Why? Because she didn't want to feel this way. So Sherry has all the internal motivation in the world. Last thing we want to do is send her the message. We don't think you're trying hard enough.
So what is available? to the person who's listening to you right now. And if you could speak directly to them, whether they are a parent who has a child like just spiraling from an eating disorder or spiraling with behavior issues at schools and they're getting kicked out and they're lost or You have somebody in your life that's spiraling with addiction.
What do you want to say to that person directly about what's available to them in this conversation?
Well, so what I want to say to them is that it starts, most importantly, from this place of mindset.
Okay.
And that we've got to take ourself out of this position of wanting to make somebody change, impose our will upon them in some way, whether we do that harshly or nicely. And what we need to do is remember this person's doing the best they can to handle what the world is throwing at them with the skills they're able to bring to bear in that moment.
And so what we wanna do is we wanna try to help figure out what are they struggling with so much? Which skills are they having a hard time accessing? And how can we help them with those things? How can we help problem solve? How can we help them build skills? And I have good news here, too, is the skill building process.
It's not something where you're going to send your kid or somebody out to have somebody else build their skills. You can help them do that. And it's not by some sneaky process. It's just by collaborating with them on practicing problem solving, but using the real life problems that they're confronting.
The way you just explained that makes me see it completely differently.
And I just want to be clear that it's not like I don't reach moments where I that that faith gets shaken because I get so upset, bothered, pissed off, etc. And both in my own life personally, but also my clinical life. And, you know, I just try to hold tight to that philosophy.
And when you were saying that, you know, a memory came up years ago in my practice of working with an adolescent who was really, really struggling. Okay. And his behavior was really obnoxious, too. Like what? Well, he just would be really disrespectful to his parents, to most adults, authority figures, and it seemed like he just didn't care. So it was so easy.
It was so frustrating because you sort of couldn't engage him much, and it seemed like he didn't care. And... I remember the day where his mom, who never lost hope, and she brought in, you know, he was a 15-year-old at the time, and he was a pretty rough kid. She brought in a picture of him asleep as a two-year-old. on the back seat of the car. And he was just the cutest little thing.
And it's giving me goosebumps right now just talking about it. And I saw this and I said to myself, like, that kid's in there somewhere. Like this hardened, tough kid who's really hard to access. There's this little adorable guy and things have gone wrong in the interim. But I got to believe that that kid who, you Everybody looked at this lovely, cute kid. He's in there. He wants to do well.
And how do we access that? And actually, sometimes I give parents that advice with little kids. I said, if you're losing faith, just watch them sleep for a little bit. Because they're really cute then and they can't be obnoxious when they're sleeping or difficult. And it'll restore a little bit of your faith and remind yourself kids do well if they can and then come back at it the next day.
Although we're going to get into specifics about exactly what to do. I want to be clear. This is not just about mindset. It's about shifting your mindset and then shifting what you do to match that new mindset.
You were talking about skills. Can you just list off some of the skills that people that we may be dealing with in our families or at work or in life are missing that create challenging behavior?
Absolutely. So, you know, I gave you some sort of big categories that they fall in, problem-solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance. But I also told you there's 50 years of research that shows exactly where those skills are. And in essence, what we found is they're in five different areas.
And if we want to use fancy language just for a moment, they're what we call neurocognitive skills, which is a fancy way of saying thinking skills in essence. They're largely what happens in the prefrontal cortex of your brain. So there's five areas. One, language and communication skills.
Now, really easy to think about with a kid because, you know, like most two-year-olds are very poorly behaved, right? We call it the terrible twos. Not because they're evil little beings, but because they lack a lot of skills, including they're not great at knowing what's bothering them, using words to tell somebody what's bothering them, engaging in a back and forth to solve a problem.
Those are language and communication skills. Now, most four-year-olds are better than that, than two-year-olds at that. Most eight-year-olds better than five-year-olds. Most 20-year-olds better than 10-year-olds at that. But notice my language. Most. So you may be working with a 15-year-old who's got six-year-old language skills.
And let's be clear, this does not just apply to kids because you may be in marriage with a 45-year-old who really struggles to identify what's bothering them, communicate it to others, engage in the back and forth to problem solve. So that's one category, language and communication skills.
And you know what else I just kind of got as I'm listening to you? I need to manage my face because I think I look like I'm in a state of shock the entire time I'm listening to you. So I'm like, where were you 30 years ago? You're here now, and we're all going to learn from you now, is that as you were explaining the two-year-old,
Then if you don't have the language and communication skills, it would be completely age appropriate and normal for you to exhibit challenging behavior because you don't have the language and communication skills to express what you need.
Well, that's what I would say. What do two-year-olds do when they're upset? They don't calmly express what's going on, right? They bite, they scream, they flop, they run, they hit, you know, they do all those things. And that's what they've sort of gotten their bag of tricks in their toolbox, right? So if they don't develop other skills, that's what they're going to resort to.
You know, there's a good analogy, a precedent that I like to remind myself of because I think we've made a ton of progress there. And I know this will resonate for you. Yeah. When you and I were in school, we didn't know much about learning disabilities. True. Right? So if you had dyslexia when you were our age growing up and you were struggling to read,
People didn't say, I wonder what she's having a hard time with. They thought that you were either lazy or dumb. And if they thought you were lazy, what would they do? They would try to motivate you to work harder to read, which, you know, the sad reality, the ironic reality is who's working harder than anybody else in the classroom to learn how to read? The kid to whom it's not coming naturally.
Yeah.
And honestly, I think we lost a lot of kids by sort of teaching them that we thought they weren't working hard enough when actually they were working overtime and what they were struggling with was skill, not will.
Wow. The opportunity for all of us to look at any challenging behavior or any frustrating or scary dynamic with another human being as a skill issue is incredible. You've covered one of the five skills and that was communication and language.
So what are the other four? Right. Okay. So the other has to do with attention and working memory skills. That's number two. Okay.
And it's a big category, but you know, attention skills are like, can you focus on something, not that's enthralling to you, but something that isn't that interesting or you don't exactly feel like focusing on right now, but can you sort of marshal enough attention to focus on it? And can you shift your attention from one thing to the next when needed?
And as a kid, by the way, you're told all the time, but even as an adult, we're told, stop paying attention to that, start paying attention to that.
Right. And then also what's confounding, whether you have a child who's a gamer or you have a young adult in your life or a significant other who's a gamer, you look at the fact that they can focus there. Yes. And then you're like, why the hell can't you pick up your shoes or pay attention or keep a job?
Well, and this is a big misconception, for instance, about attentional issues as a whole. Okay. You know, people think that if somebody's diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, ADHD, it means they can't focus at all. It's just not true. What does it mean, Doc? Well, it means that they have a hard time focusing on things that are not intrinsically all that interesting to them.
In fact, most people diagnosed with ADHD will tell you they have the ability to hyper-focus, right? which is an incredible skill and strength on something they're super interested in. But it's when somebody says, well, could you pay attention to this now? That is really hard to focus your attention on, which by the way, for kids in school, there's a fair amount of school.
They're like, I got to force myself to pay attention to this. Right. So, you know- And that's a skill. It's a skill. Absolutely. Gotcha. And what's the third one? And well, so hold on. Oh, we're not even done?
Oh my God.
Okay. Well, I snuck in attention and working memory because it's related to attention.
See, I have both- And I'm exhibiting it in the middle of this interview.
Well, you know, most of us humans can only remember three to five things at one time, and there are five of these.
Well, Dr. Ablon, my memory not working right now.
Okay, so keep going. Working memory just means keeping a bunch of stuff, ironically, in your head at one time and balancing it together. Okay. But the reason that's relevant is all problem solving requires working memory. Yeah. You don't realize, but when you're solving a problem, you have all these files open in your head and you're toggling back and forth between them all at one time.
What's the problem? Have I seen this before? What did I do about it? How did it work out? Have I seen anybody else handle a problem like this? How might I do it now? And you're juggling all those things. And if you're sort of hard drive crashes trying to juggle all those things, it gets in the way.
Yep. Okay.
So that's attention to working memory skills. Okay. Let's go to number three. Yes. Use jargon for one second. I'll translate it. Okay. Number three is emotion and self-regulation skills. Okay. regulate is a word that's thrown around a lot these days. What does that mean? Well, here's the thing, just translate it into plain old English. It means to manage or to control.
Okay.
So when people are talking about emotion regulation, they're talking about your ability to manage or control your emotions.
Okay.
Okay. And self, self-control. What are they talking about there? They're talking about things like perhaps the most important human skill we have, which is impulse control. OK, all day, all of us basically keep our impulses in check. And we say to ourselves, like, don't say that. That's a bad idea. Don't do that. You know, we sort of check ourselves.
I always tell people, if you want to know how important impulse control is, spend a day. We should not do this today on the podcast, but spend a day where you imagine what it would be like if you did or said the first thing that came to your mind all throughout the course of the day. And I'll see you in jail.
Yeah.
You'll have, I was going to say, you'll have a blast. Yeah. But yes, it would be ugly. Yes. Because most of the time we're checking our impulses. Now, again, who's not very good at checking impulses? Two-year-olds, four-year-olds. But guess what? Teenagers. Some teenagers, but also adults. True. Okay. And, you know, if I could just point out really quickly, again, a sad irony here.
Yeah.
People who are very impulsive do stuff without thinking about the consequences of their actions. That's the definition of impulse control. Think about the likely consequences of what you do before you do it. So if you have poor impulse control, you do stuff without thinking first. Then you get hit with consequences, typically.
The reason this is sadly ironic is guess what consequences require to be effective in the first place? Impulse control. You got it. Because you've got to be able to stop in the moment and say, okay, if I do this, what will happen? Oh, gosh, if I do that, there's probably going to be this consequence or this bad outcome. I probably shouldn't do that. Let me reel it back in.
So in other words, consequences only work if somebody has good impulse control.
Because, and I just want to make sure we unpack this because I think this is really important because a lot of us get in this loop, especially with kids or even with people in our lives that are adults where you literally like, let's give an example because I'm thinking about like a kid who is not studying at school and you start hammering them.
You got to get more motivated, get your grades up or else you're going to get on academic probation and then you're going to get kicked out. Well, if you have poor impulse control, you're going to go party all weekend or you're going to blow off class because you don't have the ability to think about the fact that this is going to happen.
And then when it happens, it's not really that motivating because you still don't have the impulse control to think about the consequences if you don't get your act together to get back into school.
You got it. So consequences in essence don't work for the people to whom they are most applied is basically what we're saying.
And that's why it's so frustrating to the rest of us Because you can see the consequences and you're like, why is this idiot not seeing what's about to happen? Do they not care about their family or their life or their future or my feelings or all that? So I can see how not seeing impulse control as a skill
that could be developed creates this real, like, almost toxic situation between you and another person where you just lose your power, they lose theirs, you're now in this weird standoff, and it spirals.
Absolutely. And we should be clear, Mel. None of these skills that I'm talking about are correlated with intelligence, okay? So this is not like if you're struggling with any of these skills, just like dyslexia. If you can't decode words, that doesn't make you not smart. In fact, some of the most brilliant, innovative, interesting people had a hard time decoding words.
Their brains worked a little differently. Same is true with these skills. You can have poor language and communication skills, but be brilliant. You can have poor attention and working memory, emotion and self-regulation skills. And we still got two categories to go through. You can struggle with those skills and be brilliant.
Well, and what you know that I think would be helpful for the person listening to hear and understand is that the majority of people that end up in jail actually are missing these skills or have a learning disability or have impulse control issues. So it is not ever... That you're dealing with a, quote, bad human being.
You're dealing with somebody who would do well if they can, and they didn't have the conditions or the skill building that would have helped them.
I remember when I first presented these ideas at one of the prisons we were working with, one of the senior guards there that everybody sort of respected the most. He said after, he said, this is really interesting. He said, you know, I I think this might apply to like, say, 10%, maybe 5% of the young people we have here. But the rest of them, they're actually criminals.
And what they lack is the motivation to not behave this way. And a couple of years into our work together, it was amazing when he was like, you know, Doc, got to tell you, I still think there might be a couple of like sociopaths here, but like 95 or more percent of these people here are struggling with the exact skills you're talking about.
Yeah. Yeah, and it makes it heartbreaking. And that's why I'm thrilled that you're here because I think seeing these five skills that are things that anybody can learn, but when you're missing it, creates challenging behavior. This is the heart of what we're talking about because it allows you to approach any dynamic with any human being in a very different way. You got it.
Dr. Avalon, I have so many more questions. There's so much I want to dig into with you. I need to take a short pause to hear a word from our amazing sponsors. While you're listening to our sponsors, share this with people in your life. This information, the wisdom, the research that Dr. Avalon is teaching you and me today, it will change your life.
I can already feel things shifting inside me and I'm sure you can too. So take a moment, share this with somebody and don't go anywhere because Dr. Avalon has so much more to teach us and we're going to be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are getting to spend time together with the amazing Dr. Stuart Ablon.
He's teaching us how to help people change in our lives and how to deal with challenging behavior by first understanding the source of it. So Dr. Ablon, what is skill number four?
Cognitive flexibility. Cognitive, fancy word for thinking. So we're talking about flexible thinking.
And what is flexible thinking?
You know, there's a lot of people out there who struggle with flexible thinking. What I mean by that is that they tend to be more sort of rigid or concrete or literal or we call black and white in their thinking. It's sort of like all or none. Yeah. Yeah. And sort of the grays of the world are harder.
You know, as kids, you can spot these kids because they're the kids who, if everything goes according to the rules, the routine, the structure, the template they had in their head, life is good. Yes. But any change, any unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, entering a situation they don't know what it's going to look like, they don't have the template for, and sort of winging it.
What's interesting is, I don't know if as you're listening to Dr. Ablon, you're like, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me. I'm checking all five and I'm missing all of them. But what's interesting to me is that I can say that I definitely default to that all or none. Like things are absolutely fabulous or they're horrendous or it's going to be amazing or this is the worst.
And
My husband and kids often feel like they're on this emotional roller coaster with me because they're not quite sure. Are we going to get the Mel who's at level 100? Are we going to get her at zero? And I work at this. So I hear what you're saying as a skill. Like I have to practice these tools of catching my own thinking. Yes. And wanting to have a mindset that is more flexible.
And over time, I've absolutely become way more flexible.
So this is the thing. Kids' brains are very malleable. Yes. So you, you know, changeable. You can help them learn skills more easily. But sometimes people think that like once you're an adult, you know, you can't develop these skills. That's nonsense. You can change the adult brain. But as you're saying, it takes repetition and practice, but you can become a more flexible thinker.
Just like you can become better at regulating, controlling, managing your emotions. You can become better at using your language and communication skills. And this is the power of thinking skill, not will. Because if it's about skill, not will, skills can be built. And I have to say, I have never seen anyone at any age with any level of skill where they couldn't improve that skill incrementally.
So I'm talking about the most severe cases. There's always opportunity to improve our skills. Always.
Absolutely. This is so empowering. What is the fifth?
The fifth is a big category, social thinking skills. And what does that mean? So it means all the types of skills that go into managing social interactions, like basic ones, like how do you start a conversation with somebody? How do you join a group of people who are doing something smoothly without sort of butting in or upsetting things?
To more subtle, complicated skills, like knowing how you come across, how your behavior impacts other people. I call it your feedback loop. which we are all so reliant on in the world. Basically, we do stuff and say stuff and look around and say like, how's it coming across? And we adjust our behavior if all's going well.
But some folks don't have a feedback loop or keep it open for a very short amount of time or misjudge the feedback. So, you know, those are more complicated skills and probably empathy. And perspective taking is one of the most complicated of all social thinking skills, you know, which is in essence, can you try to understand where somebody else is coming from?
And all these skills can be interrelated too. So these five we talked about, they're not mutually exclusive. It's not, I have a hard time with this and nothing else. Because you can imagine, you know, if you're a very concrete, literal thinker, it might be hard for you to step into somebody else's shoes and empathize. Right.
Or if you tend to think in a very black and white way, your emotions may spiral pretty quickly if you start to catastrophize, as you said a moment ago. Right.
And I can also think of things like, especially in the social behavior, like if you're somebody that just doesn't have the skill of the cues. Yes. You're the awkward kid or the awkward person at work that just stands a little too close to everybody.
Yes.
Or like close talker, or you follow somebody too closely into the bathroom and you just don't know. Yes. That that then becomes its own thing that makes you start to wonder, why don't I have friends? And why do I feel like I don't belong here?
Yep.
And so how does missing those skills create this dynamic that is challenging for us with other people?
Well, the way it happens is because you struggle with these skills, you have a hard time meeting people's expectations. You end up doing things that people don't like, that they don't want you to do, and not doing things people want you to do. People get frustrated with you. Yep. And then people default to assuming this is a lack of will. Yep.
And they try to motivate you through incentives, rewards, consequences to try to behave better. And that doesn't work because you're already trying hard. You're trying harder than anybody else to behave well. I mean, this is one of the secrets. People think sometimes people who struggle with their behavior aren't trying hard to behave well. No, you know who's not trying hard to behave well?
Well-behaved people, because it comes naturally. The people who are really working hard are the folks for whom it doesn't come naturally. And then I got to say what gets really dangerous is not only are rewards and consequences, incentives, things like that, not effective, right? But they can cause real harm. And if I can talk about two ways they cause harm.
Please, because I think where we're going now is, especially if you think about it from a parenting context, that when you get frustrated, you then discipline and you punish and you scream or yell or timeouts or whatever it may be. Yeah. And what is the impact if we're dealing with a skill situation?
By the way, that word discipline is an interesting one because people somehow have equated discipline with punishment. Yes. Where actually the origins of the word don't involve punishment at all. The origins of the word discipline revolve around teaching, really means to teach. And punishment is a very poor way to... to teach.
Now, if you think skill, not will, now you're in the business of teaching because you know what you're teaching, which is skills. But to go back to the harm, two ways, okay, that I think classic discipline, rewards, consequences, things like that cause harm.
One is that when you try to motivate somebody with some external motivator, some like tangible thing that you'll get this if you do this, or you won't get this if you don't. There have been thousands of studies that have shown, not just with kids, but with adults too, that when you use external motivators,
to try to get kids to do stuff or people to do stuff, it actually decreases their internal drive to do what you want them to do. They do become more motivated, but what do they become more motivated? To get the thing. Get the stuff. They actually become less motivated to achieve the goal you want them to achieve, which is ironic. So not only is it not work, it makes matters worse.
And this smell is not a small correlation. This is a strong, what we call in research, negative correlation. The more you use external reinforcers, the less internal drive develops. And it actually can cause even more problems because what ends up happening is people end up behaving in unethical ways also because they're just trying to get the stuff.
I want to talk about the second way that I think rewards and punishments can really be harmful because not only do they decrease internal motivation, okay, intrinsic motivation, but for kids and adults, they can do real damage to self-esteem because here's the thing. If we're constantly using rewards and consequences, we're sending the not-so-subtle message that
That we think at least part of the problem here is you're not trying hard enough. Or why would we smart adults be trying to motivate you? And my grandfather, who I was incredibly close to, and he lived till he was 106. Wow. Yeah, my grandmother just celebrated her 107th birthday.
We call that a smucker's grandparent. You know how they used to put them on TV?
Yes.
Yes, with the smucker's jam. Yeah.
So my grandfather was really, really close to, grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi at the beginning of the 20th century. And what he saw in his life is amazing, but he had all these like great grandfatherly sayings, these like pearls of wisdom he would impart. And one thing he would say to me all the time is he would say, you know what, Stuart, if you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it.
If you give a dog a name, Eventually they'll answer to it. And what I realized with the kids we're talking about today is that if you treat a kid like they're lazy, unmotivated, don't care, aren't trying hard enough, we shouldn't be surprised when over time, guess what?
They start to look like and talk like and act like kids are lazy, unmotivated, don't care, aren't trying hard enough because if you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it. And I want to be clear, us parents, you know, we would never set out to make our kids feel that way. Of course, teachers never, of course, try to make people feel that way.
But with every reward and consequence, again, comes the not so subtle message. Hey, if you tried harder, this would go better. It's unavoidable.
I'd love to have you talk a little bit about That sentiment that some parents have or some people have that's like, well, you know, nobody talked to me about that and I turned out okay. Like how you address that sort of generational pattern and cynicism that has been passed down through families and in our society.
Yeah. Well, I mean, typically when people say to me, you know, nobody ever did this for me and I turned out okay, they're saying that with an edge because there's parts of them that maybe didn't turn out okay. And if you can get to that part with them, which is what do they wish was different about their life and their skills and how they operate, it opens up a lot of doors there.
My feeling about that is each generation – there's actually been research on this – each generation feels like the generation that comes after it has it easier, isn't learning the right skills, is a more spoiled generation than the previous one. If you go back hundreds of years, this happens. And look, the world changes, and we need to adapt with it.
I mean, look, when people say we wouldn't do this that way when I grew up, we used to think that corporal punishment, that actually injuring kids, hurting, traumatizing kids, that that was a good form of discipline, right? We learn things, okay? We learn that actually that causes harm. It doesn't help. And we need to change with the times. And you mentioned trauma.
Since we can image the brain, one of the clearest things we found is expose somebody to trauma or to chronic toxic stress in childhood. Guess what it does? It delays, it changes the brain. It delays skills. in those five areas we talked about before. It's one of the primary reasons for very challenging and concerning behavior.
Kids who have trauma histories, that trauma has gotten in their way of their skills. So if you want to be sort of really trauma sensitive, you really need to realize behavior is about skill, not will.
I'm really glad that you said that because when you go back to the five things that are skills that are missing if somebody is exhibiting challenging behavior and now you're connecting the dots to any form of trauma is interfering with your ability to have those five skills, whether you're talking about racism or poverty or having a parent going through a struggle or financial hardship or
a parent that's absent or mental illness or abuse, like all of these things.
Yes.
Impact your ability to develop these skills, which then impact the behavior that then becomes seen by the outside world as challenging.
And then to make it worse, the outside world typically reacts in punitive ways, which what does that do? It adds stress. So it further gets in the way of skill development. It only escalates the behavior. And then when we have escalating behavior, we tend to up the ante on the discipline.
So it becomes this cycle of sort of chronic stress and punitive discipline that just keeps making matters worse and worse and worse. And the good news is we don't have to respond to that behavior punitively. We can respond in a different way, a way that I call relational discipline. Discipline that doesn't leverage power and control, but leverages relationship.
Because remember, the biggest predictor of helping somebody change, helping somebody build skills, is the degree of helping relationship. So we can respond with relational discipline.
So, Dr. Avalon, I'm totally bought in. Give me the step-by-step.
Let's go. What do we do? You know, here's a simple way to think about things. And I always say to people, don't confuse simple with easy, okay? Yep. But simple is this. Pick any problem that you have with anybody, literally anybody in your life, okay? In other words, anything they're doing you don't want them to do or not doing you want them to do, anything. Okay.
And at the end of the day, you really only have three options for how to handle those. And just to be clear, we didn't create these in collaborative problem solving. We just put labels on them. Okay. We call them your three plans. Okay. Which is another word saying your options for how to handle a problem. You need a plan. What's your plan? Okay. Okay. There's only three. Okay.
We call them plan A, plan B, and plan C. So give me an example.
So you've got somebody in your life.
Yeah.
that has a problem. And it could be anything from somebody who has a mental health issue and is not taking their meds or using their tools. It could be somebody who is not looking for a job. It could be a kid who is oppositional.
It could be as simple as a kid not getting out of bed on time to get to school. Let's use that one. Or it could be much, much, much more complicated than that.
Okay.
So you've got three options, okay? Plan A is when you decide to impose your will To try to make the person do what you want them to do.
Okay, so plan A is I'm getting them out of bed.
I'm going to impose my will. Now, there are different ways you can try to impose your will. If the kid's small enough, you could physically try to impose your will by getting them out of bed. But the other way we try to impose our will is, no surprise, rewards and consequences, right? Either way, you're sort of leveraging power and control to try to make somebody do what you want them to do. Okay.
That's one option. Okay. Plan A. Okay. Second option, call it plan B. That's our code for collaborative problem solving.
Okay.
That's when you're going to collaborate to try to solve the problem, work together to try to solve the problem, and this is an important phrase, in a mutually satisfactory way. So you're going to work together to solve it in a way that works well for the both of you. Okay. And we're going to need to go into detail about that option. Okay. Third option.
plan C. Plan C is when you decide to drop it, drop your expectation, or in essence, solve the problem the way they want it solved. When they want it solved. Not forever, but just for now. And what's really important about that is it's a strategic choice. It is not giving in
Giving in, actually, most of the time is when you try to use plan A and make somebody do what you want them to do and they don't do it. And then you throw up your hands and say, fine, forget it. Right. That's failed plan A leading to bailing. Yes. Plan C is being strategic. Plan C is saying, you know what? We got like 10 problems to solve here. Can't solve them all at once.
I'm going to just drop this one for now.
Yes.
So those are your three options. Impose your will, plan A. Collaborate to solve the problem, plan B. Drop it. Got it. Plan C. Okay. And the first thing I tell parents or anybody, this could be a manager in a workplace, is, all right, list out the problems you have, which with as much specificity as possible.
Be as specific as possible which problems you're talking about, like a kid won't get out of the bed, won't get out of bed, et cetera, okay? And just decide, how do you want to handle it? A, B, or C? And that should be informed by what you're trying to accomplish. That's basically step one. It is step one.
You have to choose the approach and choose it powerfully.
And it depends what you're trying to accomplish because plan A, imposing your will, it may get your expectation met. Right. But it might get very ugly on you. Right. It might harm the relationship. Yep. And there's no skills that are being developed by imposing your will upon another human. Okay? Yeah.
Got it. OK, this is so I just want to make sure that as you're listening, you get step one is you're going to list out everything that's frustrating you. And then you're going to choose between these three plans.
Yes. But let me make one clarifying comment here. List out the things that are frustrating you. That's going to look like a list of behaviors that are frustrating you. And then just sort of put that aside, get it out of your system. I want you to really make a list of the specific situations in which those frustrating behaviors are happening, okay?
So your list should not look like disrespect, screaming, crying, running out of the room. It should look like, when's that happening? Over what? What are the triggers, the precipitants, the situations, okay? Because that's really what you want to prioritize with these three plans.
Got it, okay.
Okay, so plan A, we talked about that. Plan C, when would you choose plan C? Plan C is going to keep things calm. So if you just want to avoid a meltdown or avoid a challenging situation for now, it'll do that. The problem is the problem lives on, right? Your expectations haven't been met. Skills aren't built by just avoiding something temporarily.
You know what I love about this conversation is that You know, all of this work that I'm doing about saying let them and then saying let me. When you say let them, you're choosing plan C. But then when you say the second part, which is let me, you come back to your work, which is let me actually follow what works when I'm ready to do it.
Correct. And I was thinking about that as well, because you talk about in the book how let them is not giving in. It's not sort of ceding. It's actually a very mindful action. It's strategic. And for parents, by the way, when we talk about plan C, I always ask people a trick question. I'm like, with plan C, who's in charge? And they usually say, the kid. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
You are still every bit as in charge as a parent because you're deciding not to pursue this. Yes. For now.
Because you're recognizing the way you've been doing it isn't working. It's just backfiring. And this is out of your control at the moment. And so you're choosing not to stress yourself out about it.
You got it. And you're choosing not to, if you're not going to pursue an expectation that's been leading to challenging behavior, you're going to reduce challenging behavior.
So let's say you, and again, I think what's fascinating to continue to remind you as you're listening is that this applies for any situation, whether you can't get your kid out of bed or whether you have somebody spiraling with an eating disorder who is refusing treatment.
It really involves any form of challenging or concerning behavior. I always go back to anything somebody's doing you don't want them to do or not doing you want them to do.
Dr. Avalon, I wish I knew this 30 years ago. And I need to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. I'm going to give you a chance to just kind of let all of that sink in. And of course, please share this with people that you care about and don't go anywhere because I'm going to be waiting for you with Dr. Avalon and so much more to unpack with you after a short break.
Stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins today. You and I are getting to learn from the extraordinary Dr. Stuart Ablon from Mass General Hospital. He's the founder of Think Kids. And Dr. Ablon, let's just jump right back in.
We talked in depth about Plan A and Plan C. We didn't talk in depth about the most important plan, which is Plan B. What does that look like? So that's when you're collaborating to solve a problem together with a kid.
So let's say you're in a really challenging situation with somebody. Whether I was in a situation with my husband who was struggling with depression, did not want to seek treatment. I have a number of friends that are dealing with situations with adult kids who are struggling with mental health or struggling with an eating disorder, also mental health. And it's a wildly frustrating dynamic.
Absolutely. And so what you say to yourself, let's say the problem, the specific problem was that somebody you love is really struggling and not seeking help.
Yes.
And again, that's a much more challenging one than perhaps a kid's not getting out of bed to go to school.
How do you get them to collaborate?
OK, am I going to try to impose my will and make them get treatment? Well, first of all, it's not going to work. OK, but it's going to have all those other downsides. Am I just going to drop it so that we're not having all this conflict? But of course, the problem's not solved. Or am I going to try to collaborate to solve the problem?
Because that option has you pursuing the thing you're worried about. trying to actually solve the problem so it won't keep rolling on, but there are other benefits. This is the only one of the three options where you're actually building that helping relationship I mentioned earlier that is the number one predictor of whether anybody's going to change their behavior anyways.
And here's perhaps my favorite thing about this, the ingredients to it, which we're about to talk about, if you just follow those ingredients, That's where the skills training happens. That's where people practice and develop their skills. Because this is going to seem really simple, but if somebody struggles with problem-solving skills, what's the best way to help them develop those skills?
To help them figure out how to solve a problem? Practice problem-solving with them and not some hypothetical problem like in a workbook or something, but take a real problem. and problem solve using a structure that's proven, an evidence-based structure for solving problems. And that's what I think we should go to next, which is, okay, what do those ingredients look like?
So how do we do that?
Okay. Three ingredients to this process.
Okay.
Okay. The first ingredient, the hardest, the most important. We call it the empathy ingredient. Okay. And the reason it's so hard is I think most of us misunderstand what the word empathy means. What does it mean? It means understanding. Okay. And we think that empathy means sort of expressing that we care by saying something like, I can tell you're really struggling. People think that's empathy.
It's actually not really empathy. Empathy is really trying to understand somebody else's perspective, point of view, concern, what's hard for them. So the first ingredient, the empathy ingredient, is not coming in with your perspective, your point of view, your solutions, which is the mistake we make all the time. Instead, it's starting with, let me understand where you're coming from.
So there's a situation I want to talk to you about. Let me understand where you're coming from. And empathy... is the most powerful human regulator we have. You wanna calm someone, make them accessible, it's all about empathy. It is the most powerful way. And I'm sure, Mel, you've experienced this, I've experienced this.
If somebody really empathizes with you, really tries to understand where you're coming from, it is incredibly calming. And it's calming upon your whole system. I mean, this is why your words can literally change the person across the table, next to you, thousands of miles away. It can change their blood pressure, their skin conductance, their heart rate. Empathy
And when people are regulated, they're much more able to express what's going on for them.
I don't know who said this, but when I heard this, I was like, oh, I think I understand what empathy, especially as a parent, but also truly is. in any relationship means. They said, it's not your child's job to help you understand them.
Yes.
It's your job to figure out who they are.
You got it. Now, I think though, that is really hard to put into practice. And so I actually spent, this is going to sound ridiculous.
No, it doesn't.
I spent like five years.
Yeah.
intensively studying the first ingredient of our problem solving process.
Well, thank God, because we all need to know how to do this, because I don't think any of us really, I think we do it performatively. Yes. Where we want to try to understand, but we don't know how to step into someone else's shoes.
You got it.
And really attempt to understand what it's like being them.
You got it. And so I spent these years with all these recordings of people doing this from different places and people we work with. And I basically poured over them my own work and basically said, when this first ingredient, empathy, goes well, what are people doing? And when it goes off the rails, what are people doing? And I'm pleased to say, like, the result, it's not rocket science.
When we do a good job of empathizing with another human... We're doing four things and four things only. Okay. And anytime we do anything other than those four, it tends to go off the rails. So here are the four. I promise they're not rocket science, okay? Two of them are information-gathering tools. Asking questions, clarifying questions, like any good detective would do. Yeah.
Trying to understand what's going on, okay? Because that's your job. You're a detective. Trying to understand the other person's point of view. Ask questions, number one. If they're having a hard time filling you in, take some guesses, educated guesses, do it tentatively because you're not the expert on them and their experience, but educated guesses.
Questions and guesses, those are the information gathering tools. The other tools are what I call the regulating tools. They are what calm someone down if they're getting upset, shutting down. And those two tools are reflective listening and reassurance.
Reflective listening simply looks like when I ask you questions or take a guess, anything you communicate back to me, I let you know that I heard you. OK, and I try to tell people, especially with adolescents, but with anybody, you know, avoid the sort of rote, just like saying exactly back to you exactly what you said, because that's that's cheesy. It upsets people.
And it doesn't show that you really heard them. Instead, in your own words, reflective listening is saying something like, OK, so let me see if I got this straight. What I hear you saying is and then in my own words and other people call this active listening, it's crucial. OK. Fourth one, okay, because we've got questions and guesses. Yep. We've got reflective listening. Last one, reassurance.
Okay.
And by the way, kids are onto this like unbelievably. And we do it so much that I have to say one of the biggest impediments to getting this off the ground is kids are skeptical. Like when we start this, they're like, oh yeah, what new form of plan A did you learn?
Now you had your session with Dr. Adlon and now you're going to come check the boxes and then drag me back to therapy.
I get serious. I've had kids say like, what did you do to my mom? She doesn't even sound like herself anymore. But so reassurance to be more specific, the way to do it is to say something like, I just want to understand.
Or one of my favorites is I know there must be an important reason that fill in the blank with the behavior not so wild about because I always remind myself I may not love somebody's behavior. I'm sure there's good concerns behind it. And that's what you're trying to uncover with empathizing. So you're asking questions. If need be, you take a guess.
If you hear anything from them, you reflect it back to make sure you got it. And if you need to, reassure them. So it looks like, you know, hey, I wanted to talk to you about how you've been feeling. I know I've been on you to get some help, but obviously there's good reasons why you haven't. And maybe I haven't done a great job listening. Can you fill me in? Like, what's going on?
Why do you think that's the case for you? And I'm sure you got a good reason.
That is so disarming. Like, even as I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody. Yeah. Because what you've probably experienced is the tension and the pressure and the judgment and the standoff and the only way that you can feel some semblance of control over your life is to resist what somebody's trying to make you do.
You got it. You got it. And I promise you, you can't go wrong. If you stick to those four things... I'm not saying it's magic, but it won't go badly. And it's almost impossible for somebody to get really worked up or shut down when all you're doing is trying to understand patiently. And if they're looking frustrated at all, you're reassuring them.
And, you know, sometimes you have to press pause and come back to it later. Sure. But you won't go wrong with those four things.
Just to recap to make sure I'm tracking. The first thing is for you to really sit down and take a look at what is the specific dynamic and when does it happen that is bothering you. And then you have to make a conscious decision about whether you're going to go with plan A, which is imposing what you want, which we know doesn't work.
Plan B, which is the kind of collaborative approach based in the research and the neuroscience and all of the work that you do, which is about you activating this helping relationship.
Yep.
Or there's plan C, which is just use the let them theory and make a decision and say, let them. And I'm going to say, let me come back to this when I'm ready to follow Dr. Ablon's approach. And now we're at the part where you have sat down and you have really led with empathy. Yep. And we have asked the open-ended questions.
I forgot the second part because I'm missing skill number two, where you have the ability to have a working memory. So I'm going to be in there as I'm listening going, one, two, three. Okay. So what's the next step?
So I'm going to do this with my hands here, okay? Because basically what you've done in that first ingredient, the empathy ingredient, is you've gotten their concern or perspective on the table. Got it. Only once you feel like you've got that on the table and they're reasonably calm. And why are they calm? Because empathy is regulating.
Then you move to the second ingredient, which is where you are going to share your perspective, your point of view, your concern.
Now, let me ask a question about this, though, because you've just reassured them you're not doing anything. So should you do it in that conversation or how do you set this up so it doesn't feel like a bait and switch?
Well, no, no. But notice what I said. You're not sharing your solution to the problem. If you were, that would be what I call tricky plan A. You're sharing what you're worried about, why you're having this conversation in the first place, not your solution. And this is the heart of collaborative problem solving.
You know what? I just had a huge breakthrough. This is one of the skills that I need because I think whenever I get worried or frustrated, I default immediately to problem solving mode.
Yes.
And that creates a tremendous number of problems in my life because I'm either running people over Or I'm frustrated because I see a solution that I think works, but now somebody feels like they're being minimized or micromanaged. Yep.
Yep. I mean, look, the reality is people want advice far less often than we think. And even when people seem open to advice, they're typically not going to follow the advice if they haven't been co-authors of the solution where their concern and perspective is accurately represented. Yeah.
So after you understand what's going on with them, you just share your perspective, your point of view, what you're worried about, not your solution. So if you had a solution in mind, you said, I think they need to do this, right? Like if you said they have to go see a psychiatrist and get medicine. Right. I would say, slow down, Mel. So you're saying they have to get medicine.
Why do you think they need medicine? Well, they're horribly depressed. They can't get out of bed. Okay, so your concern is how depressed they are and that they're not able to get out of bed. Fill me in more about what you're worried about. I just, I feel like I'm losing them. I feel like I'm, you know, they're slipping away from, okay, good. I've got your concerns on the table.
So instead of saying, okay, I heard you, you need to go get medicine. You're saying, okay, I heard where you're coming from. And I like to teach people, say the word and. not but, because but is I heard you, but here's the real deal. The and is I heard you, and I'm worried that it's hard for you to get out of bed, and I feel like I'm losing you, and I just see how much you're struggling.
Now we have two sets of concerns on the table. Then and only then do we move to the last ingredient, the one everybody's really eager to get to, which is where you're inviting the person to problem-solve together, to brainstorm solutions. But you have to tee it up like this. The reason I keep using my hands like this, if you only have one set of concerns on the table...
And it's Mel's, which plan are you using here?
Well, and also mine. And also when you got the one hand up, it looks like you're about to get smacked. So no, I'm serious. Like the visual is really good because if you think about it, like the whole three-step approach is about getting their worries and their experience on the table and your worries, but zero solution right now.
And then you're working- Just like, let's talk about what we're both concerned about.
You got it. And then you're working together. And I tell parents all the time, if you want a little tricky reminder here, a little trick to help you remember things, if you only have one set of concerns on the table and it's the adults, you're headed for plan A. If you only have one set and it's the child's, what plan are you headed for? Plan C. How do you know you're doing plan B?
You must have both sets of concerns on the table.
Oh, adult, child, both. That's why. So it's adult, both, child. I got it. That's why there's three plans. You're a genius.
And here's the other thing. I think I can remember that. Okay, good. Well, it's only three. Here's the other thing that's really important here is this order is intentional, right? Notice we don't start with the adult concern, then try to clarify what's going on for the child and then invite them because they will shut down. And there's a reason for that, because our brains work in a certain way.
OK, information doesn't hit the smart part of our brain first, which is why you can't just start problem solving. You've got to regulate a child before they're going to be able to relate to you. before you can reason with them. And that rubric is a rubric coined by a good friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Bruce Perry, who does a lot of work with very traumatized kids. Regulate, relate, reason.
And the reason I'm doing this is this is how you move up the brain. Regulation, low down in the brain, move up the brain so somebody can relate to you, and then finally get to the cortex and reason with them. And the three ingredients I'm sharing with you, those operationalize that. It turns into an action. First ingredient, empathy. Let me regulate you. Second ingredient,
Let me ask you to relate to me by sharing my perspective. Which makes you a helper, not a solver. Third ingredient, let's problem solve. And if at any point in that process, they get upset with you or shut down, just go right back to the bottom of the brain, the first ingredient. Let me re-regulate you. Let me remind you, here's what I heard from you, okay? Got it. Regulate, relate, reason.
First ingredient, second ingredient, third ingredient, okay? Incredible, absolutely incredible. And it's not easy, let me be clear.
Well, because you got to keep yourself-
which is a skill. It is, although you know what the interesting thing is? Disregulation is contagious, right? Like the person you're working with getting dysregulated or trying to help dysregulates us. I mean, there's nothing like being disrespected or things like that that dysregulates us.
But if you can just start with that first ingredient, empathy, you regulate the person in front of you, you're going to see what we call co-regulation happen. You're going to start to regulate as well. We humans, we can dysregulate each other. We can also... regulate each other.
And I think that's a critical thing here is it's one thing to understand somebody. It's a completely different way to go through life and want to actually understand what somebody's going through and where they're coming from. Yes.
To be curious. I mean, you don't want to make assumptions. Be curious. And there's so many places this matters. I mean, As parents right now, these days, I got to say one of the biggest concerns we have is social media use and screen time for our kids. There's so many battles that happen over that. This is tailor made for it. And it's a great example of.
Let's walk through that one because I think that's a huge concern. I was talking to somebody who is actually very worried about their father. So he's our age and his father is now retired.
And he's just scrolling on reels all day.
On his iPad all day, goes to bed with it.
Yep.
And his mom is upset about it. I mean, there's a real addiction there.
Yep.
And he's very concerned. He doesn't know how to address it. And so I think it's probably the same conversation, whether you're talking to a 10-year-old or you're talking to an 80-year-old.
It is. And it's just really hard because the algorithms of these things are meant to addict. I mean, let's be clear that they are built to addict. So there's a very powerful force going on here, but it's still the same three-step process. And what I find doing a lot of work with kids and adolescents around this is that kids share our concerns a lot of the time.
So we don't actually need to come barging in with our concerns and solutions. If we listen first, what we'll hear from kids is they're worried about a lot of the same things. And if that's the case, it opens up the door to collaboration where you're now working together against these addictive algorithms as opposed to sort of, you know, working against one another.
But it all starts with listening. You know, people... We actually created a series for how to talk to your kids about social media.
Well, we're going to link to it in the notes of this episode because I'm sure people are really interested in that.
I mean, it's the biggest parenting challenge of our generation, I think. But the funny thing about it is we call it how to talk to your kids about social media. It's not how to talk to your kids about social media. It's actually how to listen to your kids about social media. And it's exactly what we talked about before. Pick a specific instance.
You know, maybe it's you pick your child up at school and they're glued to their phone when you're wanting to talk to them. Right. Pick a specific instance. Okay. Decide which plan you're going to use. If you're going to try this collaborative problem solving, you're going to start by getting their concern, their perspective, their point of view on the table. Right. You'll express your concern.
You'll collaborate.
I'm so excited to try this. I am curious what you're seeing in your work when it comes to young adults, because it seems, at least maybe it's just what my friends and I are talking about, but it seems like there's a tremendous amount of challenges with parenting kids in their late teens and into their 20s. Yes.
You know, it's really interesting. I've noticed I've typically worked with children, adolescents, occasional young adult. I work with more young adults now than I ever have. And there's a reason for that. Because in essence, young adults aren't looking like what young adults used to look like. And what I mean by that is thanks to the pandemic, there's a gap between
between where we expect people to be at certain ages and skill level. Kids' skills did not develop at the same rate despite heroic efforts from teachers, from parents, which is why like fifth graders now when I work with schools look a lot more like third graders. 12th graders look a lot more like 10th graders. And yes, 22-year-olds look a lot more like 19, 20-year-olds, things like that.
So things that were already challenging are more challenging. Adulting is harder than it used to be because a lot of the kids don't have the same skills.
How do you think about this in terms of the challenging dynamics that you're seeing?
Yeah. Well, so basically, you know, I have a lot of families that are very frustrated because they're like, my kid is not launching here. Yes. And I'm supporting them. And this is unsustainable. Yes. Now, where do parents typically go with that? I'm working with a few right now where they go with that is, so here's the plan. Yep. Here's what we are willing to do to support you.
Have you been in my house? By X date, you must have at least a part-time job and contributing this amount. By X date, you will have secured an apartment and have a full-time job. And, you know, at best, what you get is, okay, yeah, that sounds good. Yep, I'm good. Which, you know what I call that? I call that dissociative compliance.
Which means the kid is basically checked out, saying exactly what they think you want to hear so that they can get this over with because their concerns aren't around the table. Got it. So it's the same three-step process. Unless you want to do plan A or plan C, it needs to look like, because that was plan A, what I just said.
Which is you're doing this.
Yes. It needs to look like. So let's talk about how things are going, what you think about how things are going, your perspective, your point of view, what you're looking for, your goals. I'll share some of my concerns and let's see if we can figure out a plan together, at least in the short term, that's going to work for the both of us.
And what is your advice about the financial piece? Because I think it's a very tricky dynamic. Yes. Because the fact is, you know, when I look at the city of Boston where we're sitting right now, I saw a statistic that housing prices have gone up 78% in three years here. No, it's absurd. It's absurd.
And, you know, I think about when I was a young lawyer working at Legal Aid, my parents helped me pay rent. I couldn't afford the rent and groceries. Yes. But then you get into this dynamic where you might be helping your kid, but then you see them going out and you see them buying things. And then you start to have opinions about how they're using their money.
And I see it with so many of our friends. We've experienced this in our family where you want to help if you can. Yeah. Yes. And that in and of itself is a wonderful place to be in.
But you also don't want to be taken advantage of.
No. And you also start to feel like I'm contributing to the, quote, lack of motivation. But if we go all the way back to the beginning where you said kids do well if they can. Yeah, it's not a lack of motivation. What is it?
In the first place.
It's a lack of skills to deal with the new world.
It's struggling with the skills needed to handle the new world, which is a very challenging world. So how do you handle the financial piece though? I always say, okay, share with me not your solutions to the financial piece, but what are you worried about, your concerns? Because they are going to be different from family to family.
One family is going to say- My concern is you're going to never get your act together and I'm going to be paying for your ass the rest of your life. So we might rephrase that slightly. Okay, slightly. This is not a safe place, Doug.
No, it is. And it's why usually when I prepare these conversations with parents, I let them tell me it that way first. Okay. And then I say, all right, so let's rephrase that a little bit.
Well, how do we say, how do you say it?
Well, but here's what I mean.
Because I'm worried. I'm worried about you finding your way. I'm worried about you being, now I'm about to get upset. I'm worried about you being happy.
Okay.
I'm worried about you like feeling successful.
Okay. But see, now we're actually getting to your real concern.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK, now someone else, their real concern might be we are going to run out of money very soon. And so I am worried about being able to put food on the table for us all. Yes. Somebody else is, you know, the concerns are different. The key is really them being co-authors of the solutions. Your concerns are every bit as important.
They're on the table, whether they're the financial concern and or the concern about I'm worried you're not going to be happy and feel good about yourself. And I want to help you. These 20-year-olds who are living with their parents who are really struggling, that doesn't feel good to them. They want to feel like I can provide for myself. Right. I'm successful. I have a career, et cetera.
But we need to help understand where they're coming from while simultaneously then sharing, okay, here's our reality of what we're worried about, and we got to work together here.
I love this. Thank you for also painting the landscape against which we're actually living right now and understanding that it is very different than when we were in our 20s or our teens or our 30s. Like a completely different world that impacts you and the five skills that you've been talking about. And one of the things that I love about your work is that it feels as though
Following everything that you've taught us today gives you the ability to change the way things have always been in your family. And I look at a lot of the incredible research that's been done around trauma and trauma the kind of takeaways that people can only give you what they have to give. People just repeat the things that are done to them.
And I wanted to share something with you because I found it to be so extraordinarily powerful. And it was an appearance that Des Bryant, who is a former NFL player who played for eight seasons for the Cowboys, he was on this podcast that I personally love called The Pivot. And he had talked about how he had a really difficult upbringing. His mom was a teen mom. His dad wasn't around.
And that he's really focused on trying to give his kids the support that he didn't get as a kid. And so he has this quote in his phone. And he pulled it out on the podcast and read it. And just, it was so emotional. And I want to share it with you and just get your thoughts.
Just say, break. Break generational curses. Quit yelling at your kids before they go to bed and inspect them to sleep well. Quit yelling at your kids in the morning right after they wake up before school and inspect them to have a good day. You set the tone for your children. You set the tone for your voice that they will always remember in their heads. You become their inner voice.
Don't be their inner critic. Speak life. Speak love. Speak bravery, kindness, and hope. Speak wisdom and truth. Most of all, listen to your children. I never had none of that. I give that to mine. That's my number one priority. I follow that. That's heartbreaking.
Wow. He's describing right there what we talked about earlier. If you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it, right? Like, don't be that voice that becomes your child's inner voice. And I love how he's setting this intention for himself, right? He is saying, this is who I want to be and how I want to be. When I hear that,
If I were sitting with him, one of the things I would say to him is to get there fully, I think he's actually going to probably need to forgive his parents. And the way to do that in my world is to remember parents do well if they can. And that the parent who wasn't there for you was probably doing the best they could to handle a very tricky situation with the skills they had.
And my guess is a parent exposed to a lot of chronic stress and trauma. And that's, I want to be clear, that's not excusing behavior. You know, there's a big difference between excusing and explaining, right? And so you can still be really upset and really mad and hurt and traumatized. And at the same time, realize that people do well if they can.
And your mom was doing the best she could and your dad was doing the best he could. And that's a way to forgive yourself. while still recognizing the impact. And then say to yourself, I'm going to do the best I can with the skills I have to handle what my kids need for me. And if I feel like I'm not doing enough, I'm going to work on building my skills.
So, you know, that's what this thing makes me think of when I hear him and his vulnerability there is amazing.
Dr. Stuart Ablon, what are your parting words?
guess my parting words are remember people do well if they can it's about skill not will it's all about empathy listening and truly understanding and if you do that it'll open up all kinds of doors to collaboration to repairing relationship to building skills and i guess
The last thing I would add is, as we've been talking about in these last few minutes, try to extend the people do well if they can to yourself. You show yourself some empathy to know that we're all doing the best we can at any given moment with what's coming our way and our skills. We can always do better because skills can be built, but we're doing the best we can.
Oh, I just love you. I just love you. I am so happy you're here. Thank you for sharing your work. Thank you for doing your work. I'm excited because I feel like I'm going to be a better parent and a better spouse and a better colleague and a better human being because of you. I can't wait to have you back. And I know that this is going to be shared all around the world.
And I really hope, my wish for you...
um as you've been listening is that you listen to this with the people that you care about that's my hope and uh one more thing in case no one else tells you i wanted to be sure to tell you that i love you i believe in you and i believe in your ability to create a better life and you and i just got the road map to doing that with other people and with ourselves and i cannot wait to see what happens when you use it alrighty i'll be waiting for you in the next episode i'll see you there
Love, love, love. All right. All right.
Here we go. Yeah.
All right. Dr. Stewart, Albon. I already said it wrong. Jesus. Here goes the dyslexia.
No, people have a hard time with my last name, which I'm always like, it's not that hard, but people, you wouldn't believe what I get. What do you get? Avalon, Albon, Ablom, all kinds of things.
How do you say it?
Avalon.
Avalon. You got it. I think I was going to say Avalon.
I must have been thinking about the nightclub here in Boston.
This is what I mean. Is this too long? Because my husband was like, this damn cat. And I'm like, Chris, he can't tell you that he's sad. Yes. Because he's only doing it in front of Oakley's door, which is shut.
Yeah. Well, so what you got to tell your husband is first, cats do well if they can. Okay.
So what is step two?
So, well, hold on.
Oh, okay.
I have to say, coming on after doing some research and listening to some things, I was like, this is a high bar. You've got some incredible people. And man, do you really get the most out of folks.
You're so good. I do. Oh my God. The whole time I'm trying to be present, I'm like, we should write a children's book together. We should do this. Let's go on tour. Ha ha ha. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher. Hey, thanks for sticking around for this bonus segment about the importance of breaking out of your routine.
Has it ever occurred to you that not taking a break and working yourself into the ground, that that has become your new routine? That's a terrible routine. And I don't want you to go through life like that, and neither does the sponsor of this special bonus segment, Celebrity Cruises. They asked me to talk to you about breaking out of this routine where all you do is work.
And this is a very important topic because if you don't learn how to take breaks and step away, then you're going to sail through your life and get to the end of it and realize you never actually did anything that made you happy. And we're not going to let that happen.
You have to make it part of your new routine to get away, to take breaks, and dare I say, plan things that make you happy and that allow you to enjoy yourself. And speaking of enjoying yourself, before we jump into this whole topic about how work can become your routine and how you got to break out of it, I want to tell you a little bit about our sponsor, Celebrity Cruises.
Our friends at Celebrity Cruises go to nearly 300 incredible destinations across seven continents. I mean, just picture yourself soaking up the rich history and vibrant culture of Europe. That's breaking out of your routine right now. Or getting lost in the wild beauty of Alaska. Or imagine, oh my gosh, stretching out on the white pinky sands in the beaches of the Caribbean and the ships.
They aren't just a way to get somewhere. They're destinations in and of themselves. And it makes it so easy to break out of your routine from the rooms to the food to the entertainment. There's something amazing around every corner. And you know what? Maybe that's all your life is missing. You're just so caught up in work, work, work or school, school, school.
You can't even see what's right around the corner. I lived years of my life like that, never taking vacation, too tired, too this, too that. You deserve to break free from this trap. And, you know, I want to add something to the conversation because I found this survey that kind of blew my mind.
Did you know that more than half of the people surveyed made a life-changing decision while they were on vacation? In fact, I have made all of my major life decisions that way. I have decided to quit a job. I've decided to sell a house. I have decided that I'm going to go to therapy. When?
When I'm on a beach or when I'm in the mountains or when I'm out on a ship at sea, staring at the endless, beautiful horizon. Why does that happen? Because a change in your environment, what does it do? It breaks your routine, which does what? It gives you a completely different change in your perspective. It's like the fresh wind of confidence blows in.
And that's available to you the moment you A, wake up and realize, I got to break this work routine I'm in. And you B, plan a trip to go somewhere. Because if you just keep doing what you've always done, you're going to keep feeling like you always feel, period. Plan a trip. Pull out that calendar and find the third week of some month that you could just say, that's mine right there.
I dare you to do it. And I want to do a big shout out again to Celebrity Cruises for saying, hey, I would love to sponsor a segment on this, Mel. Could you do a bonus segment and just help people shake things up and remind everybody of how important that is? And Celebrity Cruises, they offer travel that will push you out of your comfort zone in the best way. It'll make you feel so alive.
I mean, just imagine the perfect balance of a smaller, intimate ship with all the incredible options of a larger one. World-class restaurants, endless entertainment, gorgeous elevated rooms. Celebrity Cruises will help you get out of your routine and into something extraordinary. Learn more at CelebrityCruises.com. Visit Celebrity.com for details, ships registry, Malta, and Ecuador.