March 31, 2025
Cindy Lopez: Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.
Join us for this Voices of Compassion podcast episode as we talk with CHC experts, Dr. Emily Hsu, licensed psychologist, and Danna Torres, licensed marriage and family therapist, exploring the essential skill of distress tolerance for parents navigating the emotional roller coaster of raising children. Learn why developing the ability to withstand difficult emotions without reacting impulsively can transform your parenting journey. We’ll discuss practical strategies to build this crucial skill, including some mindfulness practices and calming techniques. Discover how strengthening your distress tolerance models healthy emotional regulation for your children. When parents and caregivers can remain steady during storms of frustration, exhaustion, and worry, children gain the security and emotional tools they need to develop resilience for life’s challenges.
Welcome, Dr. Hsu and Danna. Before we dive into the conversation, why don’t you take a minute to tell our listeners just a little bit more about yourselves.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Hi, my name is Danna. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist working at our Ravenswood branch. I work with families providing individual family therapy and also parent coaching services in both English and Spanish.
Emily Hsu, PhD: Hi, I’m Dr. Emily Hsu. I am a licensed clinical psychologist. I’m also an adult psychologist, and I provide parent coaching. I also conduct psychological evaluations for children six plus in the Medi-Cal clinic, and I also run a monthly learning disabilities parenting group.
Cindy Lopez: Thank you both Danna and Dr. Hsu for being with us today. And our topic is distress tolerance and really thinking about that for parents and what that looks like. So let’s define what we mean by that, what is distress tolerance?
Emily Hsu, PhD: Distress tolerance would be the ability to have feelings which typically are uncomfortable or negative for an individual and being able to sit with them without engaging in a behavior that might potentially make things worse, whether it’s an interaction with someone or in a situation or both. So it’s being able to work through and manage typically negative emotions in a way that is prosocial and healthy, even if it’s just for a brief period of time, so that you don’t potentially make things worse.
Cindy Lopez: And how does that apply to parents and caregivers?
Danna Torres, LMFT: So, distress tolerance skills are things like Emily said, helps us deal with challenging situations in a healthier manner. And so when we can do that with our kids or with family members then we foster positive relationships, and we create that resiliency within our family. And again, with the people that we’re connecting with, so it’s important for parents to be able to model those skills at home and also for their kids so they can walk them through it, especially when kids turn into teenagers and we go through terrible twos and then teens and all sorts of emotional changes, life changes, that require new coping mechanisms to deal with new stress that comes up.
Cindy Lopez: So it seems like what you’re saying about distress tolerance, it’s getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, and I also heard you reference emotions in this. I’m wondering like, how emotional distress and distress tolerance might go together?
Emily Hsu, PhD: I think typically when I hear situations from parents about how something didn’t work or didn’t go the way that they wanted, I like to ask parents, “Well, tell me what happened. What were your vulnerabilities.” Because I think when a situation or an interaction doesn’t go the way that they wanted that typically can be because there was a vulnerability, which I’ll talk about in a bit. One of the vulnerabilities could have also been emotional vulnerability. And I feel like emotions and distress tolerance go hand in hand. I come from a culture, I’m Chinese American, where there was no such thing as emotions. We were just supposed to kind of just deal with the situation, not talk about it, which was basically saying don’t have your emotions and then definitely don’t do something about it. But we know they go hand in hand because there’s this concept in dialectical behavioral therapy called emotion driven behavior where I think about how the emotions, that’s the emotional distress that typically somebody is feeling, and the emotion driven behavior that’s the part where the person engaged in a behavior as a result of their emotions, which means that they were unable to tolerate the distress, and so their emotions took hold, and then they engaged in a behavior that potentially made things worse. Let’s say like somebody looked at you in a way that you thought was not very polite, meaning that you’re like, “What’s wrong with that person?” Same look could happen for like another person and be like, “Oh my gosh that person thinks like what I’m wearing is not appropriate, or they think I’m ugly.” We react to a lot of things in different ways, even if it’s the same look, we interpret it in different ways. And that can depend on, let’s say I was trying out this shirt for the first time, this blue shirt that I’m wearing. I’m more of like a neutral color girl, and now I’m trying this blue colored shirt. I don’t know if I’m feeling it, I’m nervous, I’m like tugging at myself, and let’s say someone comments or looks at my shirt in a way that I negatively interpret as, oh, they think this shirt looks bad on me. I start having the emotion, which in this case comes after the thought of, they think I look bad. They don’t think this is my color, I’m feeling self-conscious, feeling bad about myself. So we got a bunch of emotions coming and then feeling just anxious about like, oh man, I have to wear this sweater for a talk I’m going to give, and are people going to think I look a certain way? And then that leads me to going out and trying to do something where it’s like putting a jacket on but it’s like really hot in the building you know so now I’m sweating and then like I’m tugging at my shirt. I’m starting to look a little bit more awkward potentially when that person just looked at me but because of my vulnerability coming into the situation of, I’m trying this out, I’m looking for cues from the environment to affirm my decision and so anything that I perceive as negative might then reinforce what I’m already worried about and then leads me to a behavior, which isn’t necessarily based on fact because we know that emotions aren’t fact. Emotions are valid. They’re not good or bad, but sometimes as a result of how we’re feeling, which can be a vulnerability, that might then lead us to engaging in a behavior that makes things worse, which meant that if I didn’t learn to sit with the fact that person looked at me, I’m feeling all these feelings right now. I’m going to sit with it. It sucks, because no one likes to feel potentially terrible about whatever choice they made, but I’m just gonna sit with it. I’m not going to change anything different because I can’t. I mean I could, but I’m not going to wear that jacket because I know it’s going to make me hot. So that’s where I’m going through the motions of being mindful so that I can then tolerate the distress that I’m feeling, but I’m still giving my emotions and thoughts airtime.
Danna Torres, LMFT: As Emily was mentioning, emotional distress and the distress tolerance, sometimes I give an example of a backpack that we carry. And how much space we have to tolerate certain things given the situation: the pressures, culture, our environment, interactions, like what is happening for us in that moment, and what are our skills? And maybe our backpack is really small, and more of that emotion is going to come out because we might not have the skills or the capacity for whatever reason in that moment, right? Because it’s a lot of moving pieces, and maybe later in the evening once I’ve ate, or once I’ve talked to my support system, or once I’ve talked through these worries with someone, if it were to happen again, I have a larger backpack to deal with those thoughts because I was able to use some of those coping mechanisms, and I don’t know what you think about this, Emily, but I feel like the backpack gets smaller and bigger, smaller and bigger, as we go through the day and as we go through life, depending on the skills that we take on. And sometimes, the emotional distress can be really big, and it can overflow out of the backpack and sometimes it fits just right, or there’s a lot more space to deal with more things in that day, that’s what I think of. I’m a visual person. So as you were saying it, I was visualizing it in that way.
Emily Hsu, PhD: I appreciate that. I think that’s a really great way of visualizing it because as a visual person myself, it’s helpful to know, okay, what do these terms mean? Like, what are some strategies, but then to be able to visualize what we’re talking about, I think is really helpful. Because I think of it as, when you say backpack, I think of something that one of my colleagues was telling me, and I just appreciated the way that she used this word. She was like, “I don’t have the bandwidth right now to be able to help you with X, Y, and Z problem because of X, Y, and Z on my plate. So I’m going to shut the door because I can’t talk right now.” And she was saying this to another colleague, and I really appreciated that bandwidth example because I think nowadays most of us are familiar with the use of the internet. Do we have enough bandwidth or not? And most of us have used backpacks in our life and did we get a backpack that was big enough or did we get one that was maybe like one from our sibling, a cousin. So sometimes not all of us are afforded the same sized backpack, or sometimes we overstuff it, or sometimes we know that the only way that we can continue is through taking things out of our backpack, but then we got to remember to also put it back in. So I appreciate that analogy because I think going into this discussion when I think about emotional distress and then I think about distress tolerance, which is why I like to talk about vulnerabilities, a lot is when I start off my sessions with my parents, I always ask, what are your vulnerabilities? What are you coming in with? Because I want to also give them grace, empathy, for the fact that you came in with a lot. And now that I know that maybe you’re tired, you’re sick, I’m going to be a little bit more targeted or maybe like shorter in terms of like what I’m going to tell you about. I’m maybe not going to go over X, Y, and Z because you told me that you were feeling sick. So that helps me know how to interact with you, which is in a way wanting me to teach parents, which I think is also a part of going into emotional distress or distress tolerance. I want parents to then facilitate that awareness of where are you at, like what are you coming into this session carrying, which could be the backpack.
Cindy Lopez: So, thinking about all this, this distress tolerance is a skill. Distress tolerance is something that we all probably can benefit from trying to build in our lives and trying to develop in our lives. And I would think for parents, it’s very important because as you just noted, Emily, when you’re talking with parents you don’t know where they’re coming at in terms of their day as they come to you. Your kids come home from school, you don’t know exactly what happened. You might have to do a little unpacking before you can really communicate with them. And you might be carrying stuff yourself as a parent. So why is it that we have a harder time with this idea of distress tolerance or building that skill or that muscle within us?
Emily Hsu, PhD: I think it’s hard for many reasons. Our parents are just parents, like they are someone’s aunt. They are someone’s daughter or however they identify. They have so many roles in which they are constantly having to navigate with, not as much support mentally, emotionally, financially, as maybe they would like. And so I think knowing those things for most of my parents and just for most of us here. I think it’s so important to have this distress tolerance skill because we all know that pain is a natural part of life. And by learning these skills, which I would almost say is like emotional acceptance because when I think about emotional distress, I think of emotional distress can also be emotional regulation, right, like I want to take that emotional distress, let’s work through this. Let’s sit in it. Let’s marinate it if we need to, and then figure out, okay, that’s enough. What are we going to do to then manage those feelings, which is the emotional regulation part because we don’t want to sit in distress forever because there is no feeling that lasts forever. Our body is very motivated to make sure that it’s protected, which is why when we’re stressed, we’re not chronically stressed, which is why when we are stressed that is a problem. It hurts us health wise when our cortisol is too high. But I think it’s important speaking for parents, because if you can model being able to sit with your pain, which I think is super, super hard to do, knowing that they come in with all these vulnerabilities, it then helps children to recognize emotions. It’s okay to have emotions. There’s no good and bad emotions. And then problem-solve, hopefully ask for what they want, show for what they want, or just be like, I just need a moment right now. And then increase their emotional awareness and then ability to regulate themselves because what we want in like parent and child relationships is the ability to co-regulate as needed. But at the end of the day, the child may potentially be independent. And we want them to be able to regulate and who’s the person that they typically learn this from? Their caregivers, whether that’s a parent, an adoptive parent, a foster parent, a caregiver. So that’s why we want parents and just individuals in general to be able to learn these skills of distress tolerance.
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Cindy Lopez: I wonder, thinking as a parent or caregiver in the situation with your child, sometimes what your child is going through could bring up something for you, and you have some internal dialogue or self-talk that’s probably not very helpful in this situation. So it seems like there could be some of that too, like you as the parent or the caregiver, you are bringing your own experience into the situation, and so that impacts your ability to tolerate the distress that you’re feeling. Is that accurate?
Danna Torres, LMFT: Yeah, Emily and I agree. I have an example. My kid, just a few days ago, I have a six year old, and he’s going through, you know, his, I’m independent, and I know more than you, and I’m like, you’re six, but he’s exercising that muscle and that independence, and I don’t want to take his voice away. And I’ve heard this from other people, when we work with kids, when we are their mentors or caregivers, when we engage with them, we want them to have a voice, and we want them to feel comfortable, but there’s a line. So how do you balance that? Well, the things that were going on for me in that moment were,I’m glad that you’re expressing that you’re frustrated, right. So what he said was, he was supposed to do some math, and then reading, and I’m looking forward to it, because it’s the first time, right, generational curses are being broken, and I’m reading books to my child, that were maybe not read for me. And I’m excited, I have a plan, and then this child is looking at me going, I don’t want to read. And I don’t want to read that book, and I don’t want to sit here, and he just started, talking back. And so my inner dialogue is, “How dare you? I wanted to sit and enjoy this moment with you. This means a lot to me. I want to be here with you, and I want to connect, and it feels like there’s some type of rejection.” And so, verbalizing it, saying it out loud, we know it might not have been that big of a deal, but it might feel that way for someone who maybe is trying to connect in a way that they weren’t able to connect with their parents, and it means something more to them. And the kid is just living their best life. It’s just, I don’t want to read today. So, a lot of that, and we go back to the skills that we just talked about, awareness, and taking a pause, and evaluating the situation, and taking a deep breath and going, okay, we read yesterday. I hear you. You don’t want to read. We’re going to read tomorrow. And if the tone is off, then I can say, “Hey, can you try that again.” I’m not going to force him to read because then now we’re all frustrated. But maybe in that moment, I want him to say it in a different tone, or I can say, “Hey, you look really frustrated, it’s okay, you can just tell me, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to read right now,’” and we don’t have to read, and so then I’m modeling that we can problem-solve, we can have this conversation, you can tell me your thoughts or what you want, and we can move forward. It’s not always going to work out that way, no parent is perfect. No caregiver, no mentor is perfect, but we try, right. And we model that. And so, at another point, because this happened a few days ago, I heard him say that to my mom. We’re a multi-generational household. And so he said that to my mom, who he overheard talking to Grandpa. And was like, “Grandma, you can just say no. It’s okay. Grandpa will understand.” And I’m listening from afar, and I’m like, that’s beautiful. How many times did we have to practice this in a natural situation just to hear it once? He won’t say it all the time. I’m not setting the expectation that now he’s got these, like, amazing emotional rewards to express how he feels so deeply. As a six year old, he repeated something that I told him, that we practiced, and that was nice to hear. And sometimes that’s as far as that goes and so practicing distress tolerance for my inner dialogue, what my thoughts were in that moment. You could say, it paid off, and then later I needed to process with my husband, with my support system and say, “Hey, can you believe your child said this to me? How dare he?” And so then I had a support system to talk that through with so that I didn’t sit with those emotions or whatever came up for me, right, thoughts, feelings, and maybe some actions. Maybe my body language was a little off, and I’m reflecting on it afterwards. And so all of these things are coming together in a very simple interaction, just to show that it doesn’t have to be a big thing. You know, we practice this in natural settings, in small situations.
Cindy Lopez: So, Danna, it sounds like as you describe that situation with your son, you have some some self-awareness of what was going on with you, that inner dialogue, your self-talk, and just taking a pause, even if it’s not a total taking 10 minutes or whatever, but just pausing a minute to understand like how you’re feeling so you could respond differently in the moment with your son was probably important. It sounds like to me, I’m sure that’s a practice that needs to be learned, and all the ways that we can deal with this distress in our lives and how we can tolerate it and move on or get to the next thing. How can a person build distress tolerance skills?
Danna Torres, LMFT: I want you to keep in mind what we talked about, which is empathy towards ourselves that we are not perfect, that we try to grow everyday, that we try to make connections and so things won’t always work out perfectly. We try, right. And so sometimes we’re working with littles who are eloping, they’re just running out and we’re running after them, and we’re afraid for their safety and we’re heightened. And so then how do you use your skill? Well, after fight or flight, you catch them, you make sure they’re safe. And then reflecting and seeing how we can prepare or how we can set ourselves up for success the following times after that because we know that it’s going to continue to happen. It’s the expectation comes from that self-reflection. A lot comes from minimal self-reflection of just what happened, how did I feel or maybe the fact I’m overwhelmed. I don’t want to talk about it. My backpack is too small right now, and I’m in survival mode. That’s enough because you recognized it, that it’s not the time.
Emily Hsu, PhD: I appreciate you saying that Danna because I did not realize until this started happening more repeatedly that I had to explicitly tell my mothers, my adoptive mothers, my adoptive grandmothers, my foster mothers, that it’s okay to be like, “Oh, I can’t right now.” There’s a skill in DBT called the STOP skill. It stands for S is stop, whatever you’re doing, stop. Just stop, provided that it’s safe, like, if you’re driving, don’t just stop driving, right. It’s situational, but provided that it’s safe, stop. T is take a step back. O is observe, mentally, emotionally, physically, what’s going on. And P is proceed mindfully. And I’ve told a lot of my parents about this skill because a lot of my parents, and this is not just my mothers, my fathers, my uncles, have also been like, I feel as a person who’s taking care of an adolescent or a young child, I have to respond. And I had told some of my parents in my learning disabilities group–I gave them permission–to put on their oxygen mask first before they helped out their child and adolescent. And a couple of people came back who were like, I needed to hear that permission to not keep doing. Because I think about it, you know, which is why I really appreciate Danna’s backpack example. We all didn’t get the same backpack. It may not be like the one that we needed, we wanted, just like we all weren’t born with the same opportunities, right, in life.
And I think about how–going back to the bandwidth example that I really appreciated from my friend–I think also part of learning distress tolerance skill is not only just learning and validating your own emotions, like, self-validation I don’t think happens enough for parents. I feel like a lot of my parents don’t feel like they’re good enough. They feel like they have to respond, they have to problem-solve. And I’m like, not always. Because if you problem-solve when you’re not emotionally at your best, yeah, you still might have done the best job that you did, but also taking that step back and also letting the other child know, which is also very important, using the STOP skill, like I have a parent put their hand up, I have a parent say burro in Spanish, I have another person saying pineapple, because that’s their word. This is their physical way, showing, putting their hand up of, I can’t right now. Emotions are running high. I can’t engage in a way that’s going to be effective. And I also think that’s important to model as a form of distress tolerance and emotion regulation, because you’re telling the child no, you don’t always need to respond, just like Danna’s example with her six year old son. It’s okay to say no. It’s the same thing, like we can’t always be the problem solvers. We can’t always respond, and sometimes the best thing to do in a situation, especially when emotions are running high, is to not respond provided that it’s safe. Again, we don’t want them to stop driving if they’re like on the freeway, but maybe pull over and just be like, “Mommy needs a minute.” Because not everyone is going to be able to process right away and problem-solve what happened. So you want children to also have that opportunity to be like, “I’m overwhelmed right now,” or “No, I can’t do it.” And that’s okay. I think that’s why this is also a really important skill for parents and just individuals in general to learn when it comes to how to manage your distress. What is my emotion? Where am I at mentally, emotionally, physically? Can I engage in the way that I would want to engage, or is the best way to engage by disengaging? But at least doing a sign so that there is some sort of communication, whether with one word or like a hand signal that this is too much.
Cindy Lopez: Both of you have provided some great real life examples of situations in which parents really need to exercise their distress tolerance, but are there any other examples that you would want to share or situations in which it’s not about distress tolerance, you just need to respond in the moment, is there anything like that?
Emily Hsu, PhD: There’s a lot of techniques that you can use, but some of the techniques that I talk to parents about is there’s grounding techniques that you can utilize, which is like, if your emotions are too much, going inward to be like, “Oh, what am I thinking and feeling,” might not be where you’re at, because we know that when we’re emotional, typically the ability to problem-solve effectively isn’t always there, which is why I tell everyone, I believe in therapy. Everyone needs support. If you are a person, living, you need support. You just need support. And so I would recommend therapy for everyone, and I hope everyone has access, but going back to some techniques, I would say, a grounding technique, which is something that I like to do, is when like emotions are really high, we got to take the person outward. So I wouldn’t say go meditate, don’t focus on your emotions. I would say let’s go outward. There’s many different types of grounding. There’s physical, there’s mental, there is emotional grounding where you literally can engage in this activity and nobody has to know. Your eyes are open and basically you can do things like, name as many people with black hair you see walking by. Oh, okay, that’s one, that’s two. It’s kind of like this might date me, but like the punch buggy, like when you would punch whenever you saw that. I thought of that as kind of like a distraction, maybe like a grounding kind of technique.
But also, sometimes like I say, this is also a technique where you can also ground by thinking about all the artists that you can name. I’m doing a lot more mental imagery, or you can even create your safe space. Like, if you were to create your safe space that you could go to at any time, what would your safe place look like? Who would be there, if anyone? What does it smell like? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? So I’m literally having them use all their senses with their eyes open to go outwards. TIP is another skill from DBT where you basically calm your emotions with temperature, so you kind of change the temperature.
Danna Torres, LMFT: That one’s my favorite.
Emily Hsu, PhD: Yeah, I have a mom where, and maybe this might answer your other question, where she has a son with a medical diagnosis and she needed to decide whether or not she was going to bring him to the ER or not, based on some symptoms. And she started, very understandably, freaking out. And her daughter came to me because I had consent to speak with her daughter and was basically like, I understand that she was freaking out, but I needed her to stop freaking out and we needed to go to the ER. But I didn’t know how to get to her. I didn’t know how to help her. And so, we kind of took a step back, and this is with an example with someone, and if needed, I can, or maybe Danna can provide an example, like, when you just need to go without somebody else present. But basically, I said to mom, come up with a word. So that the other person knows you got a tag team or like I can’t do this right now, you need to go, right, and so that was the word burro came in. We’re like she knew like I said, burro, she put her hand up. She couldn’t do it, and then I said then what you’re gonna do is you’re going to feel your face or look at it to see if it’s red or if it’s hot. So what you’re going to do is, because you didn’t change the temperature, you’re going to splash cold water on your face, and you’re going to see if you feel a little bit better. And better might be just like turning down the knob of anxiety or whatever negative emotion because we don’t want to get rid of emotions, right? And noting if need to do it a couple of times. The same thing with grounding. Sometimes people need to do grounding for 10-15 minutes in order to be able to turn the dial down on their negative emotions. It’s the same thing with TIP. It’s Temperature, Intense exercise, but of course like that’s for certain individuals, like if you have, an eating disorder, intense exercise may not be the protocol for you. Paced breathing. We also have progressive muscle relaxation. So those are just some of the dthings that TIP stands for. Danna, do you have any other distress tolerance strategies or an example of when you just need to respond in a situation?
Danna Torres, LMFT: I do. So actually my son, because kids are wild, we put a slide in the living room. And we took it out after this incident. He hit himself in the corner of something when he jumped off because he decided it would be fun to jump off. And this kid, he was two at the time. So we were scared, he was bleeding. I wasn’t taking care of him in that moment, it was my mom, and so my mom was very upset, very scared. She told me, and then I’m like an hour away, and I’m also very freaked out. And so, in that moment, something that we’ve, practiced before, because this is something that we both do, we get scared, right. I mean, it’s a child, and we don’t know where or how, where the bleeding is coming from, from his head or how deep it is and taking a deep breath was not going to help. You know I was like, “Take a deep breath.” And she’s like, “I can’t, I’m scared!” So, for her, it was tactile. So she needed to physically go see him and she was afraid to go see him, and she didn’t want to make him more fearful by touching all over and not really having a place to touch him. So when she called me to tell me, “Danna, this happened,” I said, “Okay, where?” “I don’t know!” Okay, I need you to take a step back, look at him and try to follow the blood with your finger, right? Softly. And she found it. And it was a little nick that looked worse than it was. We didn’t really find that out until we went to the ER, but in that moment she was like, “Oh, okay, okay. I’m going to put some vaseline on him, and I’m going to clean him up, and I’m going to help him because he’s crying and it’s his crying that’s upsetting me, like, it was making me fearful because he’s so distressed, and I don’t know how much it hurts.” But, taking the moment to look and at this point, me telling her, guiding her, in doing so, helped us both feel calmer, like, okay, now what do we do? It’s not a big gash, it doesn’t look like he needs stitches, but he still needs to go to the doctor. But now we’re calmer and we’re more grounded.
Other occasions, I find ice cream, I find cold water, a Coke, a lemon, something that’s going to just kind of jolt my system. And sometimes I might just go for a walk and go, I got to go guys. I’m going to take a quick walk. I’ll be back. And this is where you had said kind of put your mask on first. I’m not leaving my job, you know, I’m in a different situation, right? I’m not making these big movements where it’s going to make the situation worse. I’m letting people know what I need. I’m grabbing the lemon from my lunchbox. I went to the cafeteria, I got a Coke… whatever it was that I felt was going to help me in that moment. I took a little walk, and I felt better. Being a little more distant, and moving my body a little bit. I didn’t go for a 10 mile walk, I just needed that distraction, that redirection in order to think clearer, right? And so when we need something in the moment and we just want to remember, what do I do? Chew some ice, if your teeth will allow. Throw some water on your face, like you had mentioned, what are the easy things that are going to make me feel a little better in that moment so that then I can decide what to do for the bigger things once I really need to process what happened.
Cindy Lopez: So Danna and Dr. Hsu, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about this distress tolerance. It’s been so helpful. Thank you for the stories, your personal experiences that you shared. and your expertise. I’m wondering what you really hope that our listeners hear from you today?
Emily Hsu, PhD: I always want individuals I work with to know that you’re doing the best you can with what you have, and I truly believe that. I also want parents to know, I want caregivers to know, I want anyone that’s part of their child-adolescent’s life that it’s not about, I mean, there’s this idea like gentle parenting that’s been talked about, which is very different because gentle parenting was not utilized, but my parents were definitely individuals who, helped me become the person I am today. They were very supportive of me being a psychologist because they saw the utility (because they did not get it) in learning how to regulate your emotions, learning what that means, and I want to tell my parents, you’re not going to get it right every time because there is no right. There’s what works best for you in the moment and what works best for your child. And I often have a lot of parents be like, “Oh, Dr. Hsu I messed up that technique that we like practiced. I didn’t do it.” and I said, “Well, messed up is a judgment, it’s a negative judgment. Walk me through what happened.” And half the time I’m like, “No, you did your best.” And how did you in this situation go back and try to practice this skill again? Because that’s the thing about these things, like practicing mindfulness, learning how to validate your own emotions, self-validation. I don’t feel a lot of our parents do it enough. I don’t feel our teens do it enough, like your emotions are valid. Like I did not know that. Again, I came from a culture where we didn’t talk about emotions, right? So I didn’t know that it was okay to have all different types of emotions until I came in to this field. And so I want my parents to know that your child’s emotions are valid. Your emotions are valid. Your thoughts are valid. And there are ways in which you can learn how to get better at managing your emotions, ways in which your child can also get better at learning how to manage their emotions as well, which then leads to learning how to tolerate their emotions, which is really what distress tolerance is, like they all kind of go hand in hand.
We at CHC want you to feel like you have the tools needed to be able to have these kind of interactions that are relationship-enhancing. And sometimes that takes practicing again and again in order for these skills to become part of just regular daily practice because you don’t know, you’re going to have that one thing that you said where you felt your emotion and you were like, oh kind of like Danna’s example, she really wanted to read with her child. This is like her moment, but her child didn’t want to and that hurts, that feels like a rejection and a lot of times people personalize it, like I have a lot of parents would be they personalize it and I’m like, it’s hard not to personalize it. And I hope this is understood in a way that it’s about you and the child, not just you. Your emotions are valid, and if we can take that and use it in a way as a teaching moment to be like, okay, maybe that’s not what you want. Mommy was hoping to be able to read with you, but I understand that it seems like you want something else, right? Exploring that, or just being like, okay, seems like you need a moment right now, if you just can’t. So I’m hoping those are just some of the takeaways that listeners will have when they listen to this podcast.
Danna Torres, LMFT: What I would say, to add on. We say this a lot to kids, “Tomorrow’s a new day. You can try again,” right? There’s always an opportunity to course correct, might not feel that way, might feel very cemented, like you’ve done it, and there’s no going back. Granted, there are things that sometimes are very hard to take back, or to live with or things that we’ve said. For the most part, it’s important to normalize emotions, practice these skills when you don’t need them, right? You want to practice them during exciting moments, during typical small interactions.
It’s kind of like, exercise, right? Like you’re just preparing that muscle for when you really need it. And then you just do it naturally without having to think about it because you’ve practiced it. And so making sure that we’re practicing whatever is going to work for us and wherever we want to start in our day-to-day, whenever we get a chance and reminding ourselves, as parents, as caregivers, that you can always try again the next day. You can try again in an hour. Once you’ve given yourself space, you get back on that horse and you’re like, okay, where are we going, right? How do we repair the rupture? How do we have a good night’s sleep even if it wasn’t entirely resolved but we feel calmer? Is it a hug? Is it a snack you share? It doesn’t necessarily have to be an apology, but in what way are we connecting? And then trying again the next day.
Cindy Lopez: Another thing that comes to mind, and you’ve alluded to this throughout the conversation today, and that is parents, when you do this, you’re modeling for your kids, and they’re going to learn from that. And so, it’s an important muscle for you to build, an important muscle for your kids to build. And so part of that learning process is a modeling that they see in you. As Dr. Hsu mentioned, we’re here for you at Children’s Health Council. If you need to talk to someone, please reach out. You can reach our care team, email our care team at careteam@chconline.org, or you can call us at 650-688-3625. We have opportunities for parent coaching. You can reach out and talk with a professional, a psychologist, and parent coaching. If it’s about therapy for your child, we have those opportunities too. So please reach out if you need us, and thank you again, Danna and Dr. Hsu for joining us today.
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