Please note: transcript not 100% accurate.
00:00
So instead of focusing on the anger, focus on what pissed you off and try to dig deep and go, oh, it was because this didn’t work according to what you think it should have been.
00:17
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I wanna know it all. As healthcare providers, we are so quick to RX those pills for our patient’s mental health. We don’t take the time to discuss other changes that they can make. Why? Today we have with us Dr. Shahana Alibhai, who says,
00:47
We do not suffer from a lack of joy, simply a lack of recognizing it. Dr. Shahana is a TEDx speaker, family physician, and mental health advocate. She is the medical director at British Columbia’s largest youth health center and is the author of Feel Better that hit the number one bestseller list in psychiatry and parenting on Amazon. Welcome Dr. Shahana. Thank you so much for your time this morning.
01:16
My pleasure. So great to be here. So tell me, I mean, you’re a family physician. So why the focus on mental health? I don’t see that as often amongst family physicians. You know, it’s a really good question. And I think there’s two ways to approach it. There’s one way that I call fast food medicine. And don’t get me wrong, there is a role for fast food medicine. And when you think of fast food, I often think of a vending machine analogy. My kids play a lot of hockey. There’s always a vending machine in the hockey arena.
01:42
You put a coin in, you tap your card, you get something out, right? And oftentimes medicine can feel very transactional. You know, I have a rash, give me a cream. I have a cough, give me an antibiotic, right? It’s this for that, this for that. And oftentimes it’s harder to say no to that. So we end up giving more tests, giving more things to make us feel like we’re doing something in order to help the patient. Fair enough too. The harder part, the thing that takes more time though,
02:09
is to really start to tie the pieces together going, what’s happening in your life? What’s happening in your relationships? Are you happy at work? Are you sleeping? How are you eating? So although overtly, it’s not under the umbrella of mental health, it’s really under the umbrella of, are you functioning? Are you functioning or are you okay? And are you functioning at your, whatever your optimum is? Because this facade that we don’t bring our work to home and home to work.
02:36
It’s not like you cross the threshold of work and suddenly you’re a different person. You’re the same person. So when you cross the threshold to my clinic, I think it’s important that I at least touch on or hear all of that. But the biggest constraint that we have, of course, in our medical system is time. So getting to know the patient, getting to know their family, getting to know what the stressors are.
02:59
can get you, it’s almost just like that color by numbers where you start to go, okay, I get that piece, I get that piece, and then slowly you start to see what that full picture can be like. So why do you think, I mean, obviously there’s the time aspect. Yeah. I also feel strongly that a lot of family physicians pass off mental health. Is that an old mentality or is that changing?
03:25
I think it’s definitely changing because no matter how, you can’t really get around it. No matter which kind of curve you go around, you are going to find aspects of mental health. And oftentimes as a family doctor, we see the full picture, just like I was talking about. So if it’s insomnia or panic attacks, sometimes it’s very blatant that this is definitely under the umbrella of mental health. But I tell my patients that every single pixel that makes up that picture…
03:53
you know, in any kind of picture, that’s your emotional health. That’s how you’ve regulated your emotions, how you understand your emotions, how you feel like your emotions are trying to teach you something. And that’s the harder thing because we don’t get taught that in medical school that there’s too much to learn about disease or illness. And I think oftentimes that that that just takes a lot more time to unravel.
04:19
And I think those are not the things that you can say, here’s a prescription for your emotional health. Doesn’t work that way, right? So there’s often not a quick fix, which makes it harder to address. I mean, I don’t know a lot about this, but are emotions the issue? Is our emotions the heart of mental health? Like is that’s what, are emotions not being regulated affecting our mental health, I guess is the question. Exactly. That’s my theory. And I think we are hearing that more and more.
04:47
I shouldn’t say it’s my theory. It’s the idea that if you look at the work by Dr. Daniel Goldman, who really popularized the theory of emotional intelligence and emotional quotient, then our brains started to think that it’s not just your IQ that matters, how technically smart you are on an IQ test. It really matters about how, and I’ll give you the best analogy for thinking of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is being able to see yourself from the outside in.
05:15
and by trying to see others from the inside out. So seeing yourself from the outside in and others from the inside out. And that is, that is not a scientific definition of emotional intelligence, but it’s the one that stuck with me the most. Because what is ingrained in that phrase is curiosity. You’re trying to approach why you react to certain situations, why certain things trigger you with curiosity versus criticism.
05:43
and we are really good at condemning ourselves, criticizing ourselves, comparing ourselves, putting ourselves down, what your emotions allow you to do is to try to be a little bit curious and distance yourself from some of those feelings. So we often talk about what is the upstream issue to prevent mental health issues that are the downstream issue. And for me, the more we can understand and regulate our emotions,
06:11
I think we have a chance at preventing a lot of the downslide that comes from not doing that. So give me some kind of ideas on how people should, what should people be aware of? How should they be training these emotions or recognizing their emotions? I don’t even know how to word this thing, right? What should people be doing? How should they be alerting their family doctor and vice versa?
06:39
that there is an emotional problem and they need to regulate it and Yeah, no exactly. I think what’s really important is that there’s there’s roles for different health care practitioners, right? I think I would be very incorrect in saying you should go to your family doctor just to get help with your emotional health Right. That’s probably not the right practitioner. I have a special interest in it However, if that is starting to affect your day-to-day functioning how you sleep how you socialize
07:08
how you perform at work, your relationships, then it’s crossing a line into potentially mental health and potentially needing either pharmaceuticals or counseling. I think emotional health, the sweet spot there is through the right kind of counselor for you. I think a counselor and a coach really go hand in hand trying to figure out, you know, what are your emotions trying to tell you? That is their bucket. That’s what they want to deal with more. But like I said, if it crosses to the area of functioning,
07:38
and how you operate in your day-to-day life and really taking a toll, then definitely you can mix and match. You can do both too. The way to start with all of this is really the first step is just to understand, just to notice what’s happening in your body. Most of us walk through life on zombie pilot, like autopilot. We’re just like, look at people in the mall, look at people in the checkout stands, look at people at school pickup. I am one of those people. Yeah, I was just gonna say.
08:07
I’m like this, I’m like this, because it’s easier than looking up, making contact, all of the types of things, right? So we are in just, and you know what we are, we’re not just not think, usually I’ll call women out more on this. We’re not not thinking, we’re overthinking. We’re thinking about multiple different things. If we could actually look at all the little bubbles around a woman’s head and of course any parent’s head.
08:35
There’s a lot of things. Did I take the laundry out of the dryer? What am I gonna make for dinner today? Did I order school lunches? You know, on and on and on, right? So all of that is going on in our head. The word I use for this is languishing, and languishing is a fancy word that just kind of means, if I asked you how you felt, and if you told me you were languishing, it would mean that you just feel eh, meh, you feel fine. Because you probably do just feel fine, but fine is the new four-letter word in our society. It’s…
09:04
I guess I’m okay. But I don’t really know. And it’s the I don’t really know part. That fill in the gap is where emotional intelligence comes into play. So you have to start to ask yourself in a quiet moment, which when’s the last time you were quiet? When’s the last time I was quiet? Even in the car ride, I’m listening to podcasts or I’m always consuming some sort of information. So I say, forget meditation. Just be quiet.
09:33
for 30 seconds for a minute and just notice what’s going on in your body. And this doesn’t have to be a formal body scan. It doesn’t have to be done in the Lotus position. Doesn’t have to be anything, anything like that, but just go, am I wearing my shoulders up to my ears? You know, can I relax my shoulders? Where do you feel the quote unquote pain points in your body? Like what, what’s actually going on? And the key part is without judgment.
09:59
Don’t say I’m feeling this because I need to or should to do this. Just allow yourself to feel what you feel. And then the next step after that is to be able to name what you feel. So that’s the noticing part. The next part is name. The harder part is to go there’s very rarely where you will feel one pure emotion. I just feel anger. I just feel fear. I just feel sandwich. I want my son, his favorite.
10:26
food in the world, I think he was born in a concession stand is a hamburger. Like just like anything in a concession stand this kid wants. So think about the layers of a hamburger and all the different dressings and things that are there. That’s what your emotions are like. It’s your emotional sandwich. Your job is to figure out what is the strongest flavor, right? There’s always one flavor that sticks out. I was at a restaurant yesterday and the lady put on way too much barbecue sauce.
10:51
So that was a very predominant flavor, right? So what is it in that sandwich that’s catching your attention? Is it, do you feel disappointed? Do you feel angry? Do you feel resentful? And it’s really important to figure out, to use the emotions the right way, right? Disappointment means something very different than anger, which is often a feeling of injustice. Disappointment means that your expectations weren’t met.
11:19
They’re very different. Sometimes we’ll say, I feel angry, but are you angry? Are you actually disappointed or are you actually frustrated? Right. So trying to use the right words for how you feel. And one thing I argue or I try to talk about in the book is that for most emotional sandwiches, the core is fear. Like when you really get down deep to it, the thing that we don’t want to talk about enough is fear of fill in the blank. Fear, rejection.
11:48
fear of not being good enough, fear of not being, fear of uncertainty, there’s so many different types of fear and those fears just keep showing up in different costumes throughout your entire life. So your fear of imperfection or your fear of failure will be there as a parent, will be there as a spouse, will be there in your professional life, it just shows up in different ways, right? So that, you gotta figure out what your own hurdle and stumbling block is.
12:16
But if people can start with noticing and naming, those are two very good concrete steps. Do we all have mental health issues? Would you make that blanket statement? I’m not saying it’s a stat, but would you make that statement that we all have mental health issues and we all have emotional issues, I guess is the word now for you from you? Yeah, you bring up a very good point. So this is what I say. You know, one in five of us have a…
12:43
diagnosable mental health condition, which is a lot, that’s 20%. But five out of five of us have an emotion, right? It’s not an emotional issue, but you have emotions, right? And look at a toddler, for example, and do they ever get upset with themselves for falling or scribbling or making mistake or spilling their milk? Not usually, right? But then somewhere along the ages of four, five, six, seven, eight,
13:09
It goes from, I’m really curious about how things work. And then you start to compare yourself to your peers. And that’s all developmentally normal. But as we’ve grown up, we lose our sense of curiosity and we lose our sense of curiosity because we’re our own harshest critics. So I think a lot of us struggle from putting ourselves down and not knowing how to use self-compassion because we think that it’s just a fluffy word that won’t apply to us.
13:37
Okay. And I don’t know if this is a dumb question, but is the culprit the brain? Like is the brain the issue? So is our brain that holds these emotions, I guess, the one that we need to train, the thing we need to train? Yes and no, too. So the brain is the vessel, right? But it’s everything. I like to think of it more as the mind in some ways. So you can look at the structure of the brain. Your structure of your brain is perfect. When you think about the mind and all of the different experiences you’ve had.
14:05
the people that you’ve interacted with, all of that shapes obviously who you are too. But you’ve touched on the word training your brain. And that’s where the brain actually comes in because the brain always wants you to see what’s wrong. And it does that in a protective sense. But most of us don’t really, like we might understand it to some degree, but we don’t know that we are constantly butting up against the negativity bias. Like right now, if I asked you in your day,
14:33
give me five things that have gone right for you, you might have to pause and really think about that because that would come naturally. But if I asked you 10 things that have gone wrong, at least for me, I could think of it like that. So it’s so, like our negativity bias is like rolling a ball downhill. It’s like, it just comes naturally to us. Taking a backpack and walking uphill, that’s where the work happens. And that’s where the training of your brain to go.
15:01
I know my brain is going to go down this rolling the ball down the slope. How can I turn it around and consciously try to think about things that are actually going well in my life? And that’s where the training comes in. So what are like some pearls or some tools that, you know, people I know there’s recognizing the emotion that people can use to not get to these mental health issues? Yeah, yeah. One of the first things I want people to do is just learn.
15:30
is learn the power of the pause, right? Oftentimes, you will have a knee-jerk reaction to a situation. And that is normal. You’ve had decades of experience having that same or similar reactions. So don’t fault yourself for having your reaction. You know, for me, I’ve got three young boys. There’s many reactions I have throughout the day. Right? You will have your reaction. Then this is what I want you to do. Pause.
16:00
You’ve already had your reaction and then you want to, if you can just pause for a minute, two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, and then come back to it and go, how could I think of, how could I have thought about that situation differently? Could I have done anything? That’s where the work happens. And whether it happens in the five minutes that’s passed or whether that happens at night when your kids have gone to sleep, your work is not being expected to change the outcome at that moment. Cause that is really hard. And that’s like,
16:29
decades of undoing, your job is to go, okay, can I look at this situation objectively? How could I have reacted in a different way? And when I was young, we used to read those choose your own adventure books, right? Where you could flip to a page of the ending. Like nobody knows about these. These are great books. And so you need to figure out, could I have chosen a different ending to that story? Could I maybe have not yelled as much? And if I did yell, could maybe I model my emotions and say, I’m, mommy was sorry for having to do that.
16:58
There is nothing wrong with getting upset as long as your kids understand why and what you might want to do differently. Right. That’s the key. You know, we’re not perfect. You know, and I know you and me talked about this at the beginning where we’re both like, yeah, we all have issues. So you know, I want to kind of break that stigma with, with healthcare providers where we feel like we have to be that role model or we feel like…
17:22
We have to have all our emotions in check and that we’re perfect and we don’t yell at our kids and etc. Tell me how you got into this. Did you have these strong emotions? Did you go through any concerns? Exactly. I think there’s a difference between dishing out advice and advocating and supporting and then being on the other side of the couch or being on the other side of the
17:51
that I started to go, oh, this advice is really easy to give, but so much harder to receive, especially when you have hit your own version of rock bottom. And it reminds me of like, you know, when you try to squeeze out the toothpaste and there’s always like a little bit more at the end, I thought I had hit my rock bottom and nope, there’s a little bit more to go. You can still keep going a little bit more too. So, and that happened for me in the postpartum time period, right?
18:17
And it was kind of a reconciling of going, I had lived my life on zombie pilot, like just going through the motions and feeling like I had to constantly, achieving felt good because that’s what felt natural. I had to trust my, well, I kind of built my confidence in my career and not my character, right? And that was instilled in me at a very, probably even during the graduation time, I had only a couple of really good friends and one friend of mine said,
18:46
Just so you know, the only reason I’ve been friends with you is so I could cheat off you during the high school time period. And those moments, which there were many moments like that, only solidified that my only worth was up here. My only worth was a type of grades that I could get. And it was a beautiful cycle because the more I achieved, the more accolades I got and on and on and on you go until you end up in medical school, surrounded by a population who think very similar, right? Who had all gotten there the same way.
19:15
And medical school is a wonderful hamster wheel that’s kind of run on shame and humiliation and all the rest of it. And it spits you out at the end with these letters behind your name, but with a feeling that your own sense of self is quite eroded from what it was 10 years before or eight years before. And my one goal was to be a mom, be a mom, Mia, be a mom. And I, it’s probably a really silly explanation now, but part of it was that I really craved maternity leave.
19:42
Because according to my mom, the Trinity Leaves was playing on, playing some music in the background, strapping on an apron and the kids sitting quietly in the corner. That’s what my home video showed. Yeah. It looked lovely. Yeah. I wanted some of that too. Like to this day, my eldest is nine. I’ve never, that’s never happened. So I don’t know where they got those home videos from, but it was false advertising, according to me too. So I think I just wanted a
20:12
I wanted a socially acceptable break. And of course, anybody realizing the ending of this is that it was far from that, right? You know, the first 72 hours, I had a laminated birth plan. Like this is what is going to happen. And everything just went out the window. Just because you laminated, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. That’s the perfectionist in your organic. Exactly, exactly. Like, don’t you? Like, it’s not just, it’s not the paper here.
20:38
And it was a rude awakening on so many levels, but I think on the biggest level of this thing doesn’t respond to me reading anything about it. Like I thought I could study my way to being a mom and everything started to really start, like Jenga blocks start to really fall down. And the bigger secret to all of this that I’ve shared openly is that I had and was struggling with the mental health diagnosis that I found out about in medical school.
21:06
So from a very early age, I started to have symptoms that I would later find out were a component of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD without the compulsions, only the horrible intrusive thoughts. And this is not just like what society and the media say of checking locks or things like that. Intrusive thoughts are no joke. They are to bring you to your knees, thoughts that you don’t want to have, often harm related, horrible, horrible thoughts.
21:35
And what I never realized is that during the postpartum time period, if you have a preexisting history of this, you are much more likely to have what’s called postpartum OCD. And a lot of moms, even without a history of this, up to 10% in the first six months, 10%, one will actually have these types of thoughts of could I hurt or harm my baby? And once again, you don’t want to have these thoughts. These are what we call ego dystonic, but
22:05
Are you going to go up to your doctor and tell anybody you’re having these thoughts? Most people aren’t because there’s too much shame. There’s too much stigma and there’s too much fear of they’re going to take my baby away. They are going to label me. They’re going to lock me up. They’re going to the list goes on and on and I was the physician and I was the mom and I was the patient and most of all, I was spiraling in shame. I did exactly what I had learned to do. I ignored it.
22:34
And we all know how well ignoring these symptoms can be until it came to a point where I thought it was better off that I really wasn’t here anymore. And that to me was that toothpaste moment of that was rock bottom. And it wasn’t until that moment came that I realized that where had things gone so wrong? You know, I’d spent so much time studying all of this mental health was one thing, but the bigger problem was that I hadn’t listened to any of my emotions up until that point too.
23:02
So it was a clawing out and a climbing out of that deep hole I’d built for myself over 20 plus years. And the thing about mental health and emotional health is that it doesn’t, for most people, it’s not a one pill fix all. It doesn’t work that way. I think we need to set our expectations. It’s an oscillation. It’s an up and down. It’s like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle because you’re like, okay, one piece fits, but that piece doesn’t quite fit. And for me, it’s gonna be a life long.
23:32
journey. And that’s really hard to say. But I think at the end of the day, you have to also realize that you can never be who you were in the past because that person is different, right? So however hard that is for me to say that things will never completely likely get better, I’ll have to learn to live with this. Being open about it, using the right words and not hiding behind my degree or hiding behind the letters behind my name has been the best therapy.
24:01
I mean, you meet a lot of healthcare professionals. I do as well. Would you say that’s the most common demographic that kind of feels that shame or hides behind and maybe doesn’t even recognize that they could have a mental health issue? To be honest, I think you could be more susceptible the more quote unquote professional you think you are.
24:26
And it doesn’t have to be healthcare. I’ve seen it in lawyers, I’ve seen it in accountants, I’ve seen it in engineers. It’s people who feel that they’ve attained a certain status, whatever that status is, that somehow they are bubble wrapped from this, they’re incubated from this, and it’s mental health is a you problem, but can’t be a me problem because I’ve got it all together. And the fact is that that bubble wrap is actually glass. It’s actually glass. It makes you, I believe it can make you more fragile.
24:56
because you have this standard to hold. And it’s only you who’s trying to hold that standard for everyone else too. So it often takes a lot more to bring those people to go, you actually need the help versus getting help earlier. And I’m patient-X for that. So tell me, how do you treat your patients differently now? Do you think that you have made, now that you’ve been the patient, do you think you’ve made that active effort to change the way
25:25
you’re counseling your patients and what is that change? I think language means so much. I think the language that I use to describe depression, anxiety, isn’t just, do you feel depressed? Do you feel anxious? Which are fine questions, but sometimes if they start to describe something to me, I can help them continue the conversation or fill in the blank. And they’ll often look at me going, we’re speaking a similar language, right?
25:54
And I think the other piece is that sometimes people won’t come out and say what they’re feeling. All I’ll see is a breakdown in how they’re functioning. You know, they’re missing school or work or their relationships are really suffering or they’re not sleeping well. And because of the breakdown and what’s happening, hopefully I’m able to recognize that something is quite amiss here, right? Too. I think it’s made me a lot better at just really zoning in and going, I think I think what we’re dealing with here is there is a fear of.
26:23
rejection and then people will look up at you going, oh my goodness, yeah, that’s huge. And it’s not, I’m not trained as a counselor at all. So to really unearth all of that and go back in time and put the pieces back together, yeah, that’s what a counseling or psychotherapist is there for too. But if I can at least be a bit of a bridge for them to understand that there is such an underlying fear that might be feeding the anxiety, oftentimes that just feels like a weight that’s being taken off too.
26:52
So I think the way that I communicate has been the result of what I’ve gone through. If you had to kind of sum up the few most common mental health concerns that you see in your office now, what would be the top few that you see? Yeah, yeah. So if I had to name the top three that I commonly see, so insomnia, which could be many different things, but just generally difficulty with falling asleep, staying asleep too.
27:20
People won’t say necessarily depression. They’ll just say, I have no motivation. I just have like zero drive, zero get up and go. The things that used to bring me pleasure just don’t bring me pleasure anymore too. So really a lack of motivation too. And you know, fortunately we are learning more about ADHD, especially in women too. So it doesn’t all have to, it doesn’t.
27:42
You know, the buck doesn’t always stop just at anxiety and depression. Like we have to rule out physical causes. We have to rule out laboratory abnormalities. You have to look at other umbrella sources of things. So the, and then the third one is just under the umbrella of, I feel so panicky all the time. Like I’m dittery. My heart is racing. Once again, that can be due to medical legitimate medical issues too, but that can also be due to panic issues, generalized anxiety, you know, OCD bipolar.
28:12
psychotic type symptoms are all there, but not as likely in a family practice setting. And I should say, amongst all of the ones I’ve just mentioned, substances, right? Because substances can often cause those types of symptoms if you’re smoking too much weed or trying to withdraw from that. And then sometimes all I see is just my one glass of alcohol if they’re being open with me.
28:36
has turned to two, has turned to five, has turned to, you know, so just a steady uptick in how much we are needing to calm ourselves at the end of the day. And because I work in breast health, alcohol consumption for women is incredibly important because I do look at that in their intake. So sometimes that’s my gateway to going, you know, how much are you actually drinking? And it’s often been shown that patients will reduce their amount by half when they’re reporting it to a physician.
29:04
So if someone says it’s 10 drinks a week, it’s usually 20 drinks a week. Wow. So I was surprised by the insomnia because you named that first. Can you touch on that? I was surprised by that. You know, of course we have to rule out something underlying like obstructive sleep apnea or parasomnias, but people find insomnia is a much easier thing to say. It’s much more socially acceptable to say than coming in and saying, I think I’m struggling with my mental health.
29:34
So it becomes very much like the low energy or the low motivation. It just rolls off the tongue a lot easier. And I think for men, especially, they might, that would be a very common presenting symptom that if asked the right question, then you’re starting to go, okay, it’s not just, like we can treat the sleep, but we’re missing the boat. Right? So I think there are socially acceptable inroads to the discussion about mental health and insomnia is one of those. And what age group?
30:04
these people coming in with these top three diagnoses? Like, are you seeing it more in the younger demographic, older, 40 plus, midlife crisis? When are you seeing this? Yeah, it’s because I work, you know, I work a lot with adolescents between 12 and 24. And then I work a lot with, you know, people of the middle age category too. I’d have to say, I think it’s really in middle age that I see this. Like kind of around that late 30s, early 50s, kind of the sweet spot being in the 40s.
30:33
And not to put a gender role on this too, but oftentimes, of course, women are going through the perimenopausal transition during that time. There are a lot of changes. There are a lot of things that are just now starting to be understood. There’s also a lot of misinformation out there. So the health confusion and health anxiety coupled with legitimate reasons for poor sleep and night sweats and hot flashes can cause a big soup of going hands up. I don’t know what I’m doing.
31:02
So those are the, I think that’s what I see very commonly. You know, and you mentioned adolescents. A lot of us have kids and we know things are gonna get worse younger on. Give us advice as moms, like what can we do to recognize these symptoms of anxiety, depression in our children and what actions can we take to help them early on? So kind of coming from the mindset of.
31:28
prevention first and we’ll talk about the downstream effects if things are already starting to percolate and you’re worried. Bottom line, as a mom, as a dad, as a parent, always trust your gut and always realize a healthcare practitioner will want to see you earlier than later. Having worked at the breast health clinic too, some people will say, oh shoot, I just wasted your time. I said, there is no such thing, right? Because if you come in and just see me for this complaint and it turns out to be benign, we’re both happy.
31:54
Right? So there is no such thing as getting help too early. So I want just to put that out there as a blanket statement. And I think it’s really important to, it’s fine to take your child in to see the doctor and talk about feelings and emotions and mental health and create that understanding in your child that the doctor isn’t just about giving you your immunization or listening to your lungs or because you have belly pain or any of that. Sometimes I go into schools and volunteer.
32:20
And I’ll, I do a presentation called Think Like a Doctor, and we start out with getting them to guess the diagnoses of physical health complaints, like a, you know, a concussion or an ear infection. And then the third case is mental health. And that’s my way of showing that all of these are legitimate things to talk to your family doctor about. It’s not just because it’s physical that we need to see it. So I’ll put that out there too. So the two things to keep in mind as a parent is being-
32:46
is watch your languaging. And I don’t want to add more work to your plate, but I think it’s really important to go. If your child is showing an emotion, I get it. Sometimes our cup is totally full. So we don’t have space in order, any space in order for our child to show their emotions. So what do we want to do? We want to put a pot on that boiling water and say, just stop it. Right? So we, I’ve stopped it in all of these ways. TV, Paw Patrol,
33:15
gummies, like candy canes, like anything, like I’ve done it all. So I know what we’re talking about. Sometimes in those moments, it’s a really good moment to actually coach your child. Of course, if they’re having a full-blown tantrum, nothing’s getting in. I understand that, but wait till they’re a little bit calmer and try to walk them through the two ends. When you were going through that period, like what did you feel in your body? I do this with my son and he’s like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
33:44
And it just shows you at such a young age, they don’t know how to listen to their body. So I said, was your jaw clenched? Was your neck tight? And he’s like, oh yeah, for sure. Was your, where did you feel it? Like point. You can suspend 30 seconds doing that. And the second is trying to actually take an emotional wheel or use some words like, what got your backup? Like, why did you have the reaction you did? And this is key. If you can help your child understand.
34:10
that your emotions, their emotions are like a compass. They’re trying to point them in the direction of something they value. If you didn’t value it, if you didn’t think it was important, you wouldn’t have a reaction to it. The example I give that’s very pertinent to my life these days is I go to a lot of birthday parties, of course, with three young boys. If I was very green and climate conscious, which I am, and I saw tons of plastic.
34:38
and unrecyclable material on a lot of waste, I get my back up. I’m like, that’s really sad that we were still doing that. But if that didn’t bother me, if I didn’t have that value system or mindset, I’d be like, perfect, like that doesn’t even occur to me too. So that frustration, that anger is not just that, it’s pointing me into, oh, you really value fill in the blank. The same thing happened with my son, my eldest son.
35:07
values to this day he’s nine. Everything has to be fair and square. Like down, like I need 6.25 skittles. Like because you know, that’s what I brought. Like it just, it’s just, it’s just, and I tell him often, I said, Ishan, like life is not like that. You’re not going to get your 6.25 because some people are going to get three. Others are going to get 15 and that’s how life rolls. But he has his biggest outburst when fairness has been disrupted.
35:35
So instead of focusing on the anger, focus on what pissed you off and try to dig deep and go, oh, it was because this, this didn’t work according to what you think it should have been. Right? So if hopefully those are some tips, because as a parent, there’s a, there’s not a nicer feeling going that you can see a pattern in your kid that every time you have an outburst, it’s because fairness was eroded. Okay. I can handle that. It makes it more digestible for me. Right.
36:05
This has been so great. Thank you so much, Dr. Shahana. You have to tell our listeners where to find you. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on YouTube, lots of social media platforms, most active on Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out the book, Feel Better. It just looks like Feel Better. Feel Better on Amazon. And I did the audible reading as well. If you find it easier just to listen while you’re driving too. And then come say hi on my website, too. Lots of places.
36:34
That’s perfect. Thank you so much for your time today. My pleasure. Great being here. Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!