Anna Housley Juster, PhD, LICSW is a licensed child and adolescent mental health clinician, education consultant, and author with over twenty-five years of experience supporting children and families.
531: Helping Anxious Kids
Dr. Anna Housley Juster
Do you have a child who worries? Hunter Clarke-Fields speaks with Dr. Anna Housley-Juster, a licensed child and adolescent mental health clinician, about her book "How to Train Your Amygdala." They discuss the increasing prevalence of anxiety in children and practical tools for managing anxiety. The conversation highlights the significance of validating feelings while also instilling confidence in children's ability to cope with anxiety.
Ep 531- Housley Juster
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I do think that with this practice of mindfulness and breath work and being in control of our thoughts, that's something to learn as early as possible because I can't see the downside.
[00:00:14] Hunter: You're listening to the Mindful Mama podcast, episode number 531. Today we're talking about how to help anxious kids with Anna Housley Juster.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training. And I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans Every Day” and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hello, and welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. So glad you are here. I hope you will help the podcast grow by telling a friend about it, make sure you're subscribed and all that. It makes such a big difference. In just a moment, I'm going to be sitting down with Anna Housley Juster, who is a licensed child and adolescent mental health clinician, education consultant, and author with over 25 years of experience supporting children and families. As you'll hear, she and I grew up in the same town. We actually had played together when we were little kids. And actually, I found out some more about this, and I think her dad commissioned carousel horses from my father, who is a woodcarver. Pretty wild. So you'll hear us talk about that. And she was also the former content director across all of Sesame Street's platforms. And she has this amazing book, “How to Train Your Amygdala”, which I love so much. You're going to hear me say this. So join me at the table as I talk to Anna Housley Juster.
It is so weird, dear listener. I just have to out it. Anna wrote an amazing book that I'm super psyched about, “How to Train Your Amygdala”. And her lovely publicist sent it to me and I thought, this is a pretty neat book. And then I thought, Anna Housley- I know that name. Anna Housley? That couldn't be. And you know what, dear listener, you're my podcast guest and I played together as really little kids in our hometown.
[00:03:26] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: It's wild. Yeah. It's so fun to be here and see you now in this context.
[00:03:31] Hunter: And I haven't even asked you about your brother, who's closer my age, and you're closer my brother's age, but yeah, so we'll have to do that after. Separate conversation. Separate conversation. But I think it's so funny that here we are, we grew up playing together and here we are talking on the podcast.
It's so random, but. As I've already let you know that Anna is a licensed child and an adolescent mental health clinician. So the first thing I'm wanted to ask you is about kids anxiety. Are there a lot of little kids, because this book is trained at, aimed at little kids. It's a picture book. Are there a lot of little kids dealing with anxiety right now?
[00:04:12] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I would say that there are, and also I think we're better able to talk about it, like I think we're definitely better able to see. What might look like a behavior challenge in the classroom and it might be assumed that the child is just really dysregulated because they don't know how to behave and then you understand actually they're really anxious about something and we're better able to talk about it and have strategies to help the child pretty early learn how to manage that.
Also, I would say it's just a very, anxiety is our threat response escalated a lot of the time for perceived threats. And I think. Generally, the world is a fairly threatening place at the moment. There's a lot going on. The young brain isn't really designed to understand. So yeah.
[00:04:55] Hunter: I guess I could see that.
Like what, back to when you and our little kids playing, if there were disruptive kids in the classroom, there was a behavior problem. That was their problem. And they were. Sent away or what, had to go to the principal's office, et cetera. And yeah, we can see, we now have been able to see a lot of these behaviors as like fight, flight, or freeze, right?
Those are, arguing, kicking, spitting, pushing, doing all of these, what we see as bad behaviors. So if we now can see these Behaviors are a sense of a threat response, then we can extrapolate and say, Oh, okay, there might be. There's anxiety, there's some kind of fear or something driving this.
Some of the time, not all the time, but some of the time, right?
[00:05:44] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Definitely. Yeah, and my first job out of college was I was a Head Start teacher. And when I do consultation and trainings with teachers today, I can say the very behaviors you're talking about are much more prevalent now, but they would have happened then.
But I think when we even look pre COVID, pre pandemic this, the behaviors would be happening. But not at the rate with the number of kids that they're happening with now. So I think that there is some sort of, there's an increase in the general sense of kids being on the defensive and quicker to go into that threat response mode that you're talking about.
Also, and when you and I, when you and I were little, we wouldn't have been able to see so much access to what's happening in the rest of the world, right? We were focused on the here and now of what was happening right in front of us with. Playing at Sunset Beach or like running around in the neighborhood and We wouldn't be looking at a screen and exposed to as much as kids are to today, which I think does make a difference.
[00:06:45] Hunter: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. We were in our own imaginary worlds. Yes. Very much yeah. So I'm already seeing like a protective factor for a listener, if you have little kids like let's. let's protect them maybe from some of the world if we can, right? Some of the exposure to the outside world, to all the screens and things like that.
Yeah, the news was something that was on a literally like a 13 inch black and white television in the kitchen when I was growing up and just maybe once a day or. I didn't pay any attention to it at all. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it's happening more now. Your Head Start and Head Start for the listener doesn't know is,
[00:07:28] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: oh, yeah, federally funded.
It's federally funded, high quality education for preschoolers. So it's getting kids into kindergarten, better prepared for what the classroom environment will entail for them.
[00:07:43] Hunter: Okay, and Head Start kids often are kids like low income kids who, whose parents may not be able to afford a preschool, they're going to Head Start, so there may be additional challenges in a Head Start program to, to begin with so people are dealing with more anxiety in these programs now, and you're, and so preschool is, what, four, five?
No, five is kinder, and
[00:08:04] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: three, four. Yeah, usually they're three and four. My classroom, I had 19 four year olds, and then I was working with their, predominantly with their moms, on doing parent guidance and support for them. And the idea is that it also, Head Start can provide wraparound supports to get access to other.
basic needs that people, that kids might need. But that's a good example of the difference between a, an actual threat and a perceived threat. In the case of not having access, like food insecurity is a real threat. That's obviously going to increase anxiety. Stable housing is a, not having stable housing is a real threat.
So Head Start serves a lot of the kids where there, the outside external factors might also be. really, actually threatening.
I'm just making that distinction because we can be anxious about things that are perceived, like what our thoughts are telling us that they're not facts. And we can also have real threat that we need our amygdala to be active and help us and protect us from something as well.
[00:09:03] Hunter: Yeah I love this. And so what are you wanting kids to know and understand about the amygdala through this book?
[00:09:10] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I want kids that struggle with sensation in their body like rapid heartbeat or sweaty hands or feeling tense muscles and not being sure why, like what's going on, that there's nothing wrong with you.
It's that your brain has this superpower. tiny piece of it called the amygdala. What's a major part of the job with the amygdala is to send your body into threat response mode or alarm mode. That's what I talk about when I talk about with kids. And that's the way we talk about it in the book. But I want them to know that they have some control over that.
So it doesn't feel like this is just the way things have to be for me. I'm an anxious kid. That's just how it's always going to be.
[00:09:52] Hunter: Yeah, so you're moving them out of victim of this to having some tools, basically.
[00:09:58] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Definitely. Yep.
[00:10:00] Hunter: Yeah. Okay, cool. Now is, so I know that you've, you've worked with kids as a Head Start teacher, you worked on Sesame Street, which I think is so cool that you got to work on Sesame Street.
Okay. Have you seen that introducing anxiety management stuff? At a very early age three and four, does that work for little kids?
[00:10:20] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: In my practice, the story How to Train Your Amygdala evolved in my practice with kids. And I remember working with a three or four year old where he had learned the word amygdala.
And he knew how to talk about it. And so when he was at home, his, he could say to his mom, my amygdala is doing jumping jacks. That's how he used to talk about it. And he could ask for help using this sort of complicated neuroscience, but boiled down into a way we were talking about in the classroom.
So yeah. The book is for four to eight year olds according to the publishing category. But I have found that older kids like 12 to 13 are interested in it because they've never learned about this. I found that like my editors has read it with her three year old and they read it and they understand it together.
And so I think it's for young kids but it can be expanded. And some reviewers have said they buy it for their grandchildren and then they realize for the 70s or something that they have an amygdala and
[00:11:19] Hunter: oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:12:01] Hunter: Wow. And so it's helping like these are tools. So some of the, what are the, some of the tools that you're teaching in here that you shared with your clients and your people that you put in here that are helping people?
[00:12:12] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: So what happens in the book is that about a third of the way through the amygdala realizes it has made a mistake and it's gotten really scared about something that's not actually scary. It turns out to be a tiny kitten delivering a large cheese pizza, and then it goes on to ask for help. And the skills it teaches then to the reader are in three categories.
Controlled breathing, muscle relaxation, where you intentionally tighten and release your muscles, and visual imagery, which is just a fancy way to say using your imagination to distract from whatever scary thought you might be having. And the illustrations, which were done by Cynthia Cliff in just a beautiful way, are designed to model those strategies.
So as you're working to help the amygdala character, the reader is then practicing the strategies in real time as they read the book. And my hope is it, like you talk about so much on this podcast, that it's a practice. So that you're not like suddenly like I'm gonna be mindful right now, like this is in this one moment I'm gonna do something I've never done before and I'm gonna take a deep breath It has to be built into the practices of every day And so I'm hopeful that the book is a picture book first like a fun story But then if you read it enough times or if you just then are practicing Lifting it off the page and practicing in real life that the skills Kids could learn at a very early age, which could actually help to prevent the wiring of anxiety in the brain down the line.
[00:13:41] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is so interesting because I feel like this is all something that like kids now are learning like like this new generation of kids are learning and we have to wait and see will all these tools play out like later down the line, but I as a Listener if you have been around for a while, I don't I have so many children's books authors reach out and say, can I come on the podcast?
I don't talk to many, but I really do like this book a lot. And one of the reasons I think that it can be more successful as a book is that it's not it's fun. It's not like super pedantic. It's not just like trying to tell you something that's important necessarily that you want to know, although it is trying to do that.
But it's what I think that it has, which I think is really beautiful. And I was thinking I'm thinking, oh, it's because Anna worked on Sesame Street and they make all these like great monsters that are end up being misunderstood and cuddly. And so this is the same thing with this amygdala.
It's like this misunderstood monster that's misunderstood and cuddly. So was that a deliberate choice?
[00:14:50] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: It definitely. was. I think that what drew me to work at Sesame Street in the first place is how I was just obsessed. Actually growing, at the same time that we were growing up together, I had extremely strict TV viewing rules.
So even when there were other things to watch, I was watching Sesame Street until I was about 12 or something. I was old enough to understand how funny it was for both the adult and the child. I could see it through a different lens. And I just, I think about then started saying I wanted to work there someday.
And then getting to work there and just being inspired by so many creative people and thinking about ways to teach, not shying away from teaching hard topics, but doing it in a doing that teaching in a way that was playful and age appropriate. What I was finding in books that I was reading with kids in my practice, or even when I was a mom, I think we both have two daughters.
Mine are teenagers now, but when they were younger, I would look for books that were maybe teaching something like this, but in an either not pedantic way, like you said. Or the other thing is it's like just a worry monster, which is fine, but kids are capable of learning actual vocabulary and then understanding that they can learn about that in a fun way.
So that was my hope, was channeling definitely the inspiration from Sesame Street and some of what I found interesting as a child myself. Into the development of the story.
[00:16:16] Hunter: I think you've done that well. Have you first, what are some of the things, you have some ideas also in here for parents, what are some of the simple things that parents can say to their kids to help them, alleviate the worry without, disregarding it or dismissing it, but also without exacerbating it?
[00:16:35] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Yes. So I think it's important to try to stay in the middle, balanced, right? So which also gets at the idea of mindfulness and you talk a lot about how to tune into yourself first and check in and pause before responding to a child, I think that's critical. It's always important to first validate the feeling.
If you can say to a child I can tell that you're worried. And I'm confident you're going to be able to cope or something that balances the belief in the child's ability, but also the recognition of the worry. There's a great intervention called the space intervention out of the Yale Child Study Center, which is Eli Leibowitz or Ellie Leibowitz developed.
And I'm trained in that and I've been bringing pieces of it into my work with parents a lot. And this is a primary goal of that program is to have a supportive balance statement You're both validating the child's feeling and experience, which gets to the listening and curiosity that you talk about, because you're aware and present, and you're also showing that you're confident that the child is capable of coping.
A lot of times in my practice I'll see parents that are pretty anxious working with their kids, trying to help their kids when they're anxious, and if everybody's anxious, it's basically everyone's amygdala in a battle with everyone else's amygdala.
[00:17:58] Hunter: Yeah, so that's all unspoken language that you can feel, you can feel your amygdala.
It's we think it's just about the words we say, but 70 percent of our communication is non verbal, right? So it's all of these things that we can feel each other's emotions. .
[00:18:14] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Yeah it's true. And I think sometimes I try to use visual analogies to try to help people think about that.
So for example the amygdala is designed to protect us from threat, danger, or death. Basically it's part of our survival instinct. So imagine if a lion is charging at your child, the child is anxious about something, they don't wanna go to school that day. You're saying, you're thinking it's just school, what's the big deal, you've done this before, I didn't have a problem going to school when I was a child, right?
All the things that might come into a parent's head. Your sister goes to school, no problem none of that is recognizing the lion. That's, the child's brain thinks there's a lion charging at it. If you dismiss it completely, and you don't see the lion, what's the message to the child? Now I'm in real danger.
The child thinks that they're not being believed, and they also think that the person who would be the number one protector, from an evolutionary standpoint, the primary caregiver, doesn't see it. That's extra scary, because now it's I'm doing this by myself. I'm surviving by myself. If you go to the child, cry with them, come into a ball, align with the worry, the other, that message is, we're both about to be attacked by this lion.
[00:19:36] Hunter: Oy.
[00:19:37] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: And that's also scary to the child because that doesn't feel protective at all. I try to encourage adults, teachers and parents, and I, this by the way is a constant practice in myself, like I say these things to parents all day long and I'm on podcasts talking about it and I promise you, I don't always.
managed to do this. But ideally, you're sitting somewhat distant from the child, like with some space, confident that the child is going to be able to cope, but recognizing the lion. I see the lion, and I know you're going to be able to cope with this. And then ideally they have some strategies to, in which, that they can do that with, right?
So that's why practice and the early, I don't say this with all of education, like I, there are some things I don't think you should start as early as possible. I do think that with this practice of mindfulness and breath work and being in control of our thoughts, that's something to learn as early as possible because I can't see the downside.
Mhm. And the benefits to be able to use those strategies or that practice when you are, when you recognize the lion helps in all areas of life. I can't think of a reason not to start as early as possible.
[00:20:56] Hunter: I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's one of the reasons why, my book is written towards parents because I struggled enormously as a parent, but also, like, how do you help kids when they're in little, before they go to school you help parents.
That's how you help kids before they Yes. Before they school you, they go, you help parents but this is a way to help kids, which I love. It's a way to help parents and kids. We should sell them as a package, Anna. Raising good dildos and how to train your amygdala, a package deal.
[00:21:29] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I like it. Let's do it.
[00:21:32] Hunter: Yeah. I can't see I guess I wonder, sometimes I, there's some evidence that I guess there's some evidence with not young kids, but with teenagers that a lot of the talk about that people are getting the information that teens are getting about anxiety disorders and all of these different things that can happen that they hear about on TikTok and on all these different places can like that sort of barrage of information can make them more aware maybe overly aware of themselves, overly self aware in a negative way, overly self aware of the discomfort of being, the miserable self awareness one has when one is a teenager.
And in a bad way, like that might be, to play devil's advocate, that might be the downside, right? And do you, I don't know, what do you say to that?
[00:22:23] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I think that the question about sort of social media for teens is so complicated because on one hand, it's a lifeline. You interact with kids all over the world and some of them are going to have more similarities to you than the people living right in your own neighborhood, for example.
So there's a connection and alignment that's valuable. I do get concerned about kids getting their mental health advice from TikTok, right? Or certainly from other kids on TikTok. And I think there's a lot of damaging, as is widely discussed. Issues around self confidence, like when you're comparing yourself to all of the people you're seeing that way.
I would say that if the focus was on mindfulness or training your amygdala for teens, I think that's fantastic because chances are if it's about breath work or some strategy, it's not going to lead them astray and it's just starting the conversation in a positive way. I would never want a teen, and this does happen to try to diagnose herself on, in that way.
Or, it could make them curious to ask a mental health professional, right? Or a teacher, or it could give you some curiosity to go and say I'm wondering about this for myself. But if the question is about learning mindfulness strategies, I think that any way that people are accessing that is.
Amen.
[00:23:55] Hunter: Amen. Talking about it. Amen. Okay. So have you or any of your kids ever struggled with anxiety?
[00:24:04] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: So I wouldn't have been able to call it anxiety. I listened to one of your podcasts where you talked about how you were reading about mindfulness as a teenager or maybe in your early twenties or something.
I really
[00:24:18] Hunter: Actually, you probably know the bookstore I went to. Which one? Harper's. The book. Do you hear now, books? Do you hear now, books? Which I like. I love it. I love it. It's Nygaard. Yes! Who was the book star so
[00:24:30] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: briefly. Oh my gosh. I think she ran the youth group at some point that I was in and yeah, I, yes.
That's just credit to you for, to have the insight and then find the book. I'm like, that's. Brilliant. I think I, I have a tendency towards anxiety. I wouldn't have been able to call it that until I was in my third graduate degree, which was the master's in social work where luckily I was also learning a lot of good strategies through my work, through the studying, through what I was working on.
Now that I'm able to think about it with a vocabulary, it's fairly like a control, I would say, like I can manage what comes up for me. I have been practicing yoga for, I think, 30 years and I. The just learning how to breathe, like that's why I really wish that I had known how to breathe as a five year old because it took me decades to recognize that how much I held my breath, for example, and that simple practice.
It's not that complicated, but the simple practice of tuning into what's happening. In your body that has really helped me manage anxiety. I've also been in therapy myself and done work in that way as well. The way I can see my own anxiety showing up when I'm with my kids is that I'll be more.
Irritable. That the fight. Same. The fight response.
[00:26:00] Hunter: Yes.
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:26:44] Hunter: Grumpy, do you want them to like, go suddenly? They need to do the thing now? That's how it is for me.
[00:26:50] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Yeah, it's, it is. And then it's really work to then tune in and say, What's the need in myself that is not being met? What do I need to do first before I have this conversation end? I play with my dog, I lay on the floor with my dog and just relax, that's very calming to my amygdala, I wipe off the kitchen counter, if there's one clean surface, that's like the clarity my brain needs to move on to the next thing, I have to be careful that it's not compulsive, like you have But that's a, it's an adaptive strategy until it's not.
But for the most part, and I for years I didn't work in mental health and I was a mom before I was working in mental health and I always would have said this to my kids anyway, I would say, just try to regroup. That's the joke in my house is that regroup is my favorite word. Try to regroup.
Let's take a deep breath. Once I became a mental health clinician, the phrase take a deep breath. is no longer something I can say in my house without everybody getting frustrated at me. So it's just, it's always a balancing act. It's but I think it's, I think it's good for people to say, I have anxiety.
[00:28:06] Hunter: Yeah.
[00:28:07] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: To be okay to name that. And then again, to the point of the book is, it's not about then fighting back against some bad part of yourself. It's about connecting brain and body to be able to manage that threat response.
[00:28:24] Hunter: Yeah. One of the favorite things I say to myself is, “This is not an emergency”. And it's oh, yeah. Yeah part of me thinks this is an emergency Happens to happen right now. I can relate to what you're saying. I think I think in reflection now with my, I had probably postpartum anxiety, but I think I never would have named it that because there was like a taboo against, I've, I remember where I was walking and near my house when I thought, Oh, I think I may be feeling anxiety and thinking, Oh, Oh no, there's something wrong with me.
You know what I mean? And I don't want to say that word. I remember not wanting to say that word because I didn't want there to be something wrong with me. Yeah,
[00:29:06] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: there's such a because I guess also by association, if you were anxious, then that somehow means weak.
[00:29:13] Hunter: Yes.
[00:29:14] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: And in our society is like this really strong focus on strength and.
Resilience and just pull yourself up and get going and and I think that we need to change that step by step. And I think by just sharing about anxiety openly, we help kids not that are growing up now think about it in a different way and in a way that is more in their control because Once you name something, it's easier to talk about it and it's easier to manage it.
[00:29:48] Hunter: I'm wondering, as we're talking about this and thinking about the, that middle path and and I've been thinking with the whole like political situation of how people, there's people on a side that want to conserve the way things were and don't want, we don't want to lose some good things about the way things were.
And there are people who want to make things progressive and want things to change. And I think you're right that we, obviously, I think you're right, that we do need to be able to name these feelings. We need to be able to acknowledge them, deal with them, look at them and soothe them and understand them.
And then, as you're saying that, the emphasis on pick yourself up by your bootstraps, there's positive in that, there's positive in that too, right? We do need to be able to take care of ourselves. And Acknowledge our feelings and things like that and there are times where we just need to do the thing and regardless of how we're feeling, move forward, maybe get to school, right?
Going back to what we were talking about, get to school, move through the experience of the anxiety, realize it's not going to kill us, and move on. But that's, that was what it always was in every situation before. And I think maybe we're trying to balance the scales now, but I, it's interesting cause in some ways I think my daughter, my 17 year old has a chronic pain.
Situation and so her nervous system is telling, is making pain when it may not necessarily be there. And it's very connected also to her stress response and part of what she has to do to retrain her nervous system is yes Oh, we're doing all the things, she's doing the deep breathing, as a three to five minutes a day and things like that.
But also the thing that she has to do. is a lot of times feel the pain and continue on, keep calm and carry on, right? It's really interesting to, to see that this is like the only way out is really through in this situation in particular, too.
[00:31:55] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Definitely. I think part of it is about being able to sit with discomfort.
And that's really hard to do if your amygdala is constantly. in threat response mode. If your body and brain are in threat response mode most of the time, any little discomfort with a very high baseline, any little discomfort that's on, layered on top of that can send someone quickly way into threat fight, freeze mode.
So I think that it's not that we have to choose between acceptance or of the status quo, like we're just gonna pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and move forward and not acknowledge what's painful or what's hard or sit in the feeling for too long and be naming the anxiety and sticking with the anxiety.
It's a bit like by being vulnerable enough to. Talk about something, feel something, know what's happening, prepares you actually for what I would call like resilience. It's in that acknowledgement and the vulnerability that the strength happens. And one of the things I work really hard on with the kids that I work with and have tried to pass on to the kids in my family is that asking for help is a sign of strength.
Which, and I think it could be seen as weakness, but in fact, curiosity, interest, being willing to ask someone for advice or help in some way is a sign of strength.
[00:33:29] Hunter: Because we inter are, we are not individual silos that move through the planet. We inter are with each other. I think that's beautiful.
Okay. Speaking of asking for help, actually, I wanted to ask you for if a parent and a child are both struggling with anxiety in the same moment, who should the parent focus on first and how should parents handle that kind of situation? Is this age dependent?
[00:33:57] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: No, I don't think it's age dependent and I even think if you're talking about just a colleague at work or a friend next door or someone who just cut you off in traffic.
I live in Boston, getting around Boston, so it's a big theme. Always you have to go inside first because you have to check in and see if I'm in threat response mode, how am I going to respond to this this person's action or they said their facial expression. I often help people peel back the layers to figure out where the anger is coming from, for example, first.
So if you are a parent like so many parents today who is in a constant battle about screen time limits and come into the room and you've asked 25 times for your child to turn off the iPad because it's time for dinner or something and you feel in your body that your muscles are tight. You're hot, you are maybe like, I don't know, a kid might even look at you and know from the way you're standing because everything is tight in your body.
And you say something that you wish you hadn't said because you're angry. If you peel back the layers of that, the core is love. And love sends up when you, and then that means that your threat response is going to be easily activated when you think there's something dangerous for your child. And you're thinking, it's dangerous for my child to be on the iPad for all this time.
My job is to protect them. See? Now we're into protective mode. And what comes out way on the surface. What they see is anger, and if you can track back through that, all those layers to figure out where the threat's coming from, it's coming from a sense of commitment, love, attachment. How would you act then?
Would you still come in with that rage, which is not about the child, but it's about The fear of the iPad that you have, how would you act differently? Unless you do that first, what is usually going to happen is that you, the, you're going to come at it in threat response mode, and then what's going to happen to the child?
Resentment. Anger. And you look like a lion.
[00:36:16] Hunter: Yeah. It's going to, yep. They're going to be afraid. Or underneath it. Yeah.
[00:36:21] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: And once the child's in threat response mode and the parent's in threat response mode, no one's really listening to each other anymore. You're just both trying to survive. It's just a mess.
And it's not anymore, it's no longer about the iPad. It's become about winning and surviving. And then most of the time that goes in a bad direction, right? Like it's very hard for two people that are in threat response mode to have an actual listening conversation. So I think it's always self, it's self first in preservation of relationship.
[00:37:01] Hunter: I love that. Dear listener, self first. I love that. Okay, so this is awesome. Everyone should go out and get “How to Train Your Amygdala”, if you have a three year old, or maybe a 12 year old. They might be like, enjoy looking at it. It's everywhere books are sold. Anna, this is so great. I'm so glad we got to chat. It's funny that maybe we'll have to find each other now on 4th of July, but we'll talk about that later. Is there anything that we missed that you want us to, do want to leave the listener with?
[00:37:39] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: I would leave the listener with that it's never too late. If this, if you're a listener now and you're learning about the amygdala and the threat response in your brain, which I think that's probably not the first time because I imagine a hunter's talked about it before, but read the book for yourself. Think about it in through a new lens and think about what are the ways that I could take this into my life and basically rewire the brain.
It's never too late. Whether you're. 80, 90 years old, to actually start to change behaviors, to change the way that the, that thoughts work. And that might help you be a more grounded person that you want to be in the world.
[00:38:19] Hunter: Yeah. Actually, I realize. You're, the way you're talking about the amygdala as this sort of misunderstood fuzzy creature that's scared of things that it shouldn't be scared of, it, and making it, us care about it and making it more personalized is very much the same way that the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh talked about these things because he would say, what he would say is Imagine holding your difficult feelings in front of you in your arms like a baby, and say to your difficult feelings, I will take care of you. It's okay. I'm here for you, and I will take care of you. And that's basically exactly what your book says. It takes that same point of view, which is a very wise one.
[00:39:04] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Yes. So we're aligning with that threat response, not pushing it away.
[00:39:08] Hunter: Yeah,
[00:39:08] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: looking at it for what it is and working as a team.
[00:39:13] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, and it's never too late. Never too late Thank you so much for coming on. The podcast has been awesome.
[00:39:20] Dr. Anna Housley Juster: Thank you so much for inviting me. It was really fun
[00:39:27] Hunter: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I love “How to Train your Amygdala”. Obviously, it's such a great book. And it's so crazy that Anna and I were kids together. I went and asked my dad about it after I said, “Oh, I talked to Anna Housley- now Anna Housley Juster- for the podcast”. And yeah, her father had commissioned my father to build, to carve a bunch of carousel horses. And I remember all these carousel horses when I was a kid, because my dad carved an incredibly beautiful rocking horse- he did a lot of carousel horses and rocking horses. He did rocking horse for me and my brother- but you guys is a really different rocking horse. This rocking horse was an adult size rocking horse. So if you picture a rocking horse and you picture that little tiny like rock back and forth thing, that is not my rocking horse. My rocking horse could fit a full grown adult. And when it rocked, it really moved. We could fit three kids,- no wait, one, two, three, four kids- on the rocking horse because we'd have one person on the front rocker, one on the back rocker, one underneath, and one on the horse. It was crazy. We could fit so many kids on this horse. It was like my favorite thing ever from my childhood, I loved it so much, but yeah, I'm sure Anna and her little brother Mike, shout out to him, played on this rocking horse at some point. As did many of my friends. If you played on the rocking horse. I'm thinking of you.
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I hope you're doing well. Yeah, if you love this episode, Give me a shout out on Instagram, I'm at @MindfulMamaMentor and it is getting a little warmer here in Delaware. I am seeing some crocuses and things like that coming up, hallelujah, ooh it's a cold winter so I hope wherever you are, you're getting some nice, some warmer days and whether that you can get outside and play and be in nature, be with your kids in nature. So good for you. And all of us. And I hope this podcast episode has helped you a little bit today. It's not easy being a human here on earth and I hope it's helped you be a human here on earth today. Thanks so much for listening, and I will be back to talk to you again real soon. Namaste.
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