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 : hello and welcome to the Dr. Nursemama Show Prescribing Hope for Healthy Families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.

We live in a world where fear feels like it has become normalized

Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there friends and welcome to my favorite time of day getting to spend time with you prescribing Hope for Healthy Families. And listen, we've got a really important conversation to for you today if you are a human being and exposed to any news at all. We live in a world where fear feels like it has just become so normalized. It is just an unavoidable part of our life. When we scroll through the headlines, when we drop our kids off at school, when we walk into work, when we cross the street, I mean, it doesn't matter what we are doing. We are living as a people who are just generally anxious. And I feel this, this pulsation of fear that is running through parents and just society in general. And the realities are that parents today are navigating levels of hyper vigilance that we feel like we have to have that previous generations did not face. We have new concerns about school safety. We have new concerns about constant digital exposure. We have rising rates of childhood anxiety and depression and this world of social media that brings with it a pressure to get everything right in a world that feels increasingly wrong. And as parents, we feel like, oh, my goodness, we're afraid. We're afraid we're not doing all the right things, getting all the right people, setting our kids up for success. And I hear from many parents every single day and from myself included, just saying I am exhausted, I am overwhelmed and I'm just tired of being afraid. And we're passing those fears on to our kids. They're learning to be fearful and just to live with that. But here's the question for you today. What if fear isn't something that we need to fight? What if fear is actually our teacher? And today's conversation, we're going to have a really different perspective on fear, one that is grounded in neuroscience, one that's grounded in faith and also lived experience. We'll talk about how fear can actually be a blessing and not a burden. I know that sounds. You're like, I don't buy it already. I don't buy it. But we're going to talk to you about how authentic connection begins not with fixing our fear, but really understanding it and pivoting to a biblical worldview.

Tricia Thornton is a licensed professional counselor serving children and families

So I'm honored to welcome back to the show Tricia Thornton. She is a licensed professional counselor. She's a registered play therapist, which I feel like I need, like, on a daily basis, even as an adult. She's a certified K through 12 school counselor. She's the owner of a private practice serving children and families. She holds degree. She holds degrees from Vanderbilt, from Denver Seminary, and brings together brain science, faith and compassion for all of us who are raising kids in a broken world. And she is author of the book Blessing from fear. Embracing your journey, discovering your true. Your true self right here that I have in my hands. Tricia, I'm so glad to welcome you back.

Tricia Thornton: Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Thank you.

You wrote a book about fear that came out in April 2024

Well, let's talk about the reality now. I want to tell our listeners that you were on the show before, just in case they missed it. You shared so much of your testimony, which I'm sure that you'll share part of today. But let's just. Just have a little brief reintroduction. Tell them a little bit about you and why you ended up writing about fear.

Tricia Thornton: Yeah, so this book was my first book that came out in April 2024, and it was birthed out of, I think, just a calling, just an inkling, a nudge from God saying, write your story. And so I actually write, handwrite my books with pencil and paper. And so I got out my pad and started writing. And the way the book is introduced is. Is a little bit of a jarring story. And. And we can get into that. And then it just became very clear as I was writing. It is. Oh, wow. I didn't quite realize. I knew this before through my own work and through my own journey of faith and my own therapy that I knew that I had fear, but I had no idea that it had impeded and kind of imprinted upon my brain throughout my whole life. So it became very clear that I needed to do a little bit more exploration of the neuroscience of fear. And so that's where the love of all of that started. And, and then my most recent certification is I'm a certified interpersonal neurobiology clinician. And that just topped it off. It was like, it was kind of icing on the cake. Put the cherry on top. And I think this book is easy to understand. It is chopped full. It gives you some parenting. It gives you interpersonal work. It points you to a deeper relationship with God. And then it also really helps you understand the inner workings of your brain.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, let's talk about that a little bit. Because fear is so normalized in our culture. Kids are going to school every day feeling fearful. parents just generally feel fearful. And in some ways, even in our culture, fear is celebrated. You know, And a lot of that has to do with the biology response that you have when you're watching a scary movie or when you're riding a scary ride or going through a haunted house or something like that. Let's talk a little bit about that biology of fear and. And what's a healthy way that God designed it, and what are ways that we are taking it off the rails?

Tricia Thornton: Yeah. So let's first do some definitions of fear. I think this will be helpful. I think if we can understand what the four types of fear. I think that will give a window into people being able to identify, oh, this is happening. And if people don't realize that we're at Opryland here filming this, and it's quite a journey from one lobby to the other. And I literally was walking here, and I watched a little boy who skinned his knee, and his immediate response was a fear response. And I'll explain that as we're talking, because I literally just watched it, and I thought, oh, there's my book once again. And, so the four fear responses. Anytime our brain senses something is not right, something's off. It could be a minor thing. It could be me walking. Like, I was walking in my car, and it was really busy. I heard a very loud helicopter above me. It could be something like that. It could be as simple as a, change in your schedule. It could be a new school year. It could be some. Something very traumatic. So we're talking littles to really big fear. Our brain doesn't really recognize the difference, it just handles fear the same way. So four fear responses. They are. You're either going to freeze. And I know most people kind of are familiar with these, but there's one that you might not be freeze, flee, fight, or fawn. So let's go through those. So freeze how these look? Freeze response is when you sense, ooh, something's off, and you kind of feel like you're stuck in quicksand. And most of us have, by the way, we have all four. They're all God given. None of them are worse than the other. We just have a little bit more of a dominant one. So a freeze response is in the middle of the night, if you hear a loud noise and you get that feeling of, oh, God, what was that? And you just have that freeze moment. That's a freeze response. But on a practical. Every day, what that looks like is scrolling. So we kind of check out. It's almost like a dissociated dissociative state. And we check out and we just start scrolling and we just start doing something because we can't literally feel like we can move forward. So we feel stuck. Then a flight is what you think of flee, but think of it as flee into something else. So that's a lot of times addictive behavior. But it could also be something like you flee into overworking. You flee into. It doesn't have to be at an addiction level, but you flee into something else to numb the fear that you're feeling so you don't have to feel that. So you just engage in another activity. And then the fight response. We know this, but it's not always fists. It's tone of voice, it's. It's words, it's eye rolls. It's kind of a like a, almost a bully stance, manipulation, control. Those are also the fight response. And then the last one is fawn that a lot of people aren't aware of. And that is this. I've seen it in both men and women. Sometimes it's a little bit more of a seen in moms, but I've seen it in both and I've seen it all ages young and older. And it is when we take care of everybody else and ignore ourselves. So it's, It's. I'm not saying that coordinating the meal train is always a fond response, but if you always are going to take care of others, but you put yourself on the back burner, that is really hard to do and not to do when you are a young mom of, like, mom of Four. I have been meeting families down in the convention today, and I met one mom of seven, six. And I was just like, oh, you know, it's hard not to do a fawn response when you're taking care of six children under the age of 12. I was like, oh, I don't even know how you did that. So I. That is a common one. And all of them show up. But once we're able. The power in this is if you can pause when you sense that kind of uncomfortable feeling, something's off. It doesn't have to be overly traumatic, but just something is not right or it's something traumatic. If we can pause in, in that moment and just kind of allow your body to notice where you're feeling that and then actually name the response.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Oh, wow.

Tricia Thornton: I really am kind of doing a fear response.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Hm.

Tricia Thornton: I wonder which one it is. And that will. There's a power in us being curious and starting to name it.

Dr. Jessica Peck: That is really helpful, Tricia, because when we experience something that makes us feel fearful, we have one of these responses, like you said, one of these types of fear. Freeze, fleet, fight or fight or fawn. And then you have this automatic coping mechanism that, that comes in that is that you've just kind of hardwired, like, okay, when I feel that this is what I do and exactly what you're talking about, that pause to disrupt that, that neurological cycle to say, okay, I'm feeling this, I need to pivot to a healthy coping mechanism that is hard to do. And one of the things that I see, I'm sure you see this in your practice as well too, is that especially these fear responses are often misinterpreted by parents as poor behavior. And we don't recognize it as a fear response. And how to pause and redirect them to a coping. We say, why are you, why are you being so aggressive? Why are you checking out? Why are you not listening to me? And recognizing that may be a, really helpful reframing.

Tricia Thornton: Absolutely. And so remember the example I was saying about the little boy who skinned his knee? So I watched him fall and he immediately started crying. He was probably maybe 4ish, and he immediately started crying and he looked at his older brother and yelled at his older brother, why did you push me? And we know, and I truly did see that little older brother did not. He wasn't near him. He didn't touch him.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Vengeance from all the older brothers that helped him.

Tricia Thornton: that that was a fear response. He was embarrassed. He was in front of all these People. So his little brain sensed something wasn't right and his natural fight response came out. I wish I had been able to stay and see the parent's reaction. But ideally, let's say we would like to see what he could have, what the parent could have done in that moment for that parent to get down on that little boy's level and acknowledge and affirm that this felt scary or this felt off or wow, this is. Hm. You're feeling a lot of big feelings about skin in your knee. You know, I kind of understand why you're kind of frustrated, but I don't know if your brother was nearby, but just affirming first that the little one had that feeling. I did turn around to notice that the daddy had picked him up. So, you know, he was hopefully feeling seen and heard. But sometimes that is hard because then the big brother kind of got blamed and he wasn't. So if the dad had turned out of his own fear response and snapped at the older brother, that's where it gets kind of a mess between the child and the parent.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Tricia, I feel like this is the first big revelation that people should be getting from our conversation is looking at those fear responses and recognizing the behavior. And you talked about specific behaviors, either dissociating by scrolling or having addictive behaviors. You know, just immersing yourself in something, whether that be gaming or substances or food or whatever it is, or aggression, or overly pleasing behaviors. If we can recognize that when our kids are having those behaviors and say, okay, that may be a fear response here, what is the underlying issue? Instead of just trying to change the behavior, getting at the heart of that issue, I think that that is going to be a big part of, a transformation that can happen. When we come back, we're going to talk about what happens if you stay in that fear response, but also how to get out of it. We'll be right back with Tricia Thornton.

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No Fear by Jon Reddick: I got enemies at every side? It ain't looking good, I ain't gonna lie? Arrows flying, devil's trying to make me think I'm going down this time? You might think that I'd be afraid? Running scared with the shaking face? But the God I know says it ain't over? The God I know's gonna make a way? Yeah, though I walk through the valley I will have no fear. No fear. The mighty power of Jesus is fighting for me here. No fear. No fear. The light of the world makes the darkness disappear.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is no Fear by Jon Reddick. And that's exactly what we're talking about today, is having no fear. It seems an impossible goal because we live in a world that is saturated by fear. And I'm going to be honest with you, this is something I really struggle with. I see the worst of the worst as a nurse working in hospital. I see best families on their worst day being blindsided by tragedy. I fear sending my kids out into the world. You know, I read the news as a professor. I work with children who are abused. I mean, I've got a lot of things to be afraid of. And we live in this world that feels saturated by fear. But I am here today talking to Tricia Thornton about her book Blessing From Fear, Embracing your Journey, Discovering your True Self. And she has a lot of credentials. I've already shared with you to talk about this, really from a biological stance. So I hope that you will stick with us as we nerd out a little bit. But it's important to. To know how God made our bodies and to catch you up.

What we've talked about so far is the four types of fear

What we've talked about so far is the four types of fear we've talked about. Freeze, Flee, fight, and fawn. Now, these are fear responses that often as parent, as parents, we misinterpret or only see as poor behaviors. And if we recognize that sometimes that is a cue for us, it is a clue for us that our child is feeling afraid of something, maybe something really minor like monsters under the bed. Or maybe be something really major like bullying at school, like parents getting divorced, like family members dying. I mean, we can have kids. We know kids face real fears. And we talked about some of the behaviors that can manifest with some of those fear types with dissociating, just numbing out, scrolling, having addictive type of behaviors, having aggressive kinds of behaviors, and having pleasing kind of behaviors. Like, I'm just going to try to make everybody around me so happy and try to control my circumstances. And when we live in this constant state of fear, Tricia, when we are in this hyper vigilance all the time and we just go to. We don't pause when we have that fear response. We just go immediately to our unhealthy coping mechanism. It takes a toll on our body. That's the reality. Tell us about the toll that it takes.

Tricia Thornton: Yeah. So this is an analogy I give often in my therapy practice to all age clients, including adults and parents. In the winter, if you were to blow up a balloon and you were to put your hands all over the balloon and then touch your hair, your hair goes static. That's how I describe hyper vigilance. It's a static state. It's like your hair is standing on edge. So you're waiting for the nut to fall from the tree. You're just waiting for that next, something to come across, across your path. And that is a very tiring way to go about our days. So one thing that I like to point out too is no matter what age your children are, so if your children are m. Grown, if you're talking about grown children who have grant and you're the grandparent to a young mom, young dad, or no kids even. But we're talking a little bit specifically about parents here. It doesn't matter. We always are having kind of that, how are our kids doing? We just, we're always a parent. We never stop. Yeah. And that right there creates kind of a level of overwhelm and a level of tired. But there is a continuum. And when we are so tired and we're so overwhelmed and we can't seem to regulate and get these four fear responses in check, then we are going to be reactionary. And there's. It's really difficult to then pause and authentically connect with your children. One, of the things I also like to point out is literally neurologically what's happening. So we have. This is an easy way to explain this. Thank you to Dr. Daniel Siegel, who came up kind of with this idea of an upstairs and A downstairs brain. So the upstairs is your prefrontal cortex, which controls some words that people might know is executive functioning, how to regulate emotion, how to sort, how to understand and categorize things. And then your emotional center is your downstairs brain. So I love that visual. Upstairs, downstairs. And the downstairs is where that famous piece of our brain called the amygdala lives. And now in Ms. Tricia's office, Tricia Thornton Therapy's office, we talk about that piece being an almond because it's the shape of an almond. And I work with a lot of young children, so my favorite moment is when a child comes in my office and says, oh, Miss Tricia, my almond was really active. This radio, it was really, really having a fun time. So that is always a cute thing because I know that they get it. But when our almond, when our amygdala wakes up due to one of these responses, then that will create a very tired brain because it's on overdrive. Hypervigilance is almost kind of like that static overdrive state. Another great analogy I just thought of. This is when you're revving up your car and, I know everybody's done this before. You don't have your car in drive, but you, you're in park and you press the pedal to reverse and you hear the engine. That's an overdrive. It's like a. Your just engine keeps going. It never settles. And so that is when, when we feel that way, it's really hard to pause. So I know we're going to talk about some specifics of how to do this, but that's a little bit. I hope that explains that over drive state that our, brains get in.

Dr. Jessica Peck: The amygdala develops first before the prefrontal cortex.

Tricia Thornton: Yes.

Dr. Jessica Peck: So sometimes what we're expecting from them as parents 100 is something they're not biologically capable of yet, because that fear center, that emotion center, it is on overdrive before the prefrontal cortex catches up and starts to catch up. And I want to say this, Tricia, and this may be an unpopular thing to say, so I'll just categorize it right there. I think. And this may be just my own biased experience because I'm a woman and I'm a mom. I think that women in general are more aware of their fear responses. And we know I feel afraid. We can be comfortable talking about the fact that we're afraid. I even know what my major fear category is. I know what my unhealthy coping mechanism is. And I'll beat Myself up about that. I think it's a lot harder for dads. I think it's harder for them to say I feel afraid. But dads today are facing a lot of fears from m. Economic pressures, the economy is challenging and they're worrying about okay, I've got to get the money to put the food on the table or you know, just being a good dad. Being that, you know, worrying about your kids and sports and all of this. But just also maybe not being as hardwired, to express their emotions as well and being that reactionary mode. I think that sometimes maybe if dads would say, hey, I'm feeling afraid about some of these things that are facing my family and maybe that's where my reaction is coming from, it might be helpful.

One of the most prevalent clients that I see most often is dads

What do you think?

Tricia Thornton: 101 of my kind of most prevalent clients that I see most often is males is dads. And they come in and that is the most common issue is they, it they're not aware. And it's not that they don't know. It has nothing to do with iq. This is, they don't really know. Oh, this is one, how my brain works. And two, it's okay that I have all these responses that, that actually, God put these in my brain. And, and, and they do by the way, save us too. I mean they're not. I don't want to give. Fear response is always a bad rap.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Right, Right. They're protective.

Tricia Thornton: If you are crossing the street and you hear a loud noise, your amygdala wakes up to tell you to stop. Thank goodness it does.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Right.

Tricia Thornton: So but a lot of males, DNA is wired to fix and that's one of the hardest things I see, I see it every week is I see dads come in and they're overwhelmed. They're so tired, they're so tired. They're almost a little bit more overwhelmed than moms.

Dr. Jessica Peck: I can see that. Yeah. Ah, I can.

Tricia Thornton: Absolutely. Really does actually break my heart. It's like one of my hardest days is when I have like three or four dads because the pressure that they feel is quite palpable.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Well here's, here's the first shift that we talked about is seeing these fear responses as God given but recognizing our unhealthy coping mechanisms. And the second one is recognizing that when we just go 0 to 60 from that okay, fear and here's my coping mechanism. It destroys connections, it destroys our relational connections because of that response. It's behaviors that are off putting. We don't understand, we don't see it. We just want that behavior to stop. We want that coping mechanism to stop. We want you to stop running away. We want you to stop fighting. We want you to just stop doing whatever you're doing that now is making me feel afraid. How, how do we see and hear our own fear first and recognizing. Recognize the impact that it's having on our connections.

Tricia Thornton: So a couple of basics. number one is being curious. If you can just. And this is not. I'm not saying this is. These are easy, but over time. That's my favorite phrase. Over time, this will get easier. But if you can pause, and if you can just pause to count to five, if that's all you can do, ideally, if you can pause a minute and a half, that would be wonderful. But if you could only pause to five and a, slow five, then I. In that amount of time, your brain is going to settle just enough. Your amygdala is going to just relax just enough that your prefrontal cortex might be able to come more online. So that's the upstairs, the forehead area. And so it's going to come online, which is going to allow you to think, oh, it's going to allow that self awareness to come up and you're going to go, oh, okay. Another thing, as you're pausing, notice where it's in your body. So when I feel an immense amount of tension, it is always in my neck and shoulders. So if I'm having a conversation with my husband and I'm constantly moving my head and rubbing my shoulders, I mean, obviously we've been married long enough. He clues in. I'm like, oh, she's under a little stress. And so, but if I can recognize that in myself too, then I can pause. Because my body, God gave us these beautiful bodies, and these bodies are full of cues. And so when we cue into what our body's telling us, that's the step. Then you can pause. And of course, this has to happen in real time. This is, Your kids are screaming in the backseat. This is not easy to do. Or screaming in the next room.

Co regulation is when your brain sends a message to your child's brain

One word that we haven't said that I want to make sure we just kind of mention is the idea of co regulation. Absolutely. I think we were kind of hinting at it, but we didn't name it. So co regulation, just so everybody understands, is my brain sends a message to my child's brain. And even over the phone, this can happen. Even through text, this can happen. Maybe not text as much, but definitely over the phone, it Can't.

Dr. Jessica Peck: It can with text if you don't use punctuation correct. Or a thumbs up sign, which can be interpreted as aggressive. I'm just saying what other people have told me. Yes, not, not my own children.

Tricia Thornton: So yeah, yeah, that's true with emojis, I think that can be an issue. But anyway, so my brain sends me a message to my child's brain that either safety or unsafe. So a child's brain, a human's brain, is 24, 7 looking for cues of safety every, all day long. So if I'm too hyper, vigilant and I'm a mama sitting right here and my child is in front of me and whatever's happening, I'm communicating a response to her or to him through my brain. It's very, it's like not, you can't see it. And so because of that one, it puts a little pressure on us as moms and dads. But we, if we can learn to ground, then we are going to send a regulating signal to our children who then co regulate off of us. So that's how co regulation works. Let's talk about easier said than done.

Dr. Jessica Peck: No, it is so much easier said than done. One of the things that gets in the way of that, of that CO regulation is often our children interpret our fear response as anger. And our fear often comes out as anger. Because if your child is late for curfew and you are pacing and you are waiting and they walk in, you express it as anger. If they have not, if you can't find them and you're looking for them and all of a sudden you find them, it's where did you go? And we have that coming from a caring response. But our children don't say, oh, mom's not really angry, dad's not angry. They were just afraid. How, how do we deal with that?

Tricia Thornton: I think, how do we communicate that another way? Yeah, so I think if you feel that anger, that's, I mean, I know I keep saying it, but I really do want you to pause. Because if we can allow ourselves to just sit for just a second, then that anger might subdue and then it actually, we can still show an anxious response. But another way, you know, after you've paused is to just name it, name it to the child. And I often say parenting is repair, rupture, repair, rupture, rupture, repair. It's the whole day. That's the whole thing. I think if we can just pause and say, wow, I just felt really angry and I know that my response came out as really angry, but really what I was feeling was scared or sad.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Oh, that is so much easier said than done. Listen, Tricia, we could talk about this all day, which is why people go to therapy for an extended period of time, because these are skills that we have to learn. It is not easy, but when we come back, we have so much more to talk about. One of the things Tricia talks about in her book and that we'll talk about is what order do you put this in? And I'll give you a hint, a preview. It goes God, yourself, your spouse, and then your children and why that is so important. And if you're wanting to know more about fear, about being free from fear, you can read. And Tricia's book, blessing from Fear, Embracing your journey, discovering your true self by Tricia Thornton. We'll be right back after this break. Talking about being free from fear. See you then.

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Take You At Your Word by Benjamin William Hastings and Cody Carn: Your word is a lamp unto my feet. Your way is the only way for me. It's a narrow road that leads to life but I wanna be on it. It's a narrow road and the mercy's wide. Cause you're good on your promise. I'll take you at your words. If you said it, I'll believe it. I've seen how good it was. If you started your completed, I'll take you.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back friends. Let's take you at your word by Benjamin William Hastings and Cody Carnes. I'm coming to you live today from the national religious broadcasters at and the Opry Opryland Hotel. I always get the name Opryland.

Tricia Thornton talks about how our brains work and how it affects parenting

Okay, we're coming to you live from Opryland today. I am here with author Tricia Thornton. She has written a book, Blessing from fear, Embracing your journey, discovering your true self. And we are really taking a deep dive into some of the brain science, the way that God has designed our bodies and our brains so that we can better understand it. And so often in today's parenting culture, especially in secular Culture, it really, there's a great focus on, a significant focus on strategies, what do you do? And behavior charts and fixing outcomes and all of these task oriented things. But today we're getting at the heart of things. We're talking about how does our brain work and how does that impact our heart connections with our family. And we're, we really live in a world that is just saturated by fear. And Tricia, it's, we have so much more to talk about. But let's just go ahead and dive right back in.

The way you were parented is the lens by which you parent

I want to talk about the generational lens. Let's, let's start there and start with. If we're going to start with ourselves as parents, as adults, because this may be even spouses and we're going to recognize, okay, I am trained to live in fear. Maybe I grew up in a home that wasn't emotionally safe, that wasn't psychologically safe, that wasn't physically safe. you've had trauma or whatever it is that is making you live in that stage of hyper vigilance. We come with that generational lens. How do we recognize it and what do we do about it?

Tricia Thornton: Yeah. So one just fact to know is the way that you were parented is the lens by which you parent. So if you grew up in a home where when you were sad or you were angry or you were fearful and it was dismissed or it was put down, if it was not recognized and affirmed and acknowledged, then when your child has a fearful response, whether that comes out as anger or whatever the response is, then our brain doesn't really have a file to put it. I like to describe this as, you know, when you have your desktop and you've created this file, you created this whatever document and it doesn't really have a folder to go in and you have all these folders, but it doesn't really belong in any of them. So then for a while you just kind of leave it on your desktop. That is how it is when our child has a reaction that we aren't used to because it was not how we grew up. That happens so often. I talk to parents about this every day in my office of well then what are we supposed to do? Because it's like our brain, when we have any kind of. By the way, when we do have any kind of fear response, our brain automatically goes back to what's familiar and what it's used to. That could be all the way back to when you were a child. So when we say that kids trigger us, they trigger us more than anything else. I really, truly believe they do. It doesn't matter, what it is. Our children trigger us the most. And so. And they trigger all four of these four, you know, the four fear responses. So when we feel that our brain goes backwards and to try to stop that, we can. It is possible. God literally gave us the brain through our beautiful. Brains are neuroplastic. We can change them. It's just not easy. But it does. It can happen. It does take time.

Dr. Jessica Peck: It is not easy. And when we are triggered by those things, often we're triggered by the behaviors that we don't like in ourselves or those responses. It becomes bothers us when we see our kids struggling with something that we struggle with. And our immediate response is just kind of, oh, I don't want to deal with that.

Tricia Thornton: I don't.

Dr. Jessica Peck: I. I see that in you. It pains me, but I don't know where to go from.

Tricia Thornton: That's the freeze response.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Yes.

Tricia Thornton: Okay.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Oh, well, then there you go.

Tricia Thornton: There you go.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Therapy with Tricia Thornton. Exactly.

Tricia Thornton: And the flea would be like, forget it. I don't even know what to do. I'm gonna go wash dishes. Like, I'm just gonna check out. And then the fight would be yell at them. And the fawn would be overtake care of everything. Maybe go and try to solve the friendship issue with the other mothers and just, oh, overtake her.

Dr. Jessica Peck: I really see a lot of the fawn response in today's mothering. You kind of called it out.

We want our kids to not feel anything uncomfortable, but that's harmful too

Let's talk about that. Because sometimes we just. It comes from a place of. We want our kids to not feel anything uncomfortable, but that, that's harmful too.

Tricia Thornton: So I just had a really hard conversation this week with a couple, and I said, you know, as much as I know that you don't like to hear this, but the more you rescue and the more you are stepping in so your child doesn't feel any discomfort, Whether that's rejection from a friend, a boyfriend, even as they get older, or nobody sat with them at lunch, or nobody played with them on recess, or the coach didn't put them in the game, any of those kind of things that we face all the time and our children face them. But if we go in and rescue, and there are times where we do have to step in. I'm not saying don't step in if your child's getting bullied. I'm a little bit. That's not kind of the category that we're talking about. But if just like little things, then I. That sends A message to a child. They can't do it without mama or daddy stepping in. So they don't actually build up the resilience skills that we all want our children to have. So we have to. And this is so hard, but it's so hard. Our children have to feel discomfort because in the real world, this world is full of uncomfortable. And if we don't feel comfortable in the uncomfortable, it's really hard.

Dr. Jessica Peck: And now we're back to that co regulating concept where we recognize the discomfort that we feel, we recognize our fear response, and we intentionally pivot to a healthy coping behavior together. Because so often with that, fawn response, we don't want our kids to feel discomfort. We want to rescue them because no one rescued us. We want them to not feel discomfort because we felt nothing but discomfort. And it comes from a good place. But then kids feel anxious, just like you said, like, I can't do it on my own. Let's go to the order that we need to put this in. Because, you know, I'm type A, I need, I need a good list here. And you've got some good steps here and prioritizing God yourself. Let's go from there. Start with that.

Tricia Thornton: Okay, so I call this framework the cross of connection framework. And so if you, I want you to mentally picture a cross and so visually picture that. And if you put the word God at the top of the cross, so God is who you're connecting with first. And by the way, nothing is perfection. Get that out of our heads. So God first, then with yourself. That's the top part of the cross. The perpendicular part is you connecting either with your spouse, community, friend, co parent, whoever that is on your side there, then your children. So that is a ton of connecting that has to occur first before we connect with our children. And sometimes that's really hard. I mean, it's really hard. So. But, and this is where my story comes in. I did not feel in early parts of my marriage and young parent that I did a very, good job. And really it wasn't. I was looking for perfection. But I was so wrapped up in my own pain and that I didn't connect really well with my spouse. I skipped over that step and went straight to the children because what we were talking about before, I didn't want my children to feel discomfort. So I'm going to rush in. But what it really did was it created a wall between my husband and me that then sent a message of unsafety to my children. So it's a whole system. But if we can first connect with God, that's going to give us the confidence and give us the ability to pause. Then you're going to be more self aware. Is that connect with yourself. You're going to feel you have a partner and feel you have a team. Then you're going to be able to connect with your children.

Dr. Jessica Peck: And I feel like there may be people listening who think, oh, yeah, that's my spouse. That's what they've done. How do. And we know that trauma tends to attract trauma, right? And it's. How do we make sure that. How do we work on ourselves when that's a two way street? That's really hard.

Tricia Thornton: Ooh. My answer is like, go see a therapist.

Dr. Jessica Peck: That could be the answer.

Tricia Thornton: I think that is. I mean, I do a ton of parent coaching and in my work as a therapist, I have a parent coaching program that I do. And this is not easy to do on your own. So I would say whether you seek out a professional or you seek out a pastor or somebody who is a trusted person that can guide you as a couple. But the first, and this is the hardest, we have to be vulnerable. We have to be vulnerable within first. See, that's where that cross the connection. We have to be vulnerable with God, vulnerable within, vulnerable with each other and do some prioritizing. I always try to help couples really get kind of when you first get home, I know this is not easy. I know every listener is going to hear this and go, that is so not able to be happening at my house. But if the children can begin over time, see that mom and dad have a moment of connection when they first come together, first come in the house, it will send an immense amount of safety to your child. Like, overwhelming amount of safety. There's about nothing more safe than a child realizing that mom and dad are getting along. Because the opposite is true as well. So a lot of times I'll help couples. What do you need from your spouse the minute you walk in the door? And what do you need from each other? And what can you give that love languages comes into play? What can you give to each other? I mean, the minute you see each other? And I know that's not always possible, there's kids hanging on you. I get it, I get it. They're screaming, the water's boiling over. I totally understand that. But if over time you can do something to connect with each other, and that literally could be a high five, that could be a pat on the back, there could be a hug that

Dr. Jessica Peck: could be a phrase that you word

Tricia Thornton: of affirmation, something thing that will go a long way.

The three P's of parenting are prepare, prioritize and perspective

Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, another really great framework that you have for connection is something called the three P's. And I want to make sure we

Tricia Thornton: have time to talk about that so that I call it the three P's of parenting. And this actually is going to summarize a lot of what we've said. So the first P is, I just went totally blank. Thank you. It's coming, it's coming. Prepare. There it is.

Dr. Jessica Peck: that's okay. Oh my goodness. Even the therapist brain needs a moment to reset. We needed to go upstairs.

Tricia Thornton: I did. I went up to my prefrontal cortex. So prepare, prioritize and perspective. So the prepare piece, that is exactly what I was talking about with the mom and the dad connecting. If they can be prepared and connect with each other. The other prepare piece is, let's say right now you're listening to this show and you know that your afternoon and evening is full of activities, or you have a sick child at home, or your husband's out of town, or you have a work call that you have to get on at 5 o' clock in this bizarre way, whatever it is, how can we prepare one ourselves to embrace what is about to happen ahead that night? if your child didn't sleep well last night, prepare yourself. Tonight's not going to be easy, period. Done. They're going to have more meltdowns. They're going to be irritable with each other. There's going to be more snapping. The fear responses are going to be on high alert. So prepare during the day. And I just say sprinkle in self care. That could be on the way to pick them up. You just have some silence. Just sprinkle in some silence. Sprinkle in a little listening. Then the next one is prioritize. That kind of bleeds into what I was saying. So prioritizing your own. It is not selfish moms and dads to take care of you before you take care of your children. That's why they tell us in the airplanes to put the mask on first. Then, the next one is perspective. This has to do with everything we talked about at the beginning. If we can remember that. Oh yeah, he doesn't actually even have the circuitry to understand what the heck I'm telling this child to do and why he's melting. Why that little boy with the skin knee yelled at his brother. Oh yeah, it's because he doesn't have the circuitry to not do that. It doesn't mean that you accept disrespectful behavior. I like to always help people understand. I'm not saying everything gets, gets to fly by. However, if we pause and have some mindsight and realize, oh yeah, there we take this kind of perspective as a parent that oh, they're only five or there are 15, then that is really helpful. So I hope that helps.

Dr. Jessica Peck: You have been so helpful. Tricia. Honestly, these are not easy things. But I think even today if listeners can just come away with a perspective shift, realizing that we are living in this constant state of fear, we all have fear responses and we can respond in an unhealthy way if we could just pause and start to recognize those. And you can find more help in Tricia's book, Blessing from fear. Embracing your journey, discovering your true self. Tricia, as you were talking, I was thinking about prioritizing. We got to prioritize our spiritual health, our spiritual health with God and then our mental health is after that because our when we're not mentally healthy, our kids do not feel emotionally safe. And then the relational health with your spouse or whatever relationships are supporting you before your family is going to be healthy. There is hope for that and we are praying for that hope for you. I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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Jeff Chamblee: opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.

Live from NRB. Therapist, Author, and Speaker Tricia Thornton joins Jessica to talk about helpful strategies to overcome fear.

https://www.triciathornton.com/