[LISA LEWIS] The podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/slash network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Today on the Am I Ok? Podcast, we have Megghan Thompson. Megghan is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor and a Parent Coach/Mental Health Consultant. She has been working with highly sensitive children, teens, and their families for over years and owns a group private practice in Maryland that specializes in working with highly sensitive children, highly sensitive teens and young adult, highly sensitive persons who engage in life-threatening behaviors like daily meltdowns, aggression, suicidal actions, promiscuity, and self-harm. Megghan’s mission is to defeat the statistic that highly sensitive persons make up 50% of the population that seeks therapy, but only make up 20% of the population. She’s doing this by building an army of parents equipped with the support and accountability to rapidly transform their relationships with their children. She helps parents of highly sensitive children and teens eliminate the daily meltdown shutdown cycle in as little as eight weeks through her coaching program. Welcome Megghan. [MEGGHAN THOMPSON] Hi, thank you for having me. [LISA] Yes, it’s so good to have you here. I’ve been interviewing highly sensitive experts, guest experts, mostly about adults. So it’s so nice to have you here and kind of round out the whole spectrum of the population. [MEGGHAN] Hmm, excellent. Yes, I’m excited. [LISA] So I like to ask all of my guest experts, do you consider yourself highly sensitive? [MEGGHAN] No, I’m not highly sensitive. [LISA] How did you come to work with this population? Can you tell us about your story and your mission? [MEGGHAN] Yes, yes. So my sister’s highly sensitive. I am the oldest of three and my sister’s the middle child, and I did not learn that until after I was a play therapist for many years and deepened my study in supporting sensitive teens with chronic suicidality and chronic self-harm. So these are kids who are in and out of the hospital, may or may not have had a trauma history. So what was fascinating to me was the teenagers who didn’t have a trauma history who had, what will Aaron would speak about or Marsha Linehan would speak about, which is a different fit in parenting. So a mismatch, if you will, in the sense that the parents were, might not have been highly sensitive and didn’t know what worked to help their sensitive kids feel validated. And once I learned Marsha Linehan’s work, she’s the designer of DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), a huge light bulb went off in my house. I had always been, my sister’s name is Shannon considered the Shannon whisperer in my household and that wasn’t just after I got my master’s degree in counseling but I had kind of understood her in a different way and then understanding sensitivity through the clinical lens. And then beyond that, after reading Dr. Aaron’s work in more psychological lens. It was just a completely different ball game in terms of how I viewed the world and a lot of validation in terms of how I was raised and in terms of how I see my sister and where her skillsets are and the different components to that. So being a non-highly sensitive person working with highly sensitive parents and non-highly to parents who have highly sensitive kids has been a, it’s my gift to break it down because there are different windows to the world, if you’re a highly sensitive parent or if you’re, or if you’re a non highly that you can look at through different lenses, look at your child through different lenses. And having grown up in a household and being able to have all that hindsight. but also the clinical expertise I think makes me uniquely available to parents to hear what can be effective and to see the results that we create with our clients as well. So that’s in a nutshell, I could talk about this all day but — [LISA] I’m curious about your, your mission too, that really struck me. [MEGGHAN] So our mission at the coaching company, especially through the private practice as well is to eliminate suicidal thoughts for highly sensitive children around the world. And by eliminate, I mean, eradicate suicidality for highly sensitive people. So that is a tall order, but I know for sure that that is my mission, why I’m here on this earth. and our objective to do that is to support parents and eliminating the daily meltdown cycle. Now parents come to us for children ages three through 18 at this point so no matter where they come to us, their children might already be suicidal or they might not be. But our objective is to have the ripple impact, this generation and then beyond to look into that elimination of suicidal thoughts for sensitive people. [LISA] Wow, that is so powerful. Well, and I commend you for doing that. That’s a huge task and so much needed too. [MEGGHAN] I have a fantastic team, so I couldn’t do it without them. They are all mission oriented and I’m just blessed for everybody who has literally dropped into my lab to serve the population that we serve. [LISA] Oh, well, good. I’m so glad to have you here and to spread this word even more, just being a mental health professional myself that I get it. So as you were talking, it just led me to other questions that were coming up for me and I wanted to think about how the listeners are listening and how to best, with all their questions probably coming up too, how to best support them. Why does traditional parenting set up the highly sensitive child into a daily meltdown cycle? [MEGGHAN] So in broad terms traditional parenting teaches kids that they are right or wrong based on their behavior. And sensitive kids are uniquely available to understand how their actions impact other people. So when a parent uses a traditional parenting strategy like timeouts or grounding, or corporal punishment, spanking, et cetera, the message that the child receives, especially if they’re highly sensitive is you’re wrong and your actions are a definition of who you are. So highly sensitive people who are more prone to shame sink into that shame, because these are shame-based parenting strategies. Parents who are using these strategies aren’t not leading with shame, but the strategy itself, typically, I should say perpetuates shame. So for sensitive kids who are already more prone to shame based on all the research on that, and we can go down that rabbit hole, but I’m trying to be considerate. [LISA] No, you’re doing great. [MEGGHAN] They take on an extra layer of responsibility and fall into a helplessness and hopelessness pattern and then that helplessness and hopelessness pattern leads to trying to keep it all together in order to perform and in order to show their parents that they are trying and no child’s put on this earth to be miserable, so no child was put on this earth and wants to feel miserable. So they’re trying, they’re working hard at it, holding it all in and so then they explode afterwards and we call this the shame rage cycle. So what happens is that they are trying to maintain a level of emotional stability but without the skill. So it’s just putting a lid on a boiling pot. And when parents are using typical strategies, the children will typically react to that either right after or later in shame and frustration and aggravation. And then it’s all usually a big, I like to like in it to pig pens, dust bubble, following you around. It’s hard to tease out the pieces of all the dust of the big negative emotions, but the strategy itself creates a need for the child to hide their emotions, which then perpetuates the explosion process. So whether that explosion is a meltdown, knockdown, drag out, hitting, kicking, screaming, body on floor or an internal shutdown meltdown, which is, “I’m the worst kid ever. I shouldn’t have been alive. You’d be better off without me,” all those things children running away into the room hiding under their bed freezing and staying stuck in the frozen capacity too. So either way it’s the same cycle. [LISA] Yes, and I was thinking, if it doesn’t go outward, then it goes, turns around and goes inward that’s and either way it doesn’t feel good. And why is this stuck it up attitude isn’t the way to support your highly sensitive child? [MEGGHAN] So I want to speak about that in the sense that most parents aren’t always going straight with their child who’s frustrated or disappointed, or experiencing any negative emotion or reaction to an event or an expectation. Most parents aren’t leading with knock it off, suck it up but the knock it off, suck it up response that a parent might have is typically a secondary symptom. So what I mean by that is when you’re frustrated or exhausted yourself as a parent, because you’re dealing with meltdowns day in, day out, you’re fried. And there comes a point where you’re so tired and exhausted that you can’t give anymore because your tank is empty as a parent. So when you’re trying to set limits and teach your child to manage their emotions and try to teach them coping skills, and your child is saying, that’s not going to work, I might as well not even try it, you get to a point where you feel like your back’s up against the wall as a parent. At that point, you say, get over it. It’s just sucks or we’re trying to get out the door. Don’t you want to go to the park? Suck it up. So whether that comes forth in the words out of your mouth, or just in your energy of like kid, I just can’t, I’m done, no more, get in the car, we got to roll. This doesn’t always pertain to transitions leaving the house. It could be get to the dinner table, whatever. And that experience for the parents, children take that on is as their fault and it perpetuates, as I mentioned earlier, that shame response of, oh I don’t deserve to be happy. I’m a bad kid. I’m so sorry and then that consistent apologies to the point where it can feel like a broken record. Hopefully that answers your question in terms of the perspective, but it’s also invalidating. Highly sensitive children feel like their parents don’t understand them because they experience their emotions at a much deeper and more thorough level than non-highly sensitive parents. So when parents say, “Hey, kid, it’s not that big of a deal,” or “Hey, sweetheart. I know that you’re worried about it, but you really don’t need to be worried about it.” Your child hears there must be something wrong with the way I’m experiencing the world and I must be wrong. So when a child thinks that, they start to second guess their gut, they start to second guess their intuition and then they don’t know what’s up and what’s down. And then we see the, well, tell me how you’re feeling about that, a parent might ask and the kid is like, I don’t know. So it’s a perpetuating cycle again. [LISA] Yes. And when I hear that, something must be wrong. I usually hear it working with adults, like, there’s something wrong with me. And if there’s something wrong with me then what and it leads to the question am I ok? Am I going to be ok? As a highly sensitive child, a highly sensitive person, I experience it, just being it myself, highly sensitive, experiencing, there’s always feelers out, externally feeling out what’s going out in the environment and just really having to navigate what’s mine and what’s somebody else’s energy. [MEGGHAN] Yes. [LISA] What are some of the coping skills that don’t work for highly sensitive children? I think you’ve already touched on some of them. I wondering if there’s more. [MEGGHAN] I think the question really is not about whether or not a certain type of coping skill will work. It’s the reason why parents are so stuck in trying to teach their kids coping skills, because there’s a fix-it mentality associated with that when you’re trying to teach your child in the moment of a meltdown or right before the meltdown. You can have a, a beautiful conversation with your child who feels loving and connected, yes, mommy or daddy, or what have you. I am going to take deep breaths. I know exactly how to do that. Or maybe they have that conversation with a therapist and then when push comes to shove at the height of the meltdown, or right before the meltdowns about to happen, you’re encouraging them to use their coping skills, or you’re looking for them to use their coping skills because you practice and then they get stuck. [MEGGHAN] And this is the issue that we see for many highly sensitive children who struggle with generalizing the skill because there’s a lot more factors than just the typical fix-it mode, which can be often reinforced in a therapeutic relationship when working with a traditional therapist as well. So I wanted to speak about that component that parents can experience, which is just trying to find the right coping skill for their child. And I really encourage parents to zoom out and notice if there are other factors that are playing into your child’s ability rather than seeing oh, deep breaths don’t work or my kid will never stretch or my child won’t be able to calm themselves down. There must be something wrong with them. Again, going back to our point of are your children really broken? No. [LISA] And is it more like a like a trial by error, you try one and see if that works and if that one doesn’t work, keep trying until you find one that does work as far as like coping skill? [MEGGHAN] I see a lot of parents go in that direction. And while that can lead to some crisis intervention success, I see there’s a much bigger concern in terms of eliminating the meltdown cycle. So when we think about meltdown cycle, what I’m speaking about is parents who are dealing with daily meltdowns or multiple times a day meltdowns, even every other day of meltdowns for parents of kids growing up. That’s not developmentally appropriate even for highly sensitive kids. So when we think about trying to teach your child how to regulate their emotions, it’s not just about talking to them about what they can do better, differently next time. It’s about maintaining your relationship and shifting so that they feel understood. It’s about making sure that you’re teaching them playfully. It’s about making sure that their routine is appropriately impacted by the principles, especially the ones that we teach particular clients. But from a big picture standpoint, those coping skills, I always speak to parents, especially those who work with us directly, we work with parents who are awesome parents with awesome kids who just need awesome skills. But it’s not a matter of saying that there’s a particular coping skill that is the hum dinger zinger, magic wand. It’s a matter of noticing that if your child’s not emotionally available to learn from you, then they won’t learn [LISA] Do the parents need to know something about themselves, maybe it’s like the way they were parented and how it’s, I’m like, do they need to have more insight about themselves before they can attend to their child? [MEGGHAN] So we all, based on how we were parented can respond to our children with those automatic thoughts. For me personally, as much as I know, I still need to work on a daily basis with my own daughter of noticing that she’s doing the best she can, she’s working at it and she’s learning every day because if I’m tired or frustrated for whatever reason, I wanted to get up the stairs and she wants to stay, you know what I mean? It doesn’t matter. I’m a human being. The thought in the back of my mind is that there’s something not working well in our relationship, or I can go into, she’s just trying to gain control. Because that’s how I was parented. So yes, we definitely need to pay attention to how we are parented to notice those automatic experiences that we might have. So we quell them, we address them, we don’t respond with our children like that. That is definitely one piece of the puzzle. And quite frankly many of our clients will say that that’s the piece. They didn’t realize how pervasive it can be in terms of how we respond to our kids if we’re not paying attention to that. [LISA] Yes. And I’ve just having three children, myself, two in college and one in high school, and they’re all three different, they each respond differently. And just knowing that, that took time to figure that out. And of course not getting that perfect all the time and just learning about myself being highly sensitive and then wondering, looking to see if they are, too. So I’d say like two out of three of mine are highly sensitive. Can you share with us how do highly sensitive children, a highly sensitive teens develop mental health disorders? [MEGGHAN] So there’s a combination being born sensitive and growing up in an invalidating environment. Like I mentioned before, this is not out of purposeful joy by the parent, typically. Obviously an invalidating environment would be an abusive one too, but the parents that we see, the parents that we work with consistently are trying, oh boy, they are trying. I’m sure the clients that you have in your practice who are adults, their parents were trying too. They want the be what’s best for their children and so our clients are so dedicated to that as most parents are. So with that being said, the mismatch and invalidation is where the line is drawn. Highly sensitive people who grow up in an invalidating environ are much more likely to develop a mental health disorder and much more likely to develop chronic suicidal thoughts and self-harm behaviors and move towards suicidal actions. So that research has been going on for decades now. It’s not just my experience professionally. Marsha Linehan started putting that research out in the sixties, but even prior to that, before she named what what’s called the biosocial theory there was research around. Sensitive people used to be called neurotic or psychotic and were considered that before we had an understanding of the personality trait and stopped making it wrong or pathologizing it if you’ll. But there’s a clear path to significant mental health concerns when there’s, when that combination happens. Traumatic event or chronic invalidating environment can really set highly sensitive people, sensitive children up for a significant amount of health struggle. [LISA] So how does a highly sensitive child, if they’re not validated, let’s say, through their childhood, how do they feel about themselves as they grow into an adult later on into adulthood and beyond? [MEGGHAN] Typically what we see is that they don’t know how they feel about themselves. There’s a lot of question around who they are. I speak to my parents, the clients that we work with who are parents, obviously often that at best highly sensitive kids, without skills grow up to be “people pleasing work alcoholics.” At worst, they engage in chronic suicidal or risky behaviors. So when we look at what that means for behavior patterns that I’m describing here the highly sensitive adults who grew up in invalidating home, who have a history of grow an invalidating home, they don’t know where the boundaries are, to the sense, let me make sure that I’m clear on that. They feel where their boundaries are emotionally. However, the skillset of explaining that to other people and validating themselves that that boundary is an okay one to have is where there’s a gap. So I want to make sure that anybody listening hears the words behind my words, which is highly sensitive people are capable and able thoroughly of naming their boundaries. And when you can’t trust your gut, because you weren’t taught to trust it as a child, there’s a significant uphill battle of learning how to do that. And that’s where a skill gap comes in. So rather than speaking about a mental health diagnosis, where you have a disorder in the way you think I often prefer, 99% of the time prefer to look at it as a scale gap, because then it’s a lot easier for the client. And even the many of the parents that we work with have this scale gap. We work hand in hand in filling both simultaneously and they grow in that respect as well. So it it’s really important that we look at highly sensitive people as fully capable autonomous people, because they are. So the mental health model of looking at it like a chronically anxious need doesn’t account for the gifts that highly sensitive people have on this earth. And we can see that those gifts can be dampened by second guessing what’s possible for yourself, second guessing how other people will take it if you set a limit on their behavior or on what they’re asking of you, or a limit for yourself of what you’re capable of doing for, with them. So you can see that those gifts feel drained from you as a highly sensitive person, but it’s really important that we look at it from a strength based perspective that highly sensitive people are on this earth for a reason and necessary in the human population. And then as a result, we look for ways to understand how we can support highly sensitive people in flourishing in the way that they flourish. It’s critical that we notice that highly sensitive adults who don’t grow up with these skills are supported in learning them and that highly non-highly sensitive people, myself included honor the fact that we need to create an environment for highly sensitive people to test those boundaries and try out and stretch those boundaries as well, not stretch themselves. Because oftentimes like I said what does the people pleasing alcoholic do? They work to death. So what I mean by that is stretching boundaries to set stronger boundaries. [LISA] Oh, wow. What you just said the last, what three or four minutes was so profound, Megghan and such, I think you just really put it all like together there, just from the very beginning and like how it shows up if it goes like untreated. So I love what you say that that gap is a gap, a skill gap and not to use a label like a mental health disorder to label anybody, but it’s more of a gap. We didn’t receive what we needed and we can learn how to receive that and fill the gap. [MEGGHAN] Yes, absolutely, because what does a disorder do? It implicates something that needs to be rebuilt rather than filled in. So it indicates that something’s broken words and semantics are so important for highly sensitive people and so important in raising highly sense to a child. So I really teach that not only to my team, but also to the parents that we work with. We have to be very calculated in the words that we use because of the messages that we send for highly detailed oriented people. Words matter and that’s really important that those of us at MTC and in my practice as well that we speak to that, that we use words that are empowering, we use words that indicate possibility and potential. But we also use words that are clear, clear on our mission and clear on what we know to be true, because if you look at statistics and the rates of suicide, and I don’t want necessarily bring us all the way back there, but I just want to speak to this point the highest rates of suicide around young adults. And then again workaholic adult males. So the suicidality risk is pervasive in the whole lifespan of a highly sensitive person even if they show up “successful” beyond adolescence. Now there’s still a high risk of feeling rundown and burnt out by the time you hit middle aged-hood, if you will. So it it’s critical that we address this need for children. [LISA] And if there is someone listening that knows someone that is having suicidal thoughts what do you recommend? [MEGGHAN] So first things first is in terms of working with a crisis interventionist. If you hear somebody making a threat to hurt themselves or others, and they have access to means of carrying on that plan, call 911, call the crisis hotline, text hotline, et cetera. I’m sure Lisa, you and I can work to make sure those are in the show notes but in terms of parenting, a sensitive child who is making statements about wanting to die, that depends on their age and also the likelihood, but it’s critical that you take it seriously. A highly sensitive child or not, children do not see the possibility of death if they don’t actually think it’s a possibility to end their pain. So regardless of your child’s age, if your child is mentioning the opportunity to end their emotional experience and having death be the means of that, you need to find professional support whether that be locally or, we take calls from parents around the world and we direct them if we don’t feel like we can help them. And our coaching company is just based on the client’s needs and the child’s needs as well, the parents’ needs and the child’s needs. So don’t hesitate to ask that question. We also have other videos on our YouTube channel, on our Facebook channel to speak about that and speak about the need. We can take that in a more in-depth way, but the main point is critically take it seriously. The research demonstrates from CDC, NIH, cetera, that children young than five who mention death, understand more about death than we think they do. That is true in the research across the board over the last 40 years, plus actually. I’m thinking 1960s and I still think it’s the [crosstalk] what is that. Its been the last 60 years that that research has been relevant. So it’s really critical that we as parents, because obviously if we were to hear our child say that, that hits like a dagger to the chest and that’s an understatement. So we don’t want to even think about that possibility so we try to justify, logically problem solve, think about the odds. But it’s critical that we take it seriously. [LISA] Thank you so much for sharing all that information and where people can reach out to get help, because it is important and everyone is important and everyone needs to be heard and understood. [MEGGHAN] Yes [LISA] So to kind of switch it to a lighter note, is there a difference between a highly sensitive parent parenting a highly sensitive child compared to a non-highly sensitive parent or a non-highly sensitive parent parenting a highly sensitive child? Do they parent different ways? [MEGGHAN] So I don’t think it’s that binary, but the short answer is yes. And it’s also true that we can see highly sensitive parents respond to highly sensitive kids in a myriad of ways and then same kind of presentation for a non-highly sensitive parent. What we know to be true in terms of the parenting intuition and the parenting aftermath, if you will, so say for example, if you’re a highly sensitive parent and you’re working hard to intuitively notice your child’s needs and to anticipate them and then to help them grow and stretch, and part of it might mean that you’re trying to prevent a meltdown, then that can be really tiring quickly, especially if you don’t have the skills to regulate your own emotions. Maybe you weren’t taught that as a child yourself, or you’ve just been trying to figure this out while you’re trying to parent. So those skills aren’t innate and drilled into you based on your own practice. I don’t like the word drill, but you get what I’m saying. You can call them up quickly. Then it’s extra exhausting. So there’s a deep feeling process that can happen for highly sensitive parents but we also see a lot of highly sensitive parents who are not connected to their emotions and who have been taught that emotions aren’t okay and so they’re really quite disconnected. So then that can lead to a similar experience, parenting highly sensitive kids to either a non-highly sensitive parent or another highly sensitive parent. But I don’t look it as a, certainly when we coach parents, we do discern and we can in the first conversation decide if a parent’s highly sensitive, pretty actively, even if that parent doesn’t identify themselves yet as highly sensitive. So we take that into consideration based on how we coach and how we lead them. However, it’s not the only factor because there are so many different ways to operate in the world, whether you’re highly sensitive or not. [LISA] Thank you for explaining that and kind of taking that apart, so looking at the different perspectives, if you’re highly sensitive parent, or if you’re not. Again, I hear too, just coming back to really knowing about yourself and and also knowing what type of child you have whether highly sensitive or not and to get those coping skills to best serve the whole family. Is there anything else that I forgot to ask that you’d like to talk about? [MEGGHAN] I don’t know that I an agenda coming in. [LISA] No, I didn’t have an agenda either. [MEGGHAN] So I’m happy to answer any questions that you might be curious about, pretty open book in that respect and can speak about — [LISA] I do want to ask one question, also just about culture sensitivity and just if you’re working with many different cultures and just the way that culture is different, parent different ways. Can you say a little bit about that? [MEGGHAN] Sure. So especially being trained as a mental health therapist, I received a lot of cultural understanding training by master’s degree I earned in Washington, DC, and then also my undergrad outside of Philly. So fairly diverse educational background. But what I think is important to understand is when coaching a parent, I should say I need to honor the personal experience that a parent has coming in. I teach parents to take the understanding of what a highly sensitive child and how a highly sensitive child understands the world, what a highly sensitive child thinks like, and encompass that into their cultural experience. So we can use this let’s say for example, from a religious standpoint, we coach parents of all different spiritual and religious backgrounds. I often will encourage parents who find comfort in the relationship with God or spirit or source, whatever they focus on in their religion as a strength and speak to the experience of honoring how they view the world. It might be different than mine, but what we can all understand is that, as any good coach, as any good therapist would understand that it’s not my objective to have somebody lead my life, but to help them lead and live their best life and teach their child to do the same. So part of my objective and what our team’s objective is to support parents in experiencing a life worth living and help their children experience a life worth living. So notice thing that we are honoring the experience that they have coming to us, and then stretching their comfort zone to see what’s possible so that they have that opportunity to do that within their view of the world. It’s not my job to change the view of the world, but to stretch out, to zoom out without saying that it’s right or wrong. I mean, I can’t teach parents to validate if I’m constantly telling them that their experience is wrong, like the opposite. Not because I have to, but because I mean, that’s just the right thing to do. [LISA] Yes, and I’m thinking if parents decide to parent a different way than the way that they were parented, and then there’s the extended family members who may not agree with that and having to follow your own path that may be different from the way that you are parented yourself. How do you navigate that as a parent, when it comes to navigating like the extended family [MEGGHAN] This is a common one that we support our parents in knowing exactly what to say and when. But in terms of the understanding that this is something that many parents who are dealing with it, I often will use myself as an example. I have a master’s degree in mental health. I am a child development and child therapist expert, and I have a mom. I have a mom, she hears what we do. My parents were both super supportive and often speak about the fact that if they knew of what I did when they were raising my sister, they would’ve jumped at the chance of working with somebody who knew what I know. With that being said, under the surface is, “Hey, mom and dad. I’m parenting my kid in a way that you didn’t parent your kid so that my kid doesn’t turn out like your kid right.” That’s a hard pill to swallow if you’re not emotionally regulated as myself but then also secure in your adult relationship with your parent. And of course my parents are pretty, what’s the word? They’re pretty pragmatic and realistic about the experience they have. So if they hear this podcast, they’d be okay with it. They know what’s going on plus they raised me to be a straight shooter. But what I’m speaking about is what, it comes down to the point where, my daughter is four and if she’s not sitting at the dinner table, because she’d rather be up and about, because all the rest of the adults are up and about that can be frustrating and it doesn’t mean that she’s a bad, that needs a seatbelt at the table. But the experience that I have in encouraging her to stay focused on eating or whatever it is, the task at hand and noticing that this is for me, not a big problem, this is a problem that she’s working on, she’s learning and she’s getting better at it every day. I don’t make mountains out of hills and so when we visit my parents there might be times where my mom’s getting frustrated at a different rate that I am. And that doesn’t mean that I need to take her advice on how I should fix the problem, because to me, the problem’s already been addressed. So I need to be able to clearly have a conversation with her about that in a way that allows her to have an opinion, but I don’t take it personally or I can manage my emotions about that. Because it’s delicate dance but it doesn’t mean that it’s something that I need to inflame myself. Because like I said, it’s a delicate dance. It’s not that I don’t have an emotional experience in that moment, receiving feedback from my mom about how I should parent, however I’m able to regulate and maintain my certainty, that the way that I parent is different and I do that for a reason. So we we coach our clients on being able to not only say the things in a certain way to help that, but also it’s all about self-regulation in that moment plus certainty. When you have a strategy that works repeatedly consistently with a 99.99% success rate, you can rest in that. So it’s a lot easier for parents to then walk in saying, “I know you have a different opinion and this is the way that I choose to parent my child. So I appreciate your input. Thank you.” And then that’s it and then you make a decision about what you’re going to do next. It’s your decision because this is your child and you’re the leader in that household in terms of directing your child and noticing their emotions and regulating themselves. So there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to get to that point, but it’s certainly necessary and it’s certainly possible. [LISA] Well, thank you. That was so empowering and we hope all the parents that are listening felt really empowered by that because that certainly was very empowering. And I heard like not to give up, you can do this, definitely. [MEGGHAN] Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a big thing. So there’s so much in, I might go on a little bit of a tangent, but there’s so much in like fad parenting psychology, if you want to call it that where we just kind of throw our hands up and say like, oh, this is parenting and it’s just supposed to be hard. It’s just supposed to be nearly impossible to see the results that you’re looking for. And a lot of that is because a lot of parents don’t have a workable strategy and so it does feel like there’s a lot riding on waiting to see how it turns out. So you can feel pretty powerless yourself as a parent when you’re listening to the everything works itself out mentality, which if you’re not parenting a highly sensitive child, yes, odds might be a little higher. But when you’re parenting a highly sensitive child that can be significantly invalidating and also draining to hear that over and over and over again. And so part of this conversation, I hope is that parents who are listening, understand that that doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to be where you just have to like hush up and take it. You can experience being able to have a clear conversation with somebody else who’s another adult who has an opinion on how you parent and it doesn’t have to be a conversation where you’re saying yes ma’am and then you follow through on the way that you know intuitively it doesn’t fit the way you want to parent. [LISA] Yes. My last question, what would you want parents of highly sensitive children to know? [MEGGHAN] A big loaded question. [LISA] Think of it as a take-away. [MEGGHAN] Sure. So their relationship, your relationship with your child is the single most impactful relationship that your sensitive child will ever build. And I say that to empower you because when you change the way that you relate to your child, your child changes the way that they relate to the world. This is true and Elaine Aron’s research and [inaudible 00:49:49] research and [inaudible [00:49:51] research just to speak of a few big names. But specifically what I mean by that is that when you change the way that you play, teach, set limits and validate, your sensitive child can feel capable, creatively, solve their problems and respond to the world with an I know I can do it response consistently. And that is something that a lot of highly sensitive parents don’t think is possible in a systematic way. And that’s part of our mission here at MTC, to teach parents that that absolutely is available to you when you focus on the parent child relationship first, rather than any other strategy or any other focus. [LISA] And I hear that is, shifting that maybe that mindset, that it can be a different way. And your goal, just your mission of changing the mindset of the world that was missing it too, like look, react to highly sensitive people very differently in a way that really resonates with them. So Megghan, how can listeners get a hold of you and find out more about what you have to offer? [MEGGHAN] The fastest way is to go to our website, megghanthompsoncoaching.com, which I know is a mouthful, but you’ll find the webinar link, the Facebook community link there, also links to our YouTube channel, Instagram, et cetera. So that’s where I would send you straight to our website to watch our five-step training on eliminating the daily meltdowns. It’s right there on the homepage for parents of young children. And then for parents of teens, you go to megghanthompsoncoaching.com/fivesteps_team. I’m sure those links can be put in the show notes too, for either training. If you want to go directly there, free trainings for you, depending on your child’s age, which one’s more appropriate. [LISA] Well, thank you so much, Megghan. I appreciate all of your expertise and knowledge and my heart is just beaming because of the information that you provided and just validating me as a highly sensitive person and a parent and I’m hoping that our listeners are feeling the same way. [MEGGHAN] Beautiful. Same, mine is beaming more, so I’m glad. This is a been a lovely conversation. Thank you for having me. [LISA] You’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you for listening today at Am I Okay? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.