How To Repair the Damage After An Argument | Dr. Becky Kennedy

0:04This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:18Happy Friday, everybody. Today, we're going to talk about a truly game-changing concept. I've found this to be incredibly helpful. It helps me to be way less hateful and judge mental, two deeply wired tendencies on my part. Just to back up, basically what we're doing on Fridays these days is we're highlighting some of the golden nuggets from our vast archive. So the system we've been using this month is that we go to our staff members and ask them, like, what's still with you from the many, many years of this show? And this week, we went to the newest member of our team, Taylor Brandares, who's our director of operations.

0:54And she mentioned this moment that was also a huge moment for me in an interview that I did with Dr. Becky Kennedy, who's a rock star in the parenting advice world, but she also has plenty to say for non-parents. And she has this concept called MGI, which I will not spoil for you. I will let Taylor and then Becky explain it to you. But here's how this is going to work. After a quick break, we'll come back and we'll hear from Taylor. She'll describe why this moment was so impactful. And then we'll play the moment from Dr. Becky. Before we do that, just a quick reminder that We're offering bespoke guided meditations for all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes, and we have now decided to offer those indefinitely.

1:34So that's cool. For this entire month, the great meditation teacher Kyra Juulingo has crafted meditations to go with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. These are available only to paid subscribers over at danharris.com. This is a Friday episode, so there's no meditation to go with this one. Another thing I want to plug is that I'll be up at the Omega Institute for another installment of Meditation Party in late October. This is an in-person extravaganza with my friends Seven A. Selassie and Jeff Warren. Also, this time, Fosu Jones-Corte is coming. Like I said, October 24th through 26th at Omega, which is north of New York City.

2:08You can sign up at eomega.org, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, quick break, then we'll hear from Taylor, then Dr. Becky. I've been a fully adult human male for many decades, but I've never really focused on shorts as something you can wear and actually be stylish. I'm trying to up my shorts game, especially as my family and I have a big beach vacation coming up in the next couple of weeks. And one of my allies in this endeavor, my primary ally, is quince. I was on the quince website last night and I was picking out some awesome shorts, some linen shorts to wear at the beach so I can look good and stay cool.

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3:50Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of. The new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship. I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind, that makes you happier and less reactive.

4:26Because you're steadier, that improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier, then your relationships get even better, and up you go. Our mission over at this new app is to guide you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers like Seven A. Selassie and Joseph Goldstein and on and on. Also, add free access to our full podcast archive, exclusive live stream events where we guide meditations and take your questions. We do those every week and much more. Head on over to danharris.com.

4:59You can try it for two weeks free. And if you cannot afford a subscription, we'll give you one, no questions asked. Hi, I'm Taylor Brandares, Director of Operations. And my staff pick is Dan's conversation with Dr. Becky Kennedy. As a mom of two little boys, a five and a two-year-old, and someone who's trying to just show up better in all areas of life, this episode really landed for me in a personal way. Dr. Becky's idea of the path of repair has genuinely changed how I parent. And that's not in a one-time aha moment kind of way. It's something that I find myself learning and relearning every single day.

5:38I remember one moment clearly when my oldest was pushing his little brother around again and I just snapped. I yelled and the second it came out of my mouth, I regretted it. It hit me immediately. And I realized that I often expect more from him just because he's the oldest and that's not fair. He is still so little. So instead of brushing it off and just moving on, I circled back a little later and I said, hey, I got too mad. I didn't like how I handled that. It wasn't some big emotional moment, but I could feel him soften. That's not to say that I didn't tell him what he was wrong. I absolutely did.

6:18But I also knew that I didn't like the way that I had said it. And that's what stuck with me. That's what I took from Dr. Becky, that repair is not about being perfect. It's about being willing to reconnect. I've also started using her idea of most generous interpretation, especially with my husband. When things are chaotic and he doesn't immediately jump in, I try to pause and think, maybe he's not ignoring what's going on. Maybe he just needs a beat. Maybe he's in his own head thinking about something that happened at work or trying to shift gears before he jumps in. And that tiny mental shift, whether it be in parenting or in partnership, has helped me respond instead of react.

7:01And that space, even just for a few seconds, has made a real difference. And it's not just as a parent or a partner, but as a person just navigating everyday relationships with a little bit more patience and care. Thank you, Taylor. And welcome again to the team. And I love that you remember that moment because that moment really landed for me. So now let's hear the key part of the interview with Dr. Becky, where she talks about the power of repair. And I should say, just to plug Dr. Becky, that much of this material comes from a great TED talk she gave. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

7:36Let's start with the TED talk. You start the talk by describing a fight with your son. Can you tell that story? Yeah. So essentially, I had been cooking dinner for my family. It was a Sunday night. And Sunday nights to me, they're just so hard. Like there's a million things that were undone from the weekend. There's a million things I know I need to do for the week. And so I'm often kind of on edge. So I actually cooked dinner that night, which is not something I usually do. But I did. And then my son kind of walked into the kitchen and he just looked at the table and And he's like, oh, chicken again.

8:13And then he kind of like mumbled like disgusting like that. And I, you know, there's so many things I wish I did in that moment, but I didn't. And I just exploded. And I think my body was just completely full of frustration at that moment. There was not like one ounce left to metabolize any additional frustration. And so it all came out and I just yelled at him. I was like, what is wrong with you? You're so spoiled. You know, and just kind of went on in this scary, reactive way. He then proceeded to say, I hate you. And then he ran out of the kitchen. He ran to his room. He slammed the door. He's alone there.

8:57I'm alone in the kitchen. And, you know, that's how the night began. Sounds like good parenting to me. What's the problem? Well, you know, and I think this is the focus of the TED Talk. And in that, that moment happened. And I actually think every single person, like if you're a parent, you're like, yeah, that moment happened in my house. If you're not a parent, you're like, oh, I've said things I didn't want to say. I've used a tone that I am not proud of, right? That is the moment. And then often what we do after the moment, and I did this, we spiral. We usually spiral in one form of blame. And actually often we seesaw, right?

9:38The blame of what's wrong with my kid? My kid is so obnoxious. I'm cooking food. What's wrong with my kid? Or what's wrong with my boss? Or what's wrong with my partner? Like what's wrong with the other person? And then we seesaw between that and what's wrong with me? Why did I do that? I messed up this other person forever. I'm such an asshole, right? And irony. And I think the thing that the talk really speaks to is what does in some ways more damage to another person isn't actually the event or the moment of yelling. It's actually what happens in that spiral because as we spiral in blaming someone else and or blaming ourselves, we actually fail to go reconnect and to repair the relationship.

10:22And repair, as is the subject of the TED Talk, is actually the most powerful parenting strategy we have. So we miss out on this really, really important overall relationship moment. So mess ups are going to happen in parenting or any other relationship. It's what you do subsequently, the repair, that is the key. Yeah. And I think there's like a really big picture here, right? I didn't talk about this too much in the TED Talk, but a lot of my thoughts around repair really come from trauma literature and understanding trauma. And we know trauma is not the event that happened. It's the way an event gets processed in your body.

11:03I think another way of saying that, I love Gabor Matei's way, he says trauma isn't the thing that happens to you. It's kind of what happens inside of you. And so parents, non-parents, we all can really focus on the event, on the moment. But in every relationship, it's actually more about whether that moment gets stored in our body next to aloneness and nobody talking about it or denial from other people or whether that moment gets stored next to connection and safety and love and explanation and understanding that actually determines the way the event gets remembered in our body. So yes, those moments happen for everyone.

11:49Everyone yells. Everyone snaps. Everyone says the thing that's imperfect. We all do. And I think what I really want people to shift in terms of their perspective is rather than focusing on the kind of harmful impact of the event to really, really be aware of the healing, powerful opportunity of the repair that can happen next. This is an interesting reframe because most of us, as you said, use moments of dysregulation to blame other people and beat the shit out of ourselves. But actually, the reframe that I'm hearing from you is, oh, these are going to happen anyway. we might as well view them as an opportunity.

12:31Completely. And we've inherited those coping mechanisms, right? Like that tendency to blame ourselves or blame someone else. I mean, that's not something we were born with, right? Like no baby is like in their crib, waking up their parents at 2 a.m. and being like, oh, like, is that too much? Like, did I really need that feeding? Or I'm such a selfish baby. We're not born with that tendency to blame. And actually, that tendency we all have, which we can talk more about why, but the blaming mentality is a very stuck mentality. There's no movement possible. I'm kind of burrowing back into myself, or I'm focusing all my energy on how awful someone else was.

13:13Nobody can make any changes from that place. So it's also, and I know you're a pragmatist too, Dan, it's a very ineffective mindset. because after we yell, most of us like don't want to do that again. And so it's about finding a mindset and a couple of next steps that actually can help us change rather than keep us stuck in that awful moment. So you talk about the three steps for repair. Let's go through them. Step number one is actually internal, not external. Yeah, when I think of three steps to repair, the first step, okay, and I really mean this, is to mess up. And that I think is so important.

13:51And it's helped me personally as a recovering perfectionist so much. Because I remember being in grad school and hearing this line that my professor said, like in passing, and I remember it being like, I'm not going to hear anything else you said. That thing you said in passing was just so profound. And what she was talking about was how repair is a marker of secure attachment. Kids who had more repairs growing up were more likely to have a secure attachment. Secure attachment basically predicts everything good that we want for our kids. And Jen she kept talking about attachment. I was like, wait, wait a second, wait a second.

14:23No one else is like finding this profound. If repair is a marker of secure attachment, that means everyone ruptures. Like why is no one highlighting this? Because also if repair helps kids get into secure attachment, then you can't repair if you didn't rupture. It's almost like full permission to mess up. It's like you have to rupture to get good at repair. And so when I think about the three steps of repair and saying step one is rupture, which means yelling, saying the thing you don't want to say, messing up, whatever you want to say. That actually is step one. And the reason that helps me so much is because, and I did this in the kitchen after I yelled at my son.

15:00I was like, okay, instead of going to the abyss of I'm an awful parent, I messed up my kid forever, I actually pictured this road. And I'm like, okay, I'm actually on the road to repair. And I know I'm on the road because I just ruptured. If step three is repairing with my kids, step one is rupturing. Like I crushed that step. I'm a third of the way there. Like that's pretty close. Look at my momentum, right? And I really do say that to myself. Like, wow, look at me. I'm like getting closer. Okay, so that's step one. And if you're thinking about repair, you've already done step one. It's pretty, you know, pretty compelling.

15:30Step two is repairing with ourselves. And this is the step that I think too many people were never taught. And it's really the singular reason why so many people would say, yeah, I'm not good at apologizing. And it's not because you're selfish. And it's not because you don't have empathy. It's actually probably because you hold yourself with such derision and shame and blame that you literally can't face the reality of this thing you did. So we can never repair with someone else if we can't accept that this not so good thing actually is something that we did. And the only way we can accept that we did a kind of bad thing is actually by differentiating how I'm still a good person who did a bad thing.

16:13And if I can't repair in that way, which does not mean excusing it, we mix up all those things, okay? If I can't separate for myself, hey, Becky, I'm a good person who did a bad thing. I'm a good parent who loves her kid who yelled. Like really separating what I say is my good identity from my bad behavior, it will be actually completely impossible to repair with my kid. We cannot give out compassion and connection and goodness if we haven't re-accessed those qualities in ourselves. We can't give out what we don't have in. It's just like, I don't know, there's like physics, I think. It's not possible.

16:49It's actually not physics, but it's something. And then the last step is actually repairing with your kid. And this is where I think getting into some of the details matter because I think a lot of us probably have received apologies that didn't feel good. And that is not what I'm talking about. A repair is not, sorry I yelled, but if you didn't complain about dinner, it wouldn't have happened. That is not a repair. And if my son had said, yeah, like I really didn't like when you yelled at me. if I say, yeah, I'm sorry you feel that way. That is that classic line should be thrown in the garbage.

17:22It is not a repair. A repair is naming what happened, taking responsibility for your behavior, acknowledging the impact it had on someone else. And if you really want to go for bonus points, kind of like sharing what you would do differently the next time or what you're working on. And that sounds very different than, I'm sorry, but if you didn't do that, it wouldn't have happened. Sounds more like, hey, I yelled at you in the kitchen and it's never your fault when I yell. I'm sure that felt really scary. And look, I was frustrated, but I'm working on managing my frustration so it doesn't come out as a yell.

17:56Does repair always involve an abject apology and admission of fault? What if it's more complicated? What if there are, I mean, your kid wasn't being awesome in that moment. And sometimes when we lose our shit with other people, they're being worse than that. A hundred percent. So there's a lot of nuance here. So there's a couple things because I know, you know, as a parent, you're like, but like, if he didn't say that, you wouldn't have yelled. Like, isn't he kind of responsible? Or, you know, you say in a partnership, but my wife said this kind of not so nice thing. So like, she kind of did make me snap back at her.

18:32Okay. But here's one of the things I think about here. Number one, we confuse our right to feel frustration with our right to express frustration in an angry, disrespectful way. They're two very different things. The right to have a feeling and our responsibility to manage that feeling so we can show up as a respectful person, especially in the relationships we care about. Those are two very different things. My son saying that, or maybe let's say my partner constantly being late for dinners. Yeah, of course I feel frustrated. And of course that relates to my son saying he didn't like dinner or my husband being late.

19:11That is completely different from feeling like I have a right to express that frustration in any way I choose to express it. I think it's so important to differentiate that. So that's number one. Number two, when parents say this to me, they say, yeah, well, I said to my kid, look, if you just listened to me and got ready in time, I wouldn't have yelled. Or if you didn't complain about dinner, you wouldn't have gotten yelled at. Okay, this is what I say, okay? Because what we model to our kid is what they will do in the future. Like, Dan, I imagine being at my son's house, I don't know, however many years from now, Let's say he's married.

19:41Who knows if he will be. And I hear him say, let's say to his partner, look, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but if you had just remembered to bring toilet paper home, it wouldn't have happened. I'm sorry I yelled at you, but if the dinner you made actually tasted good, it wouldn't have happened. To me, it's like literally cringeworthy if my kid would think that that is an acceptable way to talk to someone. And I don't know any adult who'd be like, yeah, I would feel pretty awesome if I heard my kid talk to some of their loved ones in that way. And if we don't want our kids to become adults who communicate with others in that way, we just can't communicate with our kids in that way and expect it to be any different.

20:18There's also like a bigger picture here if we zoom out. I realized I'm very, very big on personal agency, right? And I always say to parents, like, what's going on with your kid isn't your fault. I believe that. That is like a firm, firm belief of mine. Another equally firm belief that I just sit side by side is, okay, so what's going on with my kid isn't my fault. I am the adult. I'm the leader in the room. And so it is not only my responsibility, I do have an opportunity to think about what I could do to shift a dynamic in the home. Because when we shift something in a system, everyone else in the system actually has to make a shift to accommodate.

20:56And so if we give that example of, let's say instead, I yell at my kid every morning because they're never ready for school. And the truth is, if they did put on their shoes, I wouldn't yell. I guess that's true. But to me, it's very disempowering. It's very disempowering as an adult to think, you know, if my four-year-old just listened to me on time, I wouldn't yell. Like, I am going to put faith in my toddler's change in behavior for me to show up as the adult I want to show up as. That would be like the CEO of a big company saying to their associates, you know, if you all showed up in time, I would be a better leader.

21:27I don't think anyone wants that CEO. You want a CEO who's like, hey, here's what I'm going to do from the top because I actually have the most power in this situation. And there's a really important thing that happens. And this happens in my house all the time. When I do say to my kids something like, hey, listen, something like, I'm sorry I yelled. The mornings have been really hectic. I'm frustrated. I'm working on managing that. I always give myself 24 hours later. And I always say there has to be 24 hours after repair. Of course, I'm a pragmatist. Then I'll say to my kid, I won't say. Now, remember how I apologized to you yesterday?

22:00I didn't actually mean it because you're actually just really annoying in the morning. that definitely is not something I recommend. But what I'll say is something from seeing my kid on my same team. I'd say, hey, mornings are so hard. And like, I ask you to put your shoes on, you don't. I ask again, you don't. And then it gets to the point where things feel really, really bad. And that's on me. And I have to imagine you also want mornings to be smoother. I wonder what we could do to just make mornings smoother. And when kids are approached from a place of collaboration rather than control or criticism, it shouldn't be shocking that they're actually willing to collaborate.

22:34And they're often very willing to apologize. I can't even tell you how many times 24 hours later after a repair, my five-year-old came and said, you know, and I really didn't listen to you and I'm sorry. And I think this goes back to this whole idea that drives everything I talk about, that kids are good inside, that if we set up conditions for them to thrive, they don't have to be tricked or sticker charted or timeouted or punished. A lot of that does come out when we lead with a similar generosity. Yeah. So I'm thinking with my son, you know, if it takes me five times to ask him to do something simple, I might say, look, there's going to be a consequence if I have to ask you again and you might lose five minutes for your iPad time or something like that.

23:20Great. Great. Great. And again, this is just how we've all been raised to raise our kids. This is just like everywhere. So we've all been so influenced by so many ideas that I believe are false that are like almost underlying that. Okay, so to me, the thing that's missing about a punishment is again, if I'm one for effectiveness, is to some degree, I have to believe, okay, my kid's not listening. And if I kind of give him a punishment, if I basically deliver him negative feelings after, that will de facto the next time help him listen. And then we'll be having better listening in our house. Okay, first of all, most people I talk to who are on a schedule of a lot of punishments are like, yeah, that's like not really happening.

24:03I just like, I don't know, I'll keep saying punishments to my kids. It's not really changing. But I don't even understand the timeline of it. Like, okay, something happened so that my kid isn't listening. Like there's a reason before, then the not listening happens. And I'm delivering a kind of random consequence after. Which means like on some level, I assume the next time, The best way to help my kid change behavior is he's going to be not listening. And he's like, wait a second, wait a second. If I don't listen in 10 minutes, I'm going to get my iPad time shortened and I don't want that. So knowing that I'm going to listen, like I don't know about your kid.